‘Someone out there is watching you… Don’t unlock your door.’
Deadly Intruder – aka The Deadly Intruder - is a 1985 US horror thriller film scored and directed by John McCauley from a screenplay by actor Tony Crupi (who appears as a drifter and was also in Joel M. Reed’s Blood Bath). It also stars Molly Cheek (Stepmonster), Danny Bonaduce, Daniel Greene, David Schroeder and Stuart Whitman (The Monster Club; Vultures).
Plot teaser:
A mental patient breaks out of a sanitarium and heads for a small town named Midvale looking for the love of his life. The disturbed individual is obsessively jealous, slaying anyone whom he fears may be endangering his relationship with his potential girlfriend. But there is also a creepy drifter hanging around. After a number of vicious killings, the escaped lunatic and the obsessive drifter confront each other…
Reviews:
‘The murders, which are mostly crowded into the first half of the picture … aren’t very bloody, and there are next to no Special Makeup Effects to be seen unless they were hiding somewhere in the gloomy photography; but they’re kind of mean-spirited, like when the friendly and trusting garage mechanic is slowly crushed under the car he’s working on! There’s also a guy stabbed in the eye with a screwdriver, a lady whose face is pushed into a running car engine and a sink drowning featuring a loose nightgown; and, in what may or may not have been intended as some sort of meta-reference, Danny Partridge gets his head rammed through a TV screen!’ Ha ha, it’s Burl!
‘A strictly okay slasher that wears its Halloween influence on its sleeve, but manages to break away from the formula somewhat. Danny Bonaduce is in this. He gets his head smashed into a television. Subsequently, he’s electrocuted and dies. Fuck yeah. That’s possibly the sole reason to see this for many. The kills are a little varied, but bloodless.’ Basement of Ghoulish Decadence
‘Unimpressive psycho-killer flick… Most of the violence is kept off screen by director John McCauley.’ John Stanley, Creature Features
Choice dialogue:
“You know cooking without garlic is like making love without foreplay.”
International titles:
Murhaaja saapuu öisin - Finland
Der Tödliche Feind – West Germany
