What do you get when you cross Beverly Hills Cop with Maniac Cop? You get this odd horror comedy from Gregory Hatanaka, the director of Samurai Cop 2: Deadly Vengeance. In fact, I’m pretty sure the production company wanted to call this Beverly Hills Maniac Cop, but they probably didn’t want to get sued. Instead, they just slapped the public domain “Amityville” label on it and called it a day. (Although there’s nothing that connects the plot back to the famous haunted house as everything takes place in Los Angeles.)
Miller (Jason Toler) is a wisecracking cop who has a habit of getting in trouble with his superiors. His latest assignment finds him investigating a series of homicides where all the victims have had their throats torn out. Turns out, twenty years ago, a devil cult imbued a rookie cop with supernatural powers. Now, he’s back on the streets killing people. Eventually, the psycho supernatural cop crashes the New Year’s party at the stationhouse and starts picking off the detectives one by one.
Since Hatanaka is drawing from such diverse inspirations, the film never quite gels overall. That said, it isn’t boring, and it’s certainly a lot more fun than his recent spate of Emanuelle rip-offs. The scant running time (it’s only sixty-nine minutes) also helps things go down smooth.
Toler’s Eddie Murphy Lite antics aren’t exactly laugh out loud funny, but he has a reasonable amount of charisma, which compensates for some of the jokes that fall flat. (Sample dialogue: “You have the right to remain dead!”) I’ll admit, it was fun seeing Laurene Landon (who was also in the Maniac Cop movies) popping up as the leader of the devil worshipping cult, even though it’s more of a glorified cameo. Hatanaka regulars like Nicole D’Angelo, Chris Spinell, and Lisa London round out the cast, all of whom do what they can with the uneven, yet fitfully entertaining material.
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