The Halloween promotional season will be arriving early this year as Blue Underground, with sales and distribution support provided by MVD Entertainment Group, has a double-barrel 4K horror blast prepped for genre fans to savor on Oct. 19.
Back from the dead is Matt Cordell (Robert Z'Dar) — a framed former police officer and now crazed serial killer dubbed the “Maniac Cop” — in the 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray presentation of director Bill Lustic’s 1988 film release of Maniac Cop 2.
Also reprising their roles from Maniac Cop are New York City police officer Jack Forrest (Bruce Campbell), who was exonerated of the murder of his wife (and many others) and officer Theresa Mallory (Laurene Landon), Forrest’s love interest and partner. But before you can say, “he’s back,” they too fall victim to the undead Cordell.
This gives the writing/directing team of Bill Lustig and Larry Cohen the opportunity to introduce a new heroine, officer Susan Riley (Claudia Christian), who teams up with detective Sean McKinney (Robert Davi) to stop the unstoppable Cordell, who has a recruited new partner of his own, serial killer Steven Turkell (Leo Rossi).
The body count goes through the roof until it is revealed that Cordell was set-up and he’s actually been on a revenge trip ever since. The little detail of anyone and everyone who got in his way being obliterated is just collateral damage.
This new 4K restoration from the original camera negative (supervised by the director of photography, James Lemmo) comes with commentary teaming Bill Lustig with fellow filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn, who is slated to direct the new Maniac Cop reboot.
If one good turn deserves another, then one round of slaughter deserves another sequel and that’s exactly what director Bill Lustig and writer Larry Cohen served up in 1993 with Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence, which is also getting the 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray Combo Pack treatment from Blue Underground on Oct. 19.
As Maniac Cop 2 ended, a follow-up was teased and sure enough Cordell (Robert Z'Dar) is resurrected one more time. Also back is detective Sean McKinney (Robert Davi), who has a new “partner,” Dr. Susan Fowler (Caitlin Dulany), who gets involved when officer Katie Sullivan (Gretchen Becker) comes upon a robbery in progress, intervenes and things go south.
She ends up comatose and accused of killing an innocent civilian, but we know different … and so too does the undead Cordell. As McKinney and Fowler try to solve the strange case of Katie Sullivan, Cordell goes on a killing spree to “rescue” her and bring her back from the dead!!
Bonus features here include a newly-minted commentary from director “Alan Smithee.”
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