To me, this movie is perfection.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

An American Indian named Victor (Paul Koslo, "The Stone Killer") is running around an Arizona town picking off people with his trusty crossbow. What he wants is for all the local fat cats to pay him a million to make him stop the killings. The richest jerk in the area, William Whitaker (Stuart Whitman, "The Comancheros"), hires a mercenary, Nick McCormick (Oliver Reed, "The Devils") to work on behalf of him and his peers. Since these particular fat cats are by and large a corrupt bunch, they would rather not use the regular legal channels. John Ireland ("I Saw What You Did") is the rather useless sheriff, Jim Mitchum ("Trackdown") a local hired for his tracking skills, and Deborah Raffin ("Death Wish 3") the reporter who takes a shine to gruff stranger-in-town Reed.Directed by the late cult filmmaker Richard Compton ("Macon County Line"), "The Ransom" (also known as "Maniac!" and "Assault on Paradise") is decent entertainment, as far as it goes. There's nothing particularly interesting or different about it, it just tells a passable, routine story in capable fashion. It does have some good set pieces, whether they be vehicular chases or a stalking / suspense sequence set at Whitakers' estate. It is rather amusing, and ridiculous, how Victor is almost always way ahead of everybody else. He seems to have little trouble infiltrating defences and acquiring excellent vantage points. Nicely photographed (by Charles Correll) in scope, and scored (by Don Ellis), it moves along pretty well, but never gives us much info about, or insight into, the characters. Most of them are ciphers. And very little is done with many of the plot details.Still, it's a treat to see Reed do just about anything, and here he gets to be moderately badass and try out an American accent. Raffins' reporter is a largely useless character, but Whitman is fun as the cranky moneybags who becomes increasingly frustrated over Victors' success and McCormicks' insistence on doing things his way.Overall, a reasonable way to kill an hour and a half, with a fairly high body count but not much in the way of gore.Six out of 10.

Assault on Paradise (1977) ** 1/2 (out of 4)A small town full of rich people find themselves being terrorized by an Indian who is shooting and killing people with a crossbow. He offers to stop the killing in exchange for one million dollars. The rich people decide to bring in Nick McCormick (Oliver Reed), an expert in tracking down people like the killer.ASSAULT ON PARADISE was also released under the title MANIAC but no matter what you call it the film itself is fairly entertaining if a bit brain dead. I say that it's a bit brain dead because it's not quite clear what the killings are for and it's not quite clear what all the rich people are hiding. Everything is pretty much being done in secret yet there's really no explanation of what is happened and why.The film's strongest point are the cast members who turn in very fun performances. Reed could play a role like this in his sleep and I'm sure this was just a paycheck to him but he still manages to turn in a good performance. I thought he was quite believable in the part and he made for a good lead. Veterans Stuart Whitman and John Ireland add some nice support as does James Mitchum in his role as a tracker. Deborah Raffin plays a somewhat love interest but her character and the motivations are about as strange as the killers. Paul Koslo plays the killer.The film's biggest problem, other than the screenplay, is the fact that the direction by Richard Compton doesn't really get any suspense from the material. I would have liked a bit more tension but that's just not to be found anywhere. The film also shows some signs of tinkering as the opening sequence was thrown on for no real reason and it sticks out like a sore thumb. With all of that said, if you're a fan of the cast then there's some entertainment to be found here.

A sniper clandestinely jaunts around a city, randomly killing people and demanding that he be paid a ransom in order to stop. In response, a take-no-prisoners, rough-around-the-edges law enforcer steps up to take down the threat by any mans necessary.Sound familiar? If you think I'm talking about Dirty Harry, you're right. I'm also talking about "The Ransom," which I myself saw under the title "Maniac!" and have also seen under "Assault on Paradise" and "The Town that Cried Terror!" (the distributors seemed unusually fond of their exclamation points). It was a trend in the 1970s and early 80s for hack directors to churn out low-grade knock-offs of successful, high-budget fare in attempts to cash in on the craze; we still see this phenomenon today with direct-to-video flicks that were tossed together in response to some pop-phenomenon (case in point, the direct-to-DVD "Snakes on a Train" and "Zombies on a Plane" made in apparently two weeks in order to prey on the interest generated by the "Snakes on a Plane" phenom). However, in the 70s/80s, these movies actually made it into the theaters, and more often than not they starred people that the audience actually recognized.The movie is rather tame by 70s standards; there's really not that much blood to speak of, no nudity (that I can recall), and limited profanity. In a year that saw some of the nastiest of the exploitation nasties hit the screen, "Maniac!" is notable for being more silly than sleazy. Even if it had been produced independent of "Dirty Harry," the script, on its own merits, is one massive exercise in corniness. Start off with the fact that the sniper here is a disgruntled former competitive swimmer named Victor who has a bone to pick with the United States because of Vietnam-- I think. His motives are never really addressed in the movie itself, and are left to be explained by the film's closing song, an obscure Byrds number. To show his solidarity with the disenfranchised, Victor dresses up like a Native American and talks in pseudo-mystic metaphors; oh yeah, and instead of using bullets, he kills his victims with a jacked-up crossbow. He's apparently also got an accomplice who dies halfway through the movie in what's supposed to be some kind of mid-film twist, but it's so poorly executed and messy that it's not really clear what's going on. I got the impression that it was supposed to be the narrative equivalent of Harry finding out that he has to let the Scorpio Killer go free halfway through "Dirty Harry." Even as I write this I'm not certain if there was really another guy or not, and if so, who the hell he was and where the hell he came from.In order to bring Victor down, the townsfolk retain the services of Nick McCormick (Oliver Reed), a rough-and-tumble detective who's so macho that he can make a woman willingly go to bed with him by pulling a gun on her, holding it at crotch level and telling her it's loaded (Reed's "ladykiller" scenes come across as parodies of the misogyny rife in 1950s lad culture; I'd call it clever satire if I weren't so sure that it was unintentional). The movie never really explains where Nick came from; we're just supposed to presume that all corrupt land barons read "Soldier of Fortune" magazine and are familiar with its want-ads. Judging by his performance, Reed didn't seem to particularly care where he was going to end up after this. It's often hard to tell whether or not he's sober; there's parts of the movie where it becomes almost impossible to focus on the plot, as Reed's blatant drunkenness takes center stage. Most of his dialogue is delivered in a tooth-clenched growl that is either Reed acting very poorly while sober or very good while intoxicated. He's also inexplicably on the verge of breaking out into a body-drenching sweat in several sequences, even when men of comparable weight and wearing similar clothing have visibly dry skin, another indicator that the sauce was driving his performance just as much as any actor's motivation. Nevertheless, given the material, Reed actually does a pretty decent job. Hammered or not, taken tongue-in-cheek, Reed's fun to watch here.The movie unfolds sloppily, with mediocre action sequences mixed in with bad subplots about corrupt businessmen and promiscuous TV reporters. There are some car chases, a fairly tense cat-and-mouse sequence involving aforementioned corrupt businessman and Victor, and eventually a kind of boring mountaintop climax that employs the ridiculous cliché of the bad guys killing one another off and allowing the hero to walk off into the sunset with clean hands. The action sequences are actually the highlight of the movie, as whatever money could have been spent on a competent writer and sober actors was apparently dumped into the film's rather impressive location shoots and cinematography. Much of the action takes place in the mountains of Phoenix, AR, and the camera crew was at least adept enough to give us some incredible eye candy.It's hard to tell while watching it if it ended the careers of everyone involved, or if they all knew that they had reached the end of the line and intentionally chose this project out of either desperation or as a means of career suicide. The director, Richard Compton, had a minor success a few years prior with "Macon County Line," a western-exploitation film; after this, he spent the remainder of his career directing episodes of TV series. Granted, some of them are top-notch--his "Star Trek: The Next Generation" effort, "Haven," is a highlight of that series' first season. Still, it seems to be a step down to go from writing and directing your own movies to hopping around different TV series.If you're looking for cheap entertainment and happen to find this, either on VHS or bootlegged on DVD, pick it up; it's worth an afternoon.

This killer MANIAC is an Injun who brings down two cops with an arsenal of arrows, only to be wanted and captured by local authorities. Want to find out the rest of the story? Then sit back and stay comfy out of this dumb and boring thriller that reveals a wrongful identity of lameness. Otherwise, I've just saved you a great deal of 90 minutes from this! And no, this isn't the Caroline Munro bloodbath classic that would consume your everyday life forever.