pre-sales. Cohen’s original script centered on an African-American detective character who would re- place Davi’s McKinney as the pro- tagonist, but when the producers were informed by financiers from Japan (where the first two pictures had performed very well) that they would not buy a movie with a black lead, the concept was scrapped. Asked to do re-writes that would bring Davi back, Cohen dragged his heels, missing several dead- lines. Faced with a looming start date and no new script, the pro- duction company (having rejected Cohen’s offer to dictate one on the fly over his car phone!) went with Cohen’s original “Bride of Fran- kenstein” concept and plunged ahead with a hurriedly pieced to- gether storyline. Lustig, having no sympathy for the reduced eco- nomics, set about making a movie on the same level as the previous one, which immediately caused the production to fall be- hind schedule. When the money ran out, the resulting rough cut clocked in at a mere 51m, over a half-hour short of the necessary minimum running time. Addi- tional material was hastily con- cocted, which Lustig refused to direct and prompted him to exit the picture. Co-producer Joel Soisson stepped in to finish and while previous releases credited Lustig with direction, this new re- lease bears a video-generated credit for the infamous Directors Guild of America pseudonym “Alan Smithee.”
Dubbed “Maniac Kate” by the press for her history of excessive force, policewoman Katie Sullivan (Caitlin Dulany) is gravely wounded while trying to apprehend psycho- pathic junkie Frank Jessup (Jackie Earle Haley). Brain dead and with seemingly no hope of recov- ery, Sullivan becomes the obses- sion of Cordell, who has been resurrected by a skid row voodoo priest (Julius Harris). McKinney
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soon finds himself investigating another string of gruesome homi- cides as Cordell has been killing off anyone he deems a threat to Sullivan. In the process, the un- dead assassin also provides evi- dence showing what truly happened during the incident with Jessup. After stealing her comatose body from the hospital, Cordell orders the priest to bring Sullivan back to life, while McKinney and a doc- tor he has befriended (Gretchen Becker) are forced to watch. While perhaps not the disas- ter that its creators proclaimed, MANIAC COP 3 suffers from Cohen’s reduced input, substitut- ing quirky, intriguing supporting characters with the brand of ob- noxious twits that commonly populate low-grade slasher fare. The SON OF FRANKENSTEIN allusions worked well as an aside in part 2, but the more pronounced borrowings from BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN here seem half- baked and this proves to be yet another horror movie with hospi- tal sequences that cannot logically account for how its hulking, im- possible-to-miss killer is able to roam the hallways sight unseen. The seams show mostly via heavy use of footage from the first two entries (including some random shots unsuccessfully utilized to hide missing coverage) and lengthy credit sequences. Lustig did man- age to get some fairly good action in the can, revisiting the extended fire stuntwork of the previous en- try and extending it to have Cordell engulfed in flames while behind the wheel of a speeding car. There is also some atmospheric work at an old church location (that ap- pears to be the one previously fea- tured in John Carpenter’s PRINCE OF DARKNESS, 1987), and quality actors like Robert Forster, Paul Gleason, Bobby DiCicco, Frank Pesce, and Ted Raimi boost the guest star quotient. These assets elevate MANIAC COP 3 a
bit above the usual direct-to-video genre fare, but it still disappoints in the wake of its far-more-inspired predecessors.
While the first two films sailed through the MPAA without issue, Lustig’s use of gory, HK-style gun- play earned MANIAC COP 3 an NC-17 rating, resulting in some minor changes to create an R- rated edition; Blue Underground’s presentation is unrated. In keep- ing with Lustig’s desire to continue making the series bigger, this one was shot in Super 35. The First Look DVD was anamorphic 1.78:1, while Blue Underground’s 4K 1080p presentation is the first to present the movie at the intended 2.35:1 ratio. Noticeably darker than the DVD, the presentation boasts solid levels of detail and appropriately forceful, if fairly un- distinguished, audio in either 5.1 DTS-HD or Dolby Digital 2.0. The bonus material consists of some brief and largely inconse- quential extended scenes (pre- sented in the same quality as the feature), the trailer, a gallery, a synopsis of the original intention for the project, and “Wrong Arm of the Law: The Making of MA- NIAC COP 3” (25m 6s). Lustig, Cohen, and Soisson all present their takes on what happened, along with comments from Davi, Z’Dar, Razatos, Becker, Dulany, and cinematographer Jacques Haitkin. While one can see Lustig and Cohen’s side of things to an extent (few movies have benefit- ted from everyone in room voic- ing an opinion), Soisson comes off as completely reasonable and most everyone else states that they were well-treated by the produc- ers and completely shielded from the behind-the-scenes turmoil. In light of what we are presented, one principally blames the director for not being willing to deliver a pic- ture within the budgetary param- eters he agreed to, and the writer for not delivering his promised
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