Maniac Cop III: Badge of Silence (1993)

Maniac Cop III: Badge of Silence is a 1992 American slasher film written by Larry Cohen and directed by William Lustig. It is the third and final installment in the Maniac Cop film series.

Maniac Cop III: Badge of Silence was released in the United States on videocassette on July 7, 1993 after a December 1992 airing on HBO. While receiving negative reviews upon release, it received retrospective critical praise in later years.

Synopsis

A priest practicing the Voodoo arts resurrects Matt Cordell, who takes his badge and comes back from the dead to do his bidding.

Plot[]

Warning: this text contains details about the plot/ending of the film.

A Voodoo priest named Houngan resurrects Matt Cordell, who takes his badge and comes back to life to do his bidding. Meanwhile, a pair of reporters who are hoping to make it big come across a convenience store robbery, where a police officer named Katie Sullivan intervenes in a hostage situation; she manages to wound suspect Frank Jessup but realizes that the clerk is his girlfriend, and she had intentionally let him in to rob the store. There is a crossfire, and while Katie is severely wounded, she ends up killing the clerk in return.

Though rushed to the hospital, Katie is declared comatose and brain dead, much to the chagrin of investigating officer Sean McKinney. McKinney catches a report from the two reporters of Katie using excessive force in a hostage situation, which portrays the clerk as an innocent victim and threatens to free the badly injured Jessup.

Meanwhile, stalking Katie's progress, Cordell goes to the hospital to watch her (killing a heckler in the process). He kills one of her supervising physicians with defibrillator paddles, then murders Katie's physician with X-ray radiation. The two reporters who had framed Katie are also slain by Cordell afterwards.

Meanwhile, McKinney and a physician, Susan, are investigating the murders and the strange behavior experienced by the comatose Katie. Their investigations lead them to Houngan, who admits that he had brought Cordell back from the dead, and he is interested in Katie, who is on the verge of death. At gunpoint, Cordell forces Houngan to attempt the resurrection on her, revealing Katie to have been his lover when he was alive. However, Houngan is unable to do so, stating her spirit is refusing to return from the dead to be with him. Cordell kills Houngan, and both he and Katie are set on fire in the process; she is immolated.

As they escape, Susan and McKinney are chased by Cordell, who survived the fire while remaining ablaze. He chases them in a beat-up police car while they ride in an ambulance. They manage to throw an oxygen tank into the burning car before both crash. However, before Cordell can back up on the other disabled vehicle, the canister goes off, blowing up the car. Later, the charred corpse of Katie is rolled into a morgue, next to the burned remains of Cordell. While the lone coroner, who rolled Katie into the morgue, is busy with his computer, the camera pans to the bodies, which shows Cordell's hand moving over to hold Katie's hand. The coroner soon notices and it cuts to black.

List of deaths[]

Name	Cause of Death	Killer	On Screen	Notes
Homeless Man	Beheaded with dagger	Houngan Malfaiteur	No	Head used to resurrect Matthew Cordell
Police Officer	Shot in stomach with shotgun	Frank Jessup	Yes
Police Officer	Shot in chest through glass door with shotgun/knocked into police car windshield	Frank Jessup	Yes
Terry	Shot in forehead	Officer Katie Sullivan	Yes
Pedestrian Heckler	Shot 5 times in chest with revolver while being thrown at car	Officer Matthew ´´Matt´´ Cordell	Yes
Doctor Peter Myerson	Face electrocuted with defibrillator	Officer Matthew ´´Matt´´ Cordell	Yes
Doctor Powell	Face burned by X-ray generator	Officer Matthew ´´Matt´´ Cordell	No
Tribble	Throat slit with baton sword	Officer Matthew ´´Matt´´ Cordell	No
2 Paramedics	Impaled repeatedly with baton sword	Officer Matthew ´´Matt´´ Cordell	No
Bishop	Impaled through back with baton sword	Officer Matthew ´´Matt´´ Cordell	Yes
2 Security Guard	Shot repeatedly with machine gun, knocked down stairs	Officer Matthew ´´Matt´´ Cordell	Yes
Gina Lindsey	Shot in chest	Frank Jessup	Yes
Hank Cooney	Shot in chest	Frank Jessup	Yes
Harry	Head bludgeoned with nightstick, shot in back	Degrazia,Kenyon	Yes
Officer Katie Sullivan	Shot twice in chest,taken off life support, caught on fire by candle	Terry, Officer Matthew ´´Matt´´ Cordell	Yes	Accident
Degrazia	Shot 3 times in chest with two handguns	Detective Lieutenant	Yes
Kenyon	Shot in shoulder once/stomach 4 times with teo handguns	Detective Lieutenant	Yes
Frank Jessup	Shot 7 times with handgun	Detective Lieutenant	Yes
Houngan Malfaiteur	Shot in back with shotgun, caught on fire by candle	Officer Matthew ´´Matt´´ Cordell	Yes

Cast[]

Robert Z'Darsky as Officer Matthew Cordell/Maniac Cop
Robert David as Detective Lieutenant Sean McKinney
Caitlin Dulany as Doctor Susan Fowler
Gretchen Becker as Officer Katie Sullivan
Paul Gleason as Hank Cooney
Jackie Earle Haley as Frank Jessup
Julius Harris as Houngan Malfaiteur
Grand L. Bush as William
Doug Savant as Doctor Peter Myerson
Robert Forster as Doctor Powell
Bobby Di Cicco as Bishop
Frank Pesce as Tribble
Lou Diaz as Lieutenant Leon
Brenda Varda as Gina Lindsey
Vanessa Marquez as Terry
Jeffrey Anderson-Gunter as Janitor
Jophery Brown as Degrazia
Vinnie Curto as Kenyon

Production[]

The original script featured a Black detective investigating a series of murders in a hospital in Harlem, New York. As the film was already in pre-production, and Lustig had started scouting location and casting actors, the pre-sale to Japan had not come through. According to Lustig, the Japanese distributor did not want a Black lead in the film, and sought Robert Davi instead. Lustig pleaded against it, but eventually Davi was cast. They had a script that did not make sense, according to Lustig in a 2019 interview. Larry Cohen refused to rewrite the script, unless he was paid for the additional work. The producers declined to pay him. As a result, Lustig had to improvise and cut scenes from the script. In Lustig's words: "We got to a point where we shot all the scenes we could shoot, after cutting all the other stuff out of the script, and it came out to be like an hour long movie. So they had to go out and shoot scenes that were just filler". At that point, Lustig walked away from the film. The film is credited to Alan Smithee.

Release[]

Home media[]

Maniac Cop III was rated NC-17 by the Motion Picture Association of America and upheld on appeal. It was released on home video in the United States by Academy Releasing. It premiered on HBO in 1992.

Blue Underground released Maniac Cop III on DVD and Blu-ray on November 19, 2013.

Reception[]

A reviewer for TV Guide awarded Maniac Cop III a score of two out of four stars, writing: "After ascending to heights unusual for a modern B movie in Maniac Cop 2, the series drops back a couple of notches with this latest entry, which seems at a loss to find new things for its horrific antihero to do".

DVD Talk's Adam Tyner, who gave Maniac Cop III an overall score of one-and-a-half out of five stars, called it "borderline unwatchable", lamenting its pacing and dialogue and asserting that "nothing about the movie works". Patrick Naugle of DVD Verdict said the cast was decent, and that while the plot was disjointed and overall the film was forgettable and "just not very good" it was still "an alright time filler" that was "worth checking out, if you're a big horror buff". Michael Gingold of Fangoria rated it two out four stars and criticized the lack of emphasis on the film's antagonist. Anthony Arrigo of Dread Central gave it a score of two-and-a-half out of five stars, calling it a disappointing sequel that "only manages to stay above water thanks to a powerhouse performance from Robert Davi". Bloody Disgusting's Mike Pereira gave it three out of five stars, writing: "It's definitely the weakest of the bunch yet still delivers the qualities that have made the franchise sustain its cult following".

External links[]

This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at Maniac Cop III: Badge of Silence. The list of authors can be seen in the page history.
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