Come Right In!

Folks, do you realize just how many horror movies there are in the world? I know, I know. You're probably thinking, "I've been a genre fan my whole life, of course I know and of course I've seen them all."

Trust me: you haven't. 

Take today's feature, Deadly Manor. It's a supernatural slasher from 1990, filmed in New York with a Spanish crew. Never in my 44 years have I heard of this movie.

Quick Plot: Six young people are road tripping to a lake when they realize they have no idea where it actually is. Thankfully, a mysterious hitchhiker named Jack shows up to help direct them. 

Well, they're still hours away due to some very bad navigation, but at least they find an abandoned house that should due for a restful night. Helen feels a sense of dread and promptly storms off, leaving her boyfriend Tony and the rest of the gang to explore their strange new digs. 

There's a smashed car staged like a shrine on the lawn, a batch of caskets in the basement, dozens of photographs of a naked woman on the walls, and most troubling, a collection of human scalps on a shelf. In other words, slightly better than your last stay at a Knights Inn.

For reasons only '80s slasher screenplays can fathom, the kids still decide to stay the night. Tony even helps himself to some house wine, despite just skimming through a photo album of murdered young people a minute before. 

There are dumb teenagers, and there are Deadly Manor's dumb teenagers. 

As you might guess, they're not lasting long enough to reproduce. As the night slowly finds reasons for the kids to split up, the house gets a whole lot bloodier.

Directed by José Ramón Larraz (whose Edge of the Axe was also a, "hey, I never saw this VHS cover" discovery for me), Deadly Manor delivers on its promises. Horny young people are hunted by some kind of entity, and the reveal is both fitting for the genre and slightly new. It doesn't quite go as bonkers as Edge of the Axe, but any horror fan with a soft spot for this era should walk away satisfied.

Low Points

It's an odd choice to give us virtually no context or insight into the actual characters. Yes, they're designed to be disposable hot teenagers by the rules of the genre, but there's absolutely nothing on the page to define them. We can't even identify the lead until we happen to have one person left. The actors are perfectly appealing and deserved a little better

Lessons Learned

Everything collapses sooner or later

All a young couple needed in the '90s was wood and condoms

Don't count on the police to arrive to an emergency quickly, but do appreciate it when they're really sorry for being late

Rent/Bury/Buy

Deadly Manor didn't rock my world, but it was perfectly entertaining in a, "hey, there's a '90s slasher I haven't seen!" way. You can find it, you guessed it! on Tubi. 

I Axe the Questions Around Here

 

How is it possible that in 2022, a horror diehard who grew up a mile away from one of the country's best independent video stores with the largest horror selection in the state of New York can STILL discover '80s slashers for the first time? 

Humanity is an endless well of wonder. 

Quick Plot: A promising opening murder follows an ill-fated cigarette puffing nurse through a deadly car wash, where an Uncle Fester-ish masked killer chops her up before the credits can roll. We're off to a neat start!

And now, our movie. 

Meet our hero(?) Gerald, an early internet adapter and all-around jerk. Gerald lives with his grandfather? Uncle? Random old man he likes to harass? It's unclear, but we know this much: Gerald is obsessed with computers and is only mildly less horrible than his best friend Richard, an exterminator who despises his much older, much wealthier wife.

Is there anything less pleasant than hearing someone talk about how much they hate their spouse? Yes, I can think of one: watching said jerk publicly seduce a much younger woman who has no reason to be charmed by a man she knows to be married (and a jerk). 

Anyhoo, Gerald and Richard begin dating Lillian and Susan (a pair of local sisters with incredibly low standards) while our axe murderer continues his reign of terror across town. The sheriff is reluctant to take any action, hoping he can pass each death off as an accident or suicide, but by the time six female bodies have piled up in pieces, the jig is up. 

Could it be Gerald, whose prescient computer obsession and gross sandwiches screams "the boy ain't right?" Lillian's mysterious institution-confined cousin with a childhood swingset head injury? Her shifty father? The shiftier town priest? MAYBE THE INTERNET CAN HELP!

Maybe, and I won't spoil the reveal, but it's 100% the best thing about this oddball of a movie. 

Directed by José Ramón Larraz as a co-production between the US and Spain (and filmed in both countries), Edge of the Axe is, in a word, a hoot. There's a mix of decent and laughable acting (though some of that may have been equally hilarious dubbing) that makes the amateur quality kind of charming, and the recycling of sets from one home to another is something that low budget fans have no choice but to salute.

High Points

I don't know that any of it really adds up, but the big reveal is pretty grand, especially for its time. Bonus points for a killer freeze frame final shot

Low Points

Look, I know we had lower standards for our leads in '80s slashers, but there's nothing redeeming about the ones we have here: Gerald is awful, and Lillian's immediate infatuation with him makes us question her sanity well before the film does

Lessons Learned

Nothing offers the promise of a serious relationship more effectively than wearing a gray-on-gray sweatsuit on your first date

The beauty of country music ballads is that they don't have to rhyme

You know it's true love when you start dressing like your new sweetheart just a week into your courtship

Rent/Bury/Buy

Edge of the Axe is occasionally a good slasher, occasionally a pile of garbage, and entirely something that deserves any '80s horror fan's eyeballs. Have at it on Amazon Prime.