Review #398: 'Bloody Moon' (1981)

The film begins with facially-scarred Miguel (Alexander Waechter) raping and murdering a girl with a pair of scissors at a masquerade party. He is institutionalised for a number of years, but then released into the care of his sister Manuela (Nadja Gerganoff), whom he used to have a incestuous relationship with. Manuela runs a language Boarding School with her wheelchair-bound mother, who refuses to name Manuela in her will. When Manuela refuses Miguel's advances to resume their relationship, the friends of Angela (Olivia Pascal), whom Miguel's seems to be intrigued by, start disappearing. Angela knows they are being killed and even witnesses a murder, but no-one believes her.

When going into a horror film directed by exploitation legend Jess Franco, you know what you're in for. Lots of blood, lots of sleeze, and in particular, lots of tits. Bloody Moon does not fail to disappoint on this front, but unfortunately, it disappoints on practically every other front. On IMDb, he is credited with 194 titles as director, and he has churned out as many exploitation titles as I have shits after a curry. While I have only seen a small handful of his films (all pretty bad), this is undoubtedly the worst I've seen. As well as ripping off other, more impressive slasher films (Mario Bava's A Bay of Blood (1971) and Blood and Black Lace (1964) are two that I noticed), the film is poorly thrown together in a manner to get as much blood and breasts as possible. While that's not a terribly bad or unoriginal idea, all the in-between parts are painfully tedious and dull.

If you're in it for the blood, you won't be disappointed. There's plenty of outlandishly staged set-pieces here, most notably the scene in which a woman is decapitated by a power saw. The hilarious thing is that the woman volunteers to be tied down in an abandoned lumber mill, inches away from the giant saw, by a masked man. She says she finds it kinky. Well, maybe she deserves to die for being so fucking stupid. Perhaps I wasn't paying attention or I was so bored I was considering slitting my wrists, but when the big revelation came at the climax, I failed to see why the killer had to kill the girls in order to achieve their goal. Again, Franco was thinking blood and boobs, and all logic went out the window. Perhaps not the worst Video Nasty on the list so far, but it's certainly up there.


Directed by: Jess Franco
Starring: Olivia Pascal, Christoph Moosbrugger, Nadja Gerganoff, Alexander Waechter
Country: West Germany

Rating: *

Tom Gillespie