Bloody Moon [1981] [DVD]

stuart

at 5:59 pm

Review by stuart for Bloody Moon [1981] [DVD]
Rating: (3 / 5)
After being released from a mental asylum, Miguel, (Alexander Waechter) is moved with his sister Manuela, (Nadja Gerganoff) to the Boarding School for young women on the Spanish resort of Costa Del Sol where she works. While hanging around the school, he finds that she’s involved in a scheme to gain control of the local Language School where she and boyfriend Alvaro, (Christoph Moosbrugger) work, and students Angela, (Olivia Pascal) Inga, (Jasmin Losensky) Laura, (Corinna Drews) and Eva, (Ann-Beate Engelke) get wind of it as well. When bodies start piling up at the school, the remaining people investigate and find a possible serial killer on campus and are forced to evade the maniac.

The Good News: One of the weirder entries in the early 80s slasher films, this one certainly has a lot going for it. One of it’s best features is the skillful mixture of the slasher clichés and Franco’s typical sleaziness. The plot is a typical one to be found in the time, being simply an excuse to get a body count available for hacking by the main villain, who has the disheveled appearance in a secluded place with no help possible from the outside. There are the usual subjective shots of the killer watching and stalking the victims, and that the victims are the typical kinds of the genre. Mix these with the typical zooming shots and the large amount of nudity normally found in Franco’s films are mixed in together with great ease. The sleaze found in the film also extends into the incestuous relationship found within, and that allows for some disturbing and erotic moments. The one where they’re looking longingly at each other through the window naked is the best example of this. It goes as a reminder of the sleaze found in within that mixes with the slasher style. It’s refreshing to see these two elements together that fit well together. This is also an exceptionally gory film with some great kills in it. One is set on fire while still sleeping in bed, there’s a knife in the back that comes out through a body part in the front, a chainsaw slicing open the chest, several stranglings and a very brutal stabbing in the stomach with scissors. The real highlight, though, is the infamous band-saw decapitation, where a victim is strapped to table with a running band-saw that eventually saws their head off. This wins out for two special occasions. The first is the execution, since it’s a quite show-stopping scene that’s incredibly realistic and brutal, but the second is the very set-up for it. Truly original and quite sadistic while being pretty suspenseful and quite out of the ordinary. The climax has a real zing to it, where the final character finds their roommates’ dead bodies meticulously strewn about her room. This wasn’t a half-bad entry in the slasher genre.

The Bad News: There is a couple things in here that don’t work in the film. The biggest thing that hurts this film is that it really seems like a collection of scenes from other films put right into the film. The most obvious genre piracy is the reworking of an obvious masterpiece of revenge. The elaborate, knotty embezzlement plot closely resembles that film, with the school property replacing the bay. The film even begins with an identical opening sequence where a wheelchair-bound character is killed by an unidentified assailant. The film also steals liberally from another defining slasher by showing an initial kill from the point of view of a party mask. Even using the clichéd conclusion feels like a rip-off from other films. Finally, it’s overly obvious that the school campus is a flimsy substitute for the more familiar and well-worn summer camp setting utilized in countless slashers. The other major big strike is the film really doesn’t feature all the usual Franco features. That may not sound like a detriment, but the fact that the zoom seems like a contrivance more than a practical one, and it’s not a major factor. That he also tones down on the sleaze is a departure. Rather than exploit the painfully obvious fact that it’s at a women’s center, there’s no scenes that capitalize on this and it’s quite shocking when that happens. While these are big factors against it, there’s another one that harms it, and that’s the slow pacing. It takes a long time to get to anything interesting, as most of the time is spent with the characters talking amongst themselves for a long period of time. The conversations here ramble on for long periods of time, and it mostly feels like they’re there simply to pad out the time, and it’s a really obvious one at that. The killings don’t really begin in earnest until the hour mark, and it’s a real sprint to the finish, but the journey to get there is a long one. These factors hurt the film in the long run.

The Final Verdict: While it’s a more-than-decent attempt to bridge the slasher cycle with Franco’s sleazier side, the plodding pace and obvious genre cliché-borrowing strike this one down. It’s still a perfectly capable film, so it’s a very worthy look for slasher fans and Franco films, who will find a lot to like in this one.

Anonymous

at 6:40 pm

Review by for Bloody Moon [1981] [DVD]
Rating: (1 / 5)
Right then – once again, Jesus Manero Franco ‘triumphs’ again with yet more of his truly appalling early 80’s ‘product’…what we have here is a combination of… the likes of ‘Halloween’ with a overworn retread of the Italian Giallo cycle, truly a combination that’s guaranteed to cure all symptoms of insomnia. ‘So what?’ you cry – after all, we’ve all suffered one or two Umberto Lenzi atrocities in the past? Sure, sure, as the godlike David Hess would say, but really, ol’ Jess baby really deserves a bit of the English Hooligan treatment for inflicting this on an unsuspecting public…To cut a very tedious story short, this moron-fest involves a whodunnit in some godawful Spanish language school , where some Iberian pervert is bumping off the local female population. Unfortunately for the viewer, thia involves a truly painful ‘shock’ introduction, complete with a ‘disco scene’ so bad that you’d almost rather commit suicide than suffer the rest of this absurdity (the dialogue is truly painful, reminding me of such badly-dubbed efforts as the Mario Bianchi-directed atrocity ‘Burial Ground’…). So anyway, there’s an obvious red herring (the local retarded gimp), an obvious suspect, and a plethora of moronic amateur dramatic ‘victims’. Just so I don’t spoil the fun, there’s a sporadic mix of badly-‘executed’ killings, some truly snooze-worthy ham acting, and a decaptiation scene that’s so badly done I could’ve died laughing at the effect of it all. Oh yeah, there’s plenty of exposition that’s guaranteed to send most sentient beings into a coma, and a sub-plot involving some trust fund or other wich climaxes in the aforementioned local retard throttling his sister, after the principal has been found out for commiting all the murders…And just for extra measure, the BBFC-approved version has excised all the ‘good’ gore moments, making it a totally worthless viewing experience for UK viewers – find the Uncut version instead if you’re masochitic enough, otherwise AVOID! (P.S. Vipco fans are directed instead to their release of ‘Death Trap’, whcih only has 22 seconds of cuts imposed by the BBFC, and is even in it’s censored version a great film)