Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence (1993) – WTF Happened to This Horror Movie?

Sometimes the WTF Happened to This Horror Movie? video series digs into the stories of what it took to make a classic. Other times, the series looks at a flawed film and tries to figure out what went wrong with it. This is one of those other times. The film covered in latest WTF episode is Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence (get it HERE), the troubled follow-up to two awesome movies. Maniac Cop 3 is a film that was abandoned by both its writer and its director before either of them had completed the job, and you can hear all about it in the video embedded above.

Directed by William Lustig from a screenplay by Larry Cohen (with producer Joel Soisson taking over for both of them along the way), Maniac Cop 3 has the following synopsis:

Cop Katie Sullivan shoots two crooks who are robbing a store, and though she’s also wounded in the process, reporters cast her as a trigger-happy rogue. Devious police department bosses, hoping to get rid of a public relations problem, plan to kill Sullivan. But Matt Cordell, a dead cop who’s just been resurrected, takes a liking to Sullivan and is determined to mow down her enemies before a police detective, Sean McKinney, can stop him.

The film stars Robert Davi, Caitlin Dulany, Gretchen Becker, Paul Gleason, Doug Savant, Jackie Earle Haley, Julius Harris, Grand L. Bush, and Robert Forster, with Robert Z’Dar as the Maniac Cop, Matt Cordell.

This is what the WTF Happened to This Horror Movie series is all about:

Hollywood has had its fair share of historically troubled productions. Whether it was casting changes, actor deaths, fired directors, in-production rewrites, constant delays, budget cuts or studio edits, these films had every intention to be a blockbuster, but were beset with unforeseen disasters. Sometimes huge hits, sometimes box office bombs. Either way, we have to ask: WTF Happened To This Horror Movie?

The Maniac Cop 3 episode of WTF Happened to This Horror Movie was Written by Cody Hamman, Edited by Brandon Nally, Narrated by Jason Hewlett, Produced by Lance Vlcek and John Fallon, and Executive Produced by Berge Garabedian.

Some of the previous episodes of the show can be seen below. To see more, head over to our JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!