Welcome to Day 1 of OkGoreberfest 2025’s 30-day Horror Challenge! Today’s challenge, you might recall from yesterday’s post, is “Your Favorite Slasher Film.”
My “Favorite” of any category is a pretty fluid concept, and it will change here and there, but I struggled with this one. As of October 2nd, 2025, what would I consider my current favorite slasher film? Historically I would always choose “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” because I always seem to skew “vintage” when it comes to things I consider best-in-show. I knew it wouldn’t be a franchise slasher, however. I grew up watching horror in the 1980’s, and the era was saturated with franchise slashers. Nope, seems like more of a cash-grab than an attempt at excellence. Two movies I reviewed earlier this year, Angst and High Tension, were outstanding new-to-me slashers, I considered those to be be high in the rankings. However I have to go with a vintage classic (because of course I do) for this entry, 1980’s “Maniac.”
Earlier this year I reviewed the 2012 Frodo Bilbagginsy version of Maniac, which was pretty good, but the 1980 version is everything a slasher wants to be. The killer Frank Zito wasn’t a polished A-lister, nope, they picked Joe Spinell for this role (he also wrote the screenplay). I suppose if we’re making a movie about a serial slasher in Los Angeles or Miami then sure, you can go with a handsome A-lister who gets manicured regularly, but for a serial killer in New York City? In 1979? You want someone who looks like a dock worker who gets punched in the face regularly.
The production of Maniac is also an important factor. William Lustig was originally a director of hardcore porn movies, not horror, but he used the profits from his 1977 film “Hot Honey” to make Maniac (and many of the cast members were primarily porn stars). Not a very big budget, either. Most scenes were shot guerilla-style with a handheld camera loaded with grainy film, not because it was “gritty” and “edgy” but because the production could not afford city permits, so they shot quickly and illegally on the streets of New York over the course of three months.
Tom Savini was the makeup artist, which is a mark of greatness by itself. They cast him in the role of victim “Disco Boy” because he already had a mold of his own head. This scene is one of the more famous scenes in the movie, inspired by the Son of Sam murders that occurred just two years earlier in NYC. Savini built a wireframe body and attached the prop head, filled with animal brains and 7 condoms full of stage blood, and blew up the head using a shotgun loaded with live ammunition. This, of course, is illegal, so they filmed the scene in under an hour near the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, fired the gun which they immediately threw into the trunk of another car to be driven away before the police might show up, and cleared everyone out soon thereafter. They had planned to use the car for a couple of other scenes but the smell from the animal brains blown up inside was unbearable, so they drove the car into the Hudson River and abandoned it.
Savini would use offal as gore props in other scenes, and even parts of the crew’s leftover lunch. It wouldn’t be the first OR last time he used animal parts as gore props.
The production was sleazy, the acting and actors were sleazy, the vibe for this movie is perfect. The sequel was good too, shot almost entirely from a killer’s-point-of-view, but I have to side with the original 1980 version for “Favorite Slasher Movie” for the pure grime factor of it.