Shudder Theater

 

This is a Shudder kind of weekend. On their Slashics Channel, Shudder was showing Maniac Cop 2 (1990) after I finished work, so I just enjoyed a meal while watching Z'Dar just obliterate a precinct of cops, while Davi and Claudia Christian try to get his name cleared and those superiors who set him up (taking dirty money) outed as corrupt. The stunt work involving the Maniac Cop (and prisoners who cut him up in prison) set on fire at Sing Sing is incredible. Leo Rossi as this serial killer of strippers who "befriends" Z'Dar steals the film. Rossi, with a peculiar southern accent, is interrupted before he could strangle his next stripper target by Z'Dar, still helped when cops attempt to arrest them. So Rossi takes Z'Dar back to his lair (with a neon sign on his wall), downs some hard liquor, comments on Z'Dar's zombie, knife-scarred face, and offers him his own warped friendship. I popped again for Clarence William III as an off-kilter jailed felon, sharing a cell with Danny Trejo (briefly in the film) and Rossi (who makes the mistake of going to a strip club where the girl he tried to strangle IDs him to Davi).

Larry Cohen made sure lots of cops fucking die. And Z'Dar is shot like an absolute killing machine menace as he should. The gritty realism of cop drama mixed with Zombie Z'Dar is quite a combo. Some will dig this, others won't.