Movies - TV
Tom Savini Didn't Let The Law Get In The Way Of His Vision For Maniac
By WITNEY SEIBOLD
William Lustig's 1980 film "Maniac" is one of the sweatiest, most brutal, most unpleasant grindhouse horror films of its decade on either side. The film's gore effects were provided by horror movie maestro Tom Savini, who had previously worked on notable horror classics like "Friday the 13th" and with George Romero on "Dawn of the Dead" and "Martin."
During a 2018 interview with Simon Abrams for RogerEbert.com, Savini talked about the film's bloody effects and how one moment, in particular, was technically illegal to shoot. In the scene, Savini plays both the killer and the victim and had to actually fire a shotgun, which was highly illegal in the state of New York at the time.
After firing shotgun pellets into the face of a mannequin, constructed to look like Savini himself, Savini recalled the whirlwind that immediately followed. “They immediately put me in a car and drove me away. The gun was given to some policeman and he drove it away. We stole that shot. [...] There was nobody there sixty seconds after we did that effect.”