YMMV / Maniac Cop

• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The movie was popular enough in Japan that the Japanese distributors paid the studio to film an additional 5 minutes of footage to meet the 92 minute mark, thus making it eligible to air on Japanese television.
• Harsher in Hindsight: After several high profile exposures of systemic police brutality in the latter half of The New '10s, it's even more disturbing to see this film's portrayal of a police force conspiring to cover up one of their own turning psycho. Of course, given Larry Cohen's usual social commentary this also counts as quite a case of Values Resonance.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • So, what we have here is a psychopath with Glasgow Smile impersonating a police officer and who, by the end of the film, is planning to kill the mayor. Sounds kinda familiar.
  • The backstory for Cordell has him being a wrongfully convicted cop in a prison filled with people whom he put in there. A year later in Tango & Cash, Robert Z'Dar plays a criminal in a prison with a grudge against one of the two main characters, who are wrongfully convicted for murder and sent to a prison filled with people they helped to put away.
• Narm:
  • Cordell's facial expressions after his scarred look is revealed. Even the creators hated how he looked.
  • Sally squealing like a hog at the sight of the hanged cop.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Cordell may have a tragic backstory, but no more so than Candyman or Pamela Voorhees. Nearly all of his victims are honest officers and completely random innocent people, he brutally beats his girlfriend (a woman who was so devoted to him that she attempted suicide when she heard about what happened to him) to death for no discernible reason, and he helps criminals (including vicious killers like Turkell and Jessup) to either further his goals or just for the Hell of it. While it is suggested that he incurred brain damage in Sing Sing, this is at best an Informed Attribute, as he comes off as cognitively functional throughout the films, and we get nothing in the way of flashbacks to what he was like prior to becoming the Maniac Cop.

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