Deadly Manor

Some friends break down and don't want to stay in the car as it thunderstorms, so they hike to an abandoned house, let themselves in, and are surprised when a masked killer does away with them for breaking into their house.

Nothing about Deadly Manor makes any sense. Even the premise itself is silly. What rational group of people would all nod their heads and say "yes" to the idea of breaking into a creepy looking mansion in the middle of nowhere just so they won't have to stay in their car as it rains? Even at under 90 minutes, the film drags because we can't relate to any of these people why they're doing what they're doing. You'd think that, knowing their premise was inept, they'd at least try to spice it up with some clever kills here and there, but I can't remember a single kill in this movie and I watched it last night.

Spanish-American co-production slasher film, directed by José Ramón Larraz (Vampyres, 1974). A group of REALLY idiotic 'teens' (plus a mysterious hitchhiker) travelling through upstate New York on their way to vacation at a lake decide to stop off and spend the night in an apparently abandoned mansion. Despite finding an old, severely damaged car bizarrely parked on top of a stone monument in the grounds, as though the whole thing is some kind of a shrine, several coffins in the basement, and what appears to be a human scalp, they decide they'll stay anyway. Eventually (surprise!), one by one they start getting bumped off.

This was made in 1990; the 80s slasher boom had passed, and Scream had yet to pump new life into the genre. The first half is very slow, taking a while to get going as far as kills are concerned, the acting ranges from bad to barely passable, and the killer's motivation is ridiculous. But the location (a genuinely abandoned house, demolished soon after the shoot) is very creepy, the girls are cute (the absolutely stunning Claudia Franjul was tragically killed in real life just five years after this in a traffic accident at the age of just 24), and if throat slashings are your thing you could do worse. Some female nudity. 5/10.

A group of friends headed to a lake for a little weekend fun pick up a dangerous hitchhiker and then they stop off at a seemingly deserted mansion instead of sleeping in their car when it gets dark. Little do they know that the house is inhabited by a psychotic killer who will spend the rest of the evening dispatching of them in the most boring ways imaginable.

Deadly Manor's plotting is so nonsensical it sometimes feel like watching someone else's dream. People pick up and believe random hitchhikers, they walk into creepy mansions that don't belong to them to sleep, they go off and investigate strange noises in the night, etc. The acting is about as good as this story deserves, which is to say that it's equally as uninteresting. Nothing about this movie makes any sense and, even worse, it's pretty boring and doesn't even have a few stylish death scenes to make up for it.

Six youths on their way to an elusive lake in upstate New York pick up a dubious hitchhiker and are eventually compelled to stay at a remote, dilapidated mansion in the sticks. Will they make it out alive?

"Deadly Manor" (1990) combines 80's slasher with spooky house à la "Hell Night" (1981). Coming out ten years after the seminal "Friday the 13th," it's rather late in the game but fans of those movies and "Tourist Trap" (1979), "The Funhouse" (1981), "The Prowler" (1981), "Frightmare" (1983), "Zombie High" (1987) and "Prom Night IV: Deliver Us from Evil" (1991) should appreciate it even though it ranks with the least of em'. Like "Slugs" (1988), it's a Spanish production shot in the USA.

Some critics understandably complain that the going is slow but, despite some dubious make-up at the end, I felt the flick works up some nice spookiness, as well as some quality mystery in regards to what's going on at the remote, rundown manor. Clark Tufts stands out in the cast as Jack, looking like a rock star.

The female cast consists of Claudia Franjul (Helen), Liz Hitchler (Susan) and Kathleen Patane (Anne), but the highlight is Jennifer DeLora, who shows up around the midway mark. Speaking of whom, she appears nude in one sequence, as well as in photos. There's additional overt nudity involving several bike enthusiasts, mostly in the form of old photos. Just a heads up.

The film runs 1 hour, 26 minutes, and was shot at Hillburn Manor, a derelict 100-year-old mansion in Suffern, New York, that was demolished after the film was shot in five weeks around September, 1989. Suffern is located about 40 minutes north of Manhattan near the border of northeastern New Jersey.

GRADE: B-

Jose Ramon Larraz was a Spanish director of horror pictures who was well known in the 1970s for his atmospheric, uniquely-shot movies like SYMPTOMS, DEVIATION, and VAMPYRES. However once his glory days were behind him he kept working through the 1980s, usually churning out cheap exploitation movies, and 1990's DEADLY MANOR is such a film. As with a number of Larraz's other productions, this one was made abroad, in New York in this instance.

The plot is entirely undistinguished and completely clichéd. Your stereotypical group of teenagers end up in an old deserted manor house which they soon discover is occupied by someone or something decidedly deadly. What follows involves your usual slasher antics as the group turn up dead in gruesome ways, one at a time. In the end the survivors have to band together to try to unmask the villain in their midst.

DEADLY MANOR is generic stuff indeed and the poor production values don't help it very much. The acting is pretty much the pits and the cinematography is very dark, inducing eye strain in the viewer. Larraz fails to bring much in the way of atmosphere to the picture and indeed he seems to have left his expertise at the door. There's a little gore and nudity on display here and I imagine most horror fans will find this film tests the patience more than anything else.