[Editorial] If Looks Could Kill: Tom Savini’s Practical Effects in Maniac (1980)

In the late seventies and early eighties, one man was considered the curator of all things gore in America. During the lovingly named splatter decade, Tom Savini worked on masterpieces of blood and viscera like Dawn of the Dead (1978), a film which gained the attention of hopeful director William Lustig, a man only known for making pornography before his step into horror. Due to the previous success of his films, Savini was lucky enough to be able to pick and choose the scripts he was interested in, but Lustig was persistent in his persuasion to get Savini on board with his passion project.

Whilst he worked on Friday the 13th (1980) in New Jersey, Tom received a visit from Lustig and soon to be leading man Joe Spinelli, as they tried to persuade him to work on a low budget production called Maniac (1980). Luckily for the team, Savini had coincidentally just broken up with a girl in Pittsburgh and was reluctant to return there after the current production ended, so they struck a deal. The godfather of gore would work on Maniac in New York, as long as accommodation was provided so that he could avoid Pittsburgh for a few more months, and thus a beautifully gruesome professional relationship was born.

Although Maniac has become a cult classic known for its extreme gore and violence, it wasn’t originally as brutal on paper. After looking through the script, Savini made his way to New York to meet with Lustig and Spinelli to brainstorm further concepts which could add horror into the visuals. Whilst Savini’s previous experience gave him a solid steer for what works on-screen, Joe Spinelli, who played Frank, would often get over excited during these discussions, attempting to push the murder scenes a little too far. When asked about this in an interview years later, Savini simply stated that Spinelli wanted to “bite stuff off… in the nether regions…” and that if this idea had gone ahead then he would have had to buy oysters or a similar seafood to make it possible. Thankfully ideas like this were put in the maybe pile and instead replaced with scalping. 

The total budget for Maniac’s special effects was a mere $5,000, a cost that included Savini’s housing which doubled as a workshop for the project. This apartment was in the same building as Lustig’s home, so the team remained close in proximity for the entire production. Because of the low budget for effects, Savini often improvised with tools from his ‘kit’, a makeup box consisting of fake blood, latex and much more. Many of the scenes were thought out ‘on the fly’ with no time or money to do face casting or other costly techniques, with the exception of one cast for leading man Spinelli.

There was also one final condition that Savini set for working on the film, he wanted to be in front of the camera, and thus his performance as Disco Boy was born. Opportunity knocked when it turned out that Savini had a head cast of himself which would soon not be an exact replica of him as he planned to get a nose job once production was over. With this in mind, he offered to use the fake head in Maniac and got to work filling it with any food from the catering table that would make a good ‘splatter’ – shrimp dip, apple cores and copious amounts of cabbage were all added. Having done something very similar for Dawn of the Dead, he knew this would be the perfect disgusting explosion concoction when shot with a double barrel shotgun.

As the head was loaded up and placed on the mannequin body in the car, Tom Savini prepared himself with the shotgun, ready to jump onto the bonnet and fire, because of course he had to be the stunt double who fired the weapon too. There were only two issues with this situation, the first being that Savini had never fired through a windshield before. When he shot the round he was flung from the car bonnet due to the recoil, thankfully he hit the target on the first go and the head was gloriously eviscerated, with gore flying everywhere. The second issue with this plan was that they were filming in a quiet area of New York, where it was illegal to fire shotguns, with a potential prison sentence of up to five years. As soon as the weapon was fired, Savini was whisked away from the scene in a car (with the gun being transported in another vehicle), or so the crew attempted to do, much to the special effects artist’s annoyance as he wanted to spend some time looking at the damage inflicted on the head cast.

After production wrapped, the film crew dumped the car used in Disco Boy’s scene, with his mangled head and chicken wire body still inside, into the Hudson River, much to Savini’s amusement. There’s a possibility that one day this will be found by a very confused police officer.

Listening to interviews with Tom Savini reveals his unyielding passion for his work, with Maniac being a film he looks back on with warm nostalgia. When the film premiered in theatres, Tom remembers going to the movie theatres with other members of the crew to watch it. When they left, he was approached by two young men in suits who recognised him instantly and asked if he would mind coming to see what they were editing in a studio nearby. Those men were Sam Raimi and Robert Tapert, and the project they were editing was The Evil Dead (1981). Taking a chance to get an expert opinion from Savini truly shows how well respected The Sultan of Splatter, as he was later known by the industry, was and still is. His work in the field of practical effects remains timeless and sincerely respected by all those in the horror community as he has curated and created some of the best blood and gore on screen to date.

Sources:

Tom Savini discusses his work on Maniac: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCf4WWtKGNw   
William Lustig talks about his work with Tom Savini on Maniac: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP-pOiGTIiI

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