MANIAC COP 3: BADGE OF SILENCE (1993) Reviews and overview

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Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence is a 1993 action horror film directed by Alan Smithee [aka William Lustig and Joel Soisson] from a screenplay written by Larry Cohen (It’s Alive, Q: The Winged Serpent, The Stuff) and Joel Soisson.

The movie stars Robert Davi, Paul Gleason, Jackie Earle Haley, Robert Z’Dar, Caitlin Dulany and Gretchen Becker.

The film was originally rated “NC-17″so some extreme violent acts were cut to get an “R” rating.

Plot:
A priest practising voodoo resurrects Matt Cordell (Robert Z’Dar), who takes his badge and comes back from the dead to do his bidding. Meanwhile, a pair of cameramen who are hoping to make it big, come across a convenience store robbery, where a police officer named Katie Sullivan (Gretchen Becker) intervenes in a hostage situation, where she manages to wound the suspect, but realises that the clerk is his girlfriend, and she had let him in purposefully to rob the store. There is a crossfire, and while Kate is severely wounded, she ends up killing the clerk in return.

When rushed to the hospital, she is rendered comatose and brain dead, much to the chagrin of investigating officer Sean McKinney (Robert Davi), who had caught the report of Katie using excessive force in a hostage situation, seeming to make the clerk an innocent victim, and in response threatening to free the badly injured Frank Jessup.

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Meanwhile, stalking Katie’s progress, Cordell goes to the hospital to watch her. He kills one of her supervising physicians with defibrillator paddles, and the physician set to sign the warrant to cut Kate’s life support, by exposing him to high amounts of X-Ray radiation. The reporters who had framed Kate are then murdered as well…

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Reviews:
… you can definitely tell which sequences were directed by William Lustig and which were directed by producer Joel Soisson, he just doesn’t have the action-chops of Lustig but he gives it quite a shot with the crazy police cruiser vs. ambulance car chase at the end of the movie…” McBastard’s Mausoleum

“Unfortunately the original concept written by Larry Cohen (who penned the previous two entries) was pretty much savaged beyond recognition by the time this went before the cameras, even dropping in a voodoo priest named Houngan (Live and Let Die‘s Harris) to justify Cordell’s resurrection for no logical reason whatsoever.” Mondo Digital

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“Out of all three Maniac Cop films, Badge of Silence is the most misunderstood and underappreciated. This is understandable, as a poor script and studio interference has resulted in an uneven mess in which Cordell almost seems like an afterthought.” Retro Slashers

MOVIES and MANIA rating:

Trailer:

Cast and characters:
Robert Davi … Det. Sean McKinney
Robert Z’Dar … Matt Cordell
Caitlin Dulany … Doctor Susan Fowler
Gretchen Becker … Katie Sullivan
Paul Gleason … Hank Cooney
Jackie Earle Haley … Frank Jessup
Julius Harris … Houngan
Grand L. Bush … Willie (as Grand Bush)
Doug Savant … Dr Peter Myerson
Robert Forster … Dr Powell
Bobby Di Cicco … Bishop
Frank Pesce … Tribble
Lou Diaz … Leon
Brenda Varda … Lindsey
Vanessa Marquez … Terry

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