Deadly Manor, from Spanish director José Ramón Larraz, begins like almost every other slasher from the preceding ten years or so: a group of young friends - all stock slasher characters, right down to the overweight joker - take a trip to a remote lake for a weekend of camping, smoking weed and high jinx. Along the way, they pick up a hitch-hiker, Jack (Clark Tufts), who says he can help give them directions. But after a flat tire delays their journey, the gang decide to take a detour off the beaten track where they find a seemingly abandoned manor, perfect for sheltering from an impending storm.
That's the clichéd characters established, the creepy setting all done and dusted (well, maybe not dusted: the place is covered in the stuff), and at least one likely suspect once the killings begin. All we need now is for the couples to wander off to have sex, and the grisly killings to start, with lashings of juicy gore effects to keep things interesting. Except that this isn't quite how things pan out. As expected, Larraz delivers some gratuitous nudity, albeit in a sex scene that turns out to be a dream (or a wet dream, more likely), but when the bodies start to pile up, nearly all of the killings happen off screen, or with minimal need for special effects (just a splash of fake blood here and there). And what is a generic slasher without inventive, gory deaths? Disappointing, that's what!
Eventually, in tried and tested fashion, the not-so-happy campers are whittled down to the final girl, at which point we learn who has been committing the murders and why -- and the reveal is particularly daft (I won't spoil it for you: it's one of the few fun moments in the film). Larraz wraps things up by having the police turn up in the nick of time to save the sole survivor and cart off the killer. No reasonable explanation is given for the two coffins in the basement, the collection of scalps in a closet, or the bodies walled up next to the fireplace.
That's the clichéd characters established, the creepy setting all done and dusted (well, maybe not dusted: the place is covered in the stuff), and at least one likely suspect once the killings begin. All we need now is for the couples to wander off to have sex, and the grisly killings to start, with lashings of juicy gore effects to keep things interesting. Except that this isn't quite how things pan out. As expected, Larraz delivers some gratuitous nudity, albeit in a sex scene that turns out to be a dream (or a wet dream, more likely), but when the bodies start to pile up, nearly all of the killings happen off screen, or with minimal need for special effects (just a splash of fake blood here and there). And what is a generic slasher without inventive, gory deaths? Disappointing, that's what!
Eventually, in tried and tested fashion, the not-so-happy campers are whittled down to the final girl, at which point we learn who has been committing the murders and why -- and the reveal is particularly daft (I won't spoil it for you: it's one of the few fun moments in the film). Larraz wraps things up by having the police turn up in the nick of time to save the sole survivor and cart off the killer. No reasonable explanation is given for the two coffins in the basement, the collection of scalps in a closet, or the bodies walled up next to the fireplace.