Deadly Manor (1990) Review
Deadly Manor (1990) Review
An old, dark house… A maniac on the loose… An orgy of bloodlust! All the hallmarks of late master of Spanish macabre José Ramón Larraz (EDGE OF THE AXE, VAMPYRES) are present and correct in 1990’s Deadly Manor – the final horror movie from one of the genre’s most unheralded filmmakers.
Whilst en route to a lake, a group of youngsters make an unscheduled stop-off at a remote, seemingly abandoned mansion where they plan to spend the night. But the property is full of foreboding signs – a blood-stained car wreck in the garden, coffins in the basement, scalps in the closet, and photographs of a beautiful but mysterious woman adorning every corner of the house. Before daybreak, the group will unwittingly uncover the strange and terrifying truth that lurks behind the walls of this dreadful place.
DEADLY MANOR (AKA SAVAGE LUST) was originally released back in 1990. It’s a slasher flick that feels like it’s come to the party too late, by at least six years, and it’s one that I imagine will only matter to slasher completists only. Elsewhere in 1990 Clive Barker was offering horror fans NIGHTBREED, Kevin Bacon and Fred Williamson were tackling giant earth worms in TREMORS and Richard Stanley was given us technology jitters with HARDWARE. But not director José Ramón Larraz (credited here as Jose Larraz) who decides to offer up stale thrills from a subgenre long past its sell-by date.
The Eighties slasher template included a bloody inventive death every ten minutes or so for the more attention-deficient viewer. Refreshingly that doesn’t happen here and that’s the only thing that does prove refreshing – initially – however you do end up wishing that it had adhered to the formula as nothing of any interest happens here and when it does it all happens too late and doesn’t really seem to make much sense when it does.
Remember the TV program David Frost used to host THROUGH THE KEYHOLE? Unconsciously DEADLY MANOR follows the same beats as different rooms in the mansion are investigated and our protagonists ponder ‘who would live in a house like this?’ Admittedly the evidence on that TV program didn’t include photographs of the same semi-clad woman adorned on the walls of the mansion, scalps kept in jars or a wrecked bloody car displayed as a macabre garden ornament (if only it had). Aside from the youngsters walking around ‘darkened’ rooms a lot there’s not a lot else happening here unfortunately – a missed opportunity to breathe new life into a tired format.
