DEADLY MANOR (1990) Blu-ray
Director: Jose Ramon Larraz
Arrow Video USA/MVD Visual

Jose Ramon Larraz takes another swing at the slasher genre with DEADLY MANOR, on Blu-ray from Arrow Video.

Six bland twenty-somethings – surfer Rod (Mark Irish) and Barbie doll Susan (Liz Hitchler), greaser Tony (Greg Rhodes, GHOSTHOUSE) and neurotic Helen (Claudia Franjul), biker slob Peter (Jerry Kernion, THEY CRAWL) and odd match Anne (Kathleen Patane) – get lost on their way up to the lake, picking up shady hitchhiker Jack (Clark Tufts, VOODOO) whose directions take them off the beaten path to an isolated mansion just before a storm comes in. Breaking in, they discover enough to creep them out – a shrine to a crashed sedan, walls festooned with photos of a beautiful woman (Jennifer Delora, ROBOT HOLOCAUST), human scalps in the closet, coffins in the basement, a photo album of dead, naked bikers, and a hollow wall with a slowly-spreading crack – including evidence that the house is not so deserted as it seems, but nevertheless elect to spend the night with the exception of ill-fated Helen who gets bad vibes off the place and makes the poor decision to try to get back to the main road through the creepy woods. With the others separating and pairing off while Jack cases the joint, Tony does some exploration of his own and discovers that the ghosts of the mansion are a bit more fleshly and feral than anticipated.

Like Jess Franco, Spanish director Jose Ramon Larraz made a name for himself with erotic genre pictures overseas including the sexy and bloody VAMPYRES and the Cannes hit SYMPTOMS as well as a couple Scandinavian-funded psychosexual films WHIRLPOOL and DEVIATION. He seemed to have shot his creative load upon returning to the more permissive post-General Franco Spain with a handful of genre pictures and a couple comedies that were not widely distributed internationally, garnering an unexpected hit with a television miniseries about painter Goya that screened subtitled in other territories including the United Kingdom. In the mid-eighties, Larraz got another shot at the genre with a trio of films made for the video market including the supernatural slasher REST IN PIECES (forthcoming on Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome), the more conventional EDGE OF THE AXE (released last month by Arrow Video), and DEADLY MANOR. In spite of some glaring faults like English dialogue that sounds like it comes from a dubbing script even though the dialogue is sync-sound, uneven performances, and a script that seems to cave to genre conventions in the last twenty minutes by killing off the only character given any degree of additional characterization in favor of a final girl who was mostly a nonentity for the first two-thirds of the film, DEADLY MANOR is the most successful of the three films in building up a creepy atmosphere with attractive photography by Tote Trenas (THE FALLING), a suitably gothic score by Cengiz Yaltkaya, and going beyond the requisite T&A to a very Larrazian sex and death montage scene that harkens not so much back to the director's own earlier work with the film's producer Brian Smedley-Aston so much as the latter's attempt to rekindle that feel with James Kenelm Clarke's THE HOUSE ON STRAW HILL. In spite of a formulaic body count, the film does build to an effective climax with a killer that is at once psychotic and pitiable.

Released direct to VHS by David Prior's label Action International Pictures under the title SAVAGE LUST (along with an Image Entertainment laserdisc), DEADLY MANOR popped up on DVD in the UK and Greece before it was briefly available from owner Films Around the World's Amazon-exclusive DVD-R label MR. FAT-W. Mastered from a 2K scan of the original 35mm camera negative, DEADLY MANOR's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray looks spectacular, revealing atmospheric use of light and shadow where there was once video haze. Saturated colors pop from blood to eighties wardrobe while some diffusion is employed in a handful of shots. The English LPCM 1.0 mono track is crisp and clean, delivering the dialogue and score effectively while English SDH subtitles are also provided.

The film is accompanied by a new audio commentary track by film historians Kat Ellinger and Samm Deighan of Diabolique Magazine and the Daughters of Darkness podcast in which they try to rehabilitate the film's reputation and trace the through-line from such films as SYMPTOMS and VAMPYRES to this later work, including the continuing influence of Belgian fantasist Thomas Owen, plot ambiguities and Larraz's interest in action and atmosphere over plotting, production anecdotes from a newspaper article about the film and the odd true story about the house location and the pair of sisters who owned it during the shoot, information gleaned from Larraz's autobiography, and their attempts to trace the identity of the film's effective supporting performer William Russell (who is not, as IMDb suggests, the British actor who starred in the first seasons of DOCTOR WHO in the sixties and the prologue of Norman J. Warren's TERROR).

“House of Whacks” (32:53) is a lively interview with actress Delora who became involved in the production through Chuck Vincent cinematographer Larry Revene – who had previously lensed DOOM ASYLUM for the film's distributor/co-producer Alexander Kogen of Films Around the World – and at this time was generally offered roles without auditions and accepting anything that came along, although she has special memories of this one including a warm working relationship with director Larraz who recognized her professionalism and was more collaborative with her than some of the other less-experienced cast. She recalls that her sex scene partner was a nightmare and refused to do the nudity specified in the contract so he was doubled by a Spanish production assistant with similar coloring whose face would be hidden behind her hair, and feels that her best work was during the climax because she had Russell as a scene partner and even she was unprepared for the reveal behind the cracked wall.

In “Making a Killing” (7:03), producer Smedley-Aston discusses his continuing friendship with Larraz after VAMPYRES and working together again when he was asked to re-edit REST IN PIECES and the idea for DEADLY MANOR. He notes that the Films Around the World funding came because the company had assumed the rights to VAMPYRES from the previous owner, and that he handled much of the casting and hiring of the crew since Larraz did not arrive stateside until four days before the shoot. Also included is an archival interview with director Larraz (3:42) that is a snippet from the nineties video interview conducted by Mondo Macabro's Pete Tombs excerpted on the UK DVD of THE COMING OF SIN and seen in full on the bonus DVD of the limited edition of Mondo Macabro's SYMPTOMS. In this clip, he humorously recalls the disastrous shooting of the sex scene also covered by Delora above. The disc also includes the SAVAGE LUST VHS trailer (1:00) – apparently recreated in high definition from the feature master – as well as a video-sourced original promotional reel (4:22) and a still gallery (2:50). The film's original script (presumably a scan of Delora's copy) and the shooting schedule are included as a BD-ROM extra. The sleeve is reversible featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Adam Rabalais while the first pressing only includes a collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by author John Martin. (Eric Cotenas)

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