1. Maniac (1980)
A squalid little gem which just stinks of nastiness, Maniac has a large cult following (forget about the remake - I know nothing of that) and is one of the more seedy and memorable slasher films. Instead of a faceless, nameless killer running round slashing a go go, Maniac builds up a character portrait of a true mad man. Schizophrenic Frank Zito has a collection of mannequins in his apartment. He kills women by scalping them and he puts their hair onto a dummy and talks to it as if it is his mother - an abusive prostitute who died in a car crash. He gets bored easily with his mannequins and this drives him to seek out more women to be scalped. Somehow he is able to cultivate a normal relationship with a photographer called Anna but pressure grows on his cracked psyche and soon he has a break with reality, tries to kill Anna and has disturbing hallucinations of the mannequins coming to life in order to kill him. The ending is ambivalent as to whether he is dead or not after Anna wounded him severely in self defence. With awesome 1980s gore supplied by Tom Savini - who in a small role gets his head blasted off Son of Sam style in a car while he is bedecked in Disco King garb - Maniac really pulls a punch in the blood and guts department. The low budget atmosphere makes the film seem like a documentary and Joe Spinell, who plays Frank, is eerily realistic in his performance as a mad man. This is truly one of the great bravura portrayals of insanity in the annals of horror cinema. You almost feel sorry for the guy even though he is a lowlife scumbag. Apparently the film crew went out of their way to portray violence as gritty and shocking. The film is certainly ugly and disturbing and adequately portrays New York's more sordid locales. In terms of a seedy masterpiece of horror, Maniac pushes all the right buttons and will satisfy most horror films.