Robert Davi and Caitlin Dulany in one of the scenes from MANIAC COP 3: BADGE OF SILENCE that William Lustig refused to direct.
video. Blue Underground’s new 4K 1080p 1.85:1 transfer is no- ticeably darker than the now-an- cient LIVE Home Video rendition, but the considerably higher reso- lution helps keep the action easily discernible. Digital noise reduction has cleaned up whatever imper- fections were in the negative with- out compromising detail. Audio options consist of 7.1 DTS HD, 5.1 & 2.0 Dolby Digital, and Jay Chattaway’s terrific score (which Blue Underground also offers on CD for $19.98) is available on an isolated DTS music track. Lustig is joined on a commen-
tary track by DRIVE director Nicho- las Winding Refn, who will be co-producing the former’s planned remake of MANIAC COP. Topics include the decision to kill off Bruce Campbell and Laurene Landon’s characters in favor of new leads, the mechanics of the elaborate-for-the-budget action sequences, and some of the smaller touches the director worked into the movie that view- ers might miss. It is also revealed that some CGI flames have been added to the climax where Cordell is on fire and igniting some of the prisoners around him. Computer- generated fire usually looks terrible in small movies, but the changes
here are fine and would likely not have been noticed by most view- ers. Interestingly, when Refn refers to the Lustig/Cohen collaboration as “the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” Lustig corrects him by saying “It was a working relation- ship.” While generally informative, the track pales in comparison to the previous one, due to both the lack of additional input and Refn’s periodic interruptions, which tend to be more disruptive than useful. Some of the information con- veyed in the commentary is re- peated in “Back on the Beat: The Making of MANIAC COP 2” (46m 53s) with Lustig returning and additional input provided by Larry Cohen, action director Spiro Razatos, composer Jay Chatta- way, Robert Davi, Claudia Chris- tian, Robert Z’Dar, Leo Rossi and Michael Lerner (a last minute and unlikely replacement for Richard Crenna as the picture’s Irish po- lice commissioner). We learn some more information about the dif- ferences Lustig and Christian had during the shoot (Christian elabo- rated further on the situation in her autobiography, BABYLON CONFIDENTIAL, but did not com- plain specifically about Lustig). The new design for Cordell is cov- ered by make-up man Dean Gates
and there are some humorous rec- ollections of the difficulties Z’Dar experienced dealing with the dis- comfort of spending long hours in it. Lustig mentions how a diet of HK action movies directly in- spired some of his choices here and that a franchise was the in- tention from Day 1, while Cohen states that he was not thinking of further installments when writing the original. Finally, Lustig is shown taking questions following a 2012 screening at the Los An- geles cult movie theater Cine- family. Trailers, a poster and still gallery and a vintage featurette (accessible as an Easter Egg on the Extras page by left clicking and highlighting the Maniac Cop im- age) can also be viewed, along with a brief deleted scene featur- ing Sam Raimi as a newsreader. MANIAC COP 2 played theat- rically in a number of foreign ter- ritories and proved quite lucrative on video, making a third install- ment inevitable. However, the rights changed hands in the in- terim and Lustig and Cohen found themselves in a very different situ- ation when it came time to make MANIAC COP 3: BADGE OF SI- LENCE. The budget was only about half of the $4 million spent previously and was raised with
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