ManiacMovies like Maniac
- Key Features:
- Serial killer, Psychological horror, Violence-high, Mental illness, Trauma, Exploitation, New York City, Nudity-high, First-person perspective, Grindhouse, Revenge, Isolation
- Tone:
- serious, gritty, suspense-driven
- Target Audience:
- Horror fans, Exploitation film enthusiasts, Viewers interested in psychological thrillers, Fans of gritty cinema
- Emotional Arc:
- Unease → Dread → Horror
Maniac

A psychotic man, troubled by his childhood abuse, kills and mutilates young women and local models on the streets of New York City.
Maniac
As he helps a young artist with her upcoming exhibition, the owner of a mannequin shop's deadly, suppressed desires come to the surface.

A killer dressed in a police uniform begins murdering innocent people on the streets of New York City.

A burned-out New York police detective teams up with a college psychoanalyst to track down a vicious serial killer randomly stalking and killing various young women around the city.

An infamous serial killer who assaulted and killed several women in the '90s, gets on a collision course with a young journalist eager for the truth and a career-changing article.

A ferocious, misogynistic, and morally deprived serial killer is active in Las Vegas. Obsessed with the collapse of the Twin Towers, and with Nazi tendencies, he even targets underage girls.

The boredom of small town life is eating Bill Williamson alive. Feeling constrained and claustrophobic in the meaningless drudgery of everyday life and helpless against overwhelming global dissolution, Bill begins a descent into madness. His shockingly violent plan will shake the very foundations of society by painting the streets red with blood.

Strippers in Manhattan are being stalked and murdered by a psycho. A hard-nosed police detective and a conflicted ex-boxer-turned-private-eye, hired by the strip club owners, set out to find him before he strikes again.

Undead cop Matt Cordell rises from the grave, and is after the criminals who murdered him in prison.

As a child, Donald was tormented by his mother who used fire as a punishment. Now a deranged adult, Donald stalks women at clubs, then takes them home where he kills them with a flamethrower.

A psychotic small-time criminal realizes that the everyday robberies, rapes and murders he commits aren't profitable enough, so he figures to hit the big time by kidnapping the daughter of a rich man.

An artist slowly goes insane while struggling to pay his bills, work on his paintings, and care for his two female roommates, which leads him taking to the streets of New York after dark and randomly killing derelicts with a power drill.

Brian comes under the addictive spell of a parasite with the ability to induce euphoric hallucinations in its hosts.

A serial killer whose mother was a prostitute starts killing streetwalkers as a way of paying back his mother for her abuse.

New York City factory worker Eddie Marino is a solid citizen and regular guy, until the day a sadistic street gang brutally assaults his wife and murders his child. When a corrupt judge sets the thugs free, he goes berserk and vows revenge.

Follows the fate of Lyle, a violent adolescent who, in lieu of prison, is placed in a juvenile mental institution, where he encounters a group of equally troubled teens. This motley crew—abused, sexually confused, violent, and yet hanging on by their grit and anger—becomes Lyle's last lifeline as he fights to find meaning in a world that seems to defy understanding.

On their way to Spring Break, college kids take a detour through an old Southern town. The people of Pleasant Valley insist the kids stay for their annual barbecue celebration... but instead of getting a taste of the old South, the old South gets a taste of them!

A young Romanian woman and a recovering drug addict launch an unlikely investigation after her parents are murdered by a vicious serial killer known as The Headhunter.

After suffering a brutal trauma, Julia uses an unorthodox form of therapy to restore herself.

A serial killer, plagued by the memory of a fatal car accident, uses various tools to murder female tenants of a Los Angeles apartment complex, then abducts a teenaged girl who lives there with her family. When the police express doubt that the murders are connected to the girl's disappearance, her brother sets out to search for her on his own.

Maria, an unfortunate young woman, kills her rapist father in self-defense, and is later tried, sentenced, and shipped off to a woman's penitentiary where she and her fellow inmates are subjected to psychological and sexual abuse at the hands of a psychotic lesbian warden.

A young policewoman slowly goes insane while tracking down an elusive serial rapist/killer through Italy when she herself becomes a victim of the brutal man's obsession.

Gioia is a buxom centerfold working for Pussycat magazine. In such a profession, having an admirer or two is expected, but Gioia's admirer is a vicious killer! He murders her fellow magazine models one at a time, using a variety of twisted implements of death. Gioia is the lucky recipient of a collection of photos, each with murdered bodies arranged around posters of her.

When New York is caught in the grip of a sadistic serial killer who preys on patrons of the city's underground bars, young rookie Steve Burns infiltrates the S&M subculture to try and lure him out of the shadows.

An otherwordly perpetrator has been attacking female virgins in Manhattan. As Dr. Pace and Detective Andriotti work together to identify the strange organic materials found on the women, the victims begin arising in a trance and leaving the hospital.

A psychotic killer is on the prowl, who continues to slaughter young women while an innocent man is wrongly accused and sentenced for crimes he could never have committed. A determined detective arrives on the scene and soon becomes obsessed with the case while under pressure from the prosecutor to see a man hang.

Madison is paralyzed by shocking visions of grisly murders, and her torment worsens as she discovers that these waking dreams are in fact terrifying realities with a mysterious tie to her past.

When the residents of a luxury apartment complex outside Montreal are infiltrated by parasites and transformed into violent, sex-crazed maniacs, it's up to Dr. Roger St. Luc to contain the outbreak from spreading to the city.

A low-budget film crew working in New York City find themselves being preyed upon by a sexually conflicted serial killer.

Beautiful young manicurist Carole suffers from androphobia (the pathological fear of interaction with men). When her sister and roommate, Helen, leaves their London flat to go on an Italian holiday with her married boyfriend, Carole withdraws into her apartment. She begins to experience frightful hallucinations, her fear gradually mutating into madness.

A photographer's obsessive pursuit of dark subject matter leads him into the path of a serial killer who stalks late night commuters, ultimately butchering them in the most gruesome ways.

A man named Seligman finds a fainted wounded woman in an alley and he brings her home. She tells him that her name is Joe and that she is nymphomaniac. Joe tells her life and sexual experiences with hundreds of men since she was a young teenager while Seligman tells about his hobbies, such as fly fishing, reading about Fibonacci numbers or listening to organ music.

An emotionally scarred highway drifter shoots a sadistic trick who rapes her, and ultimately becomes America's first female serial killer.

After witnessing a brutal murder on Halloween night, a young woman becomes the next target of a maniacal entity.

A wealthy New York investment banking executive hides his alternate psychopathic ego from his co-workers and friends as he escalates deeper into his illogical, gratuitous fantasies.

Laurie Strode comes to her final confrontation with Michael Myers, the masked figure who has haunted her since she narrowly escaped his killing spree on Halloween night four decades ago.

A woman trying to recover from a sexual attack is locked in a posh apartment with a corpse of the very man she's been dreaming would murder her. She tries to hang on to reality when objects around her seem to come to life.

When Ted’s beloved cat dies, the trauma triggers a terrible mental breakdown. His broken brain prompts him to bring his feline friend back – all he needs is nine human lives. Ted dons vicious deadly cat claw gloves and a creepy cat mask, and goes on a murderous rampage. As the butchery escalates, a twisted romance blossoms between Ted and Claire, a young woman who has also recently lost her cat in a horrifying incident.

An agoraphobic psychologist and a female detective must work together to take down a serial killer who copies serial killers from the past.

A young woman slowly goes crazy after taking a job as the caretaker for an ancient New York home.

Kate and her brutish boyfriend Big Al sell handguns on the streets of New York. She's smart, stylish, and self-confident, but all that leaves her when Al, in a jealous and self-indulgent rage, beats her. Three friends encourage her recovery: Vic, a woman who would like to be Kate's lover; Reilly, who runs with Al but also is attracted to Kate and repulsed by Al's violence; and, Liz, the counselor assigned to Kate from a battered-women's program. Vic and Reilly talk about killing Al, Liz gives pep talks; Kate remains frightened. Will Al's menace and Kate's dependency hold sway?

A man who is being driven crazy by the noise in New York City decides to take vigilante action against it.

Unemployed and unemployable, Tony is a sympathetic recluse with severe social problems, an addiction to VHS action films and a horrible moustache. Occasionally he snaps and murder is the result…

Rose, a desperate mother takes her adopted daughter, Sharon, to the town of Silent Hill in an attempt to cure her of her ailment. After a violent car crash, Sharon disappears and Rose begins a desperate search to get her back. She descends into the center of the twisted reality of a town's terrible secret. Pursued by grotesquely deformed creatures and townspeople stuck in permanent purgatory, Rose begins to uncover the truth behind the apocalyptic disaster that burned the town 30 years earlier.

After witnessing a bizarre, traumatic incident involving a patient, Dr. Rose Cotter starts experiencing frightening occurrences that she can't explain.

An ambitious carnival man with a talent for manipulating people with a few well-chosen words hooks up with a female psychologist who is even more dangerous than he is.

The early years of young Michael Myers and the events leading up to his fateful Halloween night murder rampage in the quiet town of Haddonfield, Illinois.

An ophthalmologist's assistant with an unhealthy interest in human eyeballs goes on a killing spree to collect eyeballs for his overbearing mother's collection. Reality soon takes a bizarre turn, both for the characters and the audience.

Six of the worlds scariest psychopaths escape from a local Asylum and proceed to unleash terror on the unsuspecting crowd of a Halloween Funhouse whose themed mazes are inspired by their various reigns of terror.

When four bodies are discovered among the industrial decay and urban grime of New York City, brash young detective Mike Reilly teams with ambitious Department of Health researcher Terry Huston to uncover the cause behind their violent and inexplicable deaths. The only common factor shared by the victims? Each died exactly 48 hours after logging onto a website called feardotcom.

The sadistic tale of a lonely, mentally handicapped boy who befriends his reflection in an antique mirror. This demonic creature orders him to go on a murderous rampage to kill the people he loves most.

When Susan was a little girl, she rejected the Valentine of a lovestruck classmate. Decades later, she’s come to the hospital for a routine medical examination, and finds herself trapped in a bizarre nightmare, made all the worse as her vengeful childhood valentine, disguised among the hospital staff, begins murdering everyone in his path as a means of proving his undying ‘romantic’ obsession…

A killer is released from prison and breaks into a remote home to kill a woman, her handicapped son and her pretty daughter.

An unnamed doctor has always had everything he's ever wanted, but that has only made him develop more extreme and depraved needs. He kidnaps a young couple in the prime of their life together and forces them into a game of torment that slowly extinguishes their hopes for survival.

A horror-thriller in which a doctor and his teenage daughter are terrorized by flesh-eating zombies at a truck stop.

A man who runs an apartment house for women is the demented son of a Nazi surgeon who has the house equipped with secret passageways, hidden rooms and torture and murder devices.

During the 1980s, a failed stand-up comedian is driven insane and turns to a life of crime and chaos in Gotham City while becoming an infamous psychopathic crime figure.

A woman is pursued by her murderous, psychopathic twin sister in the days leading up to their birthday.

A maniacal clown named Art terrorizes three young women on Halloween night and everyone else who stands in his way.

Ken Park focuses on several teenagers and their tormented home lives. Shawn seems to be the most conventional. Tate is brimming with psychotic rage; Claude is habitually harassed by his brutish father and coddled, rather uncomfortably, by his enormously pregnant mother. Peaches looks after her devoutly religious father, but yearns for freedom. They're all rather tight, or so they claim.

After being attacked and raped twice in one day, a timid, mute seamstress goes insane, takes to the streets of New York City after dark, and randomly shoots men with a .45 caliber pistol.

A young psychiatric intern unearths secrets about the mental health facility in which he works.

The continuation of Joe's sexually dictated life delves into the darker aspects of her adult life and what led to her being in Seligman's care.

A New York City cop and an expert criminologist trying to solve a series of grisly deaths in which the victims have seemingly been maimed by feral animals discover a sinister connection between the crimes and an old legend.

Anger stemming from being abused as a child drives an alcoholic's daughter to kill as an adult.

A bigoted junkie cop suffering from borderline personality disorder and drug addiction manipulates and hallucinates his way in a bid to secure promotion.

A journalist duo go on a tour of serial killer murder sites with two companions, unaware that one of them is a serial killer himself.

A field surgeon suffering from PTSD after combat in the Middle East creates a living human out of body parts in his Brooklyn lab.

Five dangerous patients, suffering from extreme phobias at a government testing facility, are put to the ultimate test under the supervision of a crazed doctor and his quest to weaponize fear.

The gruesome tapestry of psychological manifestations of a nineteen year old bulimic runaway stripper-turned prostitute as she descends into a hellish pit of satanic nightmares and hallucinations.

Though Kevin has evidenced 23 personalities to his trusted psychiatrist, Dr. Fletcher, there remains one still submerged who is set to materialize and dominate all the others. Compelled to abduct three teenage girls led by the willful, observant Casey, Kevin reaches a war for survival among all of those contained within him — as well as everyone around him — as the walls between his compartments shatter apart.

After witnessing a mysterious woman brutally slay a homemaker, prostitute Liz Blake finds herself trapped in a dangerous situation. While the police thinks she is the murderer, the real killer is intent on silencing her only witness.

The twisted tale of Kenneth, socially insecure technical writer who forms an obsessive relationship with "Nikki", an anatomically accurate silicone sex doll he orders over the Internet.

Martin Durnley is a young man with an infantilizing mother, resentful stepfather and an institutionalized brother with Down's syndrome. To cope, he retreats into an alternate child personality he calls Georgie. After being caught during a theft attempt at a department store, he befriends a female customer who is sympathetic to him, but his friendship soon turns into obsession.

An ex-cop and his family are the target of an evil force that is using mirrors as a gateway into their home.

Retired porn star Milos leads a normal family life trying to make ends meet. Presented with the opportunity of a lifetime to financially support his family for the rest of their lives, Milos must participate in one last mysterious film. From then on, Milos is drawn into a maelstrom of unbelievable cruelty and mayhem.

The Cavalcade of Perversion, a traveling freak show, acts as a front for Divine, who is out for blood after discovering her lover's affair.

This animated comic goes back in time to explore the events that spurred the transformation of mild-mannered John Kramer into the monstrous Jigsaw.

A young, lonely woman is consumed by her deepest and darkest desires after tragedy strikes her quiet country life.

In a quiet suburban town in the summer of 1958, two recently orphaned sisters are placed in the care of their mentally unstable Aunt Ruth. But Ruth's depraved sense of discipline will soon lead to unspeakable acts of abuse and torture that involve her young sons, the neighborhood children, and one 12-year-old boy whose life will be changed forever.

When a man's best friend is killed on the streets of New York, he transforms into a violent killer, turning New York into a war zone.

In need of creative inspiration, a professionally stagnant and hard-partying Los Angeles artist recklessly indulges in a series of drug binges. As the narcotics fly out of control, so does her newfound and inexplicable, yet unquenchable, craving for blood.

A Vietnam veteran that spends his days photographing pretty girls, and his nights strangling them, sets sights on the patients of a radio psychiatrist.

In the ravaged near-future, a savage motorcycle gang rules the road. Terrorizing innocent civilians while tearing up the streets, the ruthless gang laughs in the face of a police force hell-bent on stopping them.

After being released from prison, a young gangster with a chip on his shoulder decides to punish society by making snuff films.

The true story of Edward Gein, the farmer whose horrific crimes inspired Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Silence of the Lambs. This is the first film to Gein's tormented upbringing, his adored but domineering mother, and the 1957 arrest uncovered the most bizarre series of murders America has ever seen

Catherine, a novelist with an insatiable sexual appetite, becomes a prime suspect when her boyfriend is brutally murdered -- a crime she had described in her latest story.

A cop who moonlights as a hit man agrees to kill the hated mother of a desperate drug dealer in exchange for a tumble with the young man's virginal sister.

When a madman dubbed 'Scorpio' terrorizes San Francisco, hard-nosed cop, Harry Callahan – famous for his take-no-prisoners approach to law enforcement – is tasked with hunting down the psychopath.

Two men wake up to find themselves shackled in a grimy, abandoned bathroom. As they struggle to comprehend their predicament, they discover a disturbing tape left behind by the sadistic mastermind known as Jigsaw. With a chilling voice and cryptic instructions, Jigsaw informs them that they must partake in a gruesome game in order to secure their freedom.

When a mysterious "John Doe" wakes up in a morgue and wanders into a psychiatric ward, a devoted doctor and curious medical examiner must slowly uncover dark and sinister secrets about the man that reveal a more horrifying truth than they could have ever imagined.

Remake of the 1931 Fritz Lang original. In the city, someone is murdering children. The Police search is so intense, it is disturbing the 'normal' criminals, and the local hoods decide to help find the murderer as quickly as possible.

A man takes over a TV station and holds a number of hostages as a political platform to awaken humanity, instead of money.

Emanuelle is framed by a corrupt D.A. while investigating a drug smuggling operation and has to tough it out under lock and key, dealing with a strict warden and abusive guards.

The increasingly politicised Emanuelle gets deeper into fighting an international trade composed of sex, violence and high profile players.

A virus spreads through an office complex causing white collar workers to act out their worst impulses.

Mikey just needs a good stable home. He's bounced from foster home to foster home his whole life. He finally lands himself with a new loving family, but their perfect little child is not what he appears to be. His previous caretakers all died of mysterious "accidents" that weren't really accidents at all. Mikey is a cold blooded killer, and it doesn't take long for him to aim his sights on his new adoptive family and anyone else who stands in his way.

A young reporter enlists a top notch private eye to solve the murder of a female stripper at a Chicago nightclub.


