A brilliant film that helped define a genre

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

A derivative but strangely appealing slasher flick from that auteur of Spanish sleaze and zoom lens-inspired madness, Jess Franco, which opens with a masked killer murdering a young girl and being sent to an asylum for the crime - just to prove that Franco's copying HALLOWEEN a little bit too much, we even see POV shots from the killer looking through the eyeholes in his mask! From then on, BLOODY MOON a cheap and nasty swathe through a series of badly-acting young women, as a mysterious villain murders them off one by one. Despite being set in a language school, there are never more than four or five girls around at time, which somewhat betrays Franco's low budget roots. The plot is pretty ludicrous, with a really dumb script - the English dubbing reaches new levels of absurdity with some of the trite dialogue that the girls constantly spew.The acting isn't much better, and it's obvious that Franco picks his actresses for their looks rather than their acting ability. The identity of the killer is pretty easy to guess, especially seeing that the red herring is so obvious in this case - could it be the mysteriously scarred man who was previously convicted of murder, who constantly lurks around the school watching the girls? I don't think so. Technically, the film is rather poorly made, with sloppy editing and a tendency to shoot scenes in the dark with little lighting, making the viewing experience sometimes a test of endurance rather than genuine entertainment.So why did I enjoy this movie? Well, it's just plain trash for sure, but Franco never expects you to think it should be anything else. BLOODY MOON is just about a series of young, sometimes naked girls being offed gorily by a perverted murderer, and that's exactly what Franco delivers. His deaths are all mean-spirited and graphically gory, which earned the film some notoriety when released in the UK - in retrospect the effects are all so cheesily staged that the fuss over such "nasties" is simply ludicrous. This is a fun, barmy and genuinely amusing slasher that doesn't pull any punches.

Bloody Moon is a rare combination of American style slasher and giallo a la Jess Franco.The director most famous for his exploitation films.As far as I can recall the only other film I have seen from him is Venus in Furs.It could very well be that I have seen more titles from him without realizing.He seems to have made quite a few.But one thing I know for sure he is without doubt one of the worst directors I have come across that surprisingly is still very active in the industry.And that can be explained because he has made some films that are in a league of their own .Mostly because he mixes up the genres in a way that is rarely done.What does that mean for Bloody Moon?A slow pace and severe lack of tension and thrills that make it a real task to stay interested.The excessive gory deaths and some clever twists and turns oddly aren't enough to make you overlook that.It doesn't help also that the characters aren't really interesting apart from two key players looking very similar to James Caan and Brad Dourif in their younger years.Now there is one scene that was unexpectedly thrilling involving a little boy.You will find yourself rooting for this boy.It's a mystery in itself that this boy suddenly was so curious that he decided to investigate in the first place.But it shows that Jess Franco is able to create tense scenes.Too bad it is the only one in the whole film that is filled with real tension.With some tighter plotting and direction Bloody Moon could have become a real classic.Now it is an unremarkable hybrid of slasher and giallo that will bore you to death.

Bloody Moon (1981) ** (out of 4) Original title: Die Sage des TodesSpanish director Jess Franco wasn't shy from jumping into a genre, which was proving popular at the time he did his jumping. This time out the director jumps into the slasher genre after films like Halloween and Friday the 13th had proved to be money-making gold. As the film starts a deformed man kills a woman after she turns down his sexual advances. He's sent to a mental hospital but five years later he is released and soon afterwards more bodies begin to pile up. This film doesn't really work and it's certainly not on the level of the best slashers out there. While it would fall somewhere down by the middle-ground American movies, I'd rank this a little higher since it doesn't limit itself to the certain rules that were in American slashers. As with a lot of Franco's work from this period, it's budget allowed for some nice stuff including the cinematography, which manages to be pretty good here. Another bonus are the special effects, which while some are obviously fake, they still come off looking good. We have a wide range of murders here ranging from simple stabbings to the most famous one where a woman has her head chopped off by a industrial saw. The saw effect is somewhat hit and miss but the gore that pumps out makes for an interesting moment to say the least. It's also interesting at how Franco plays with not only the victim but even the viewer during the scene. The performances are about average for what you'd see in a movie like this but the main reason to view this is simply for Franco's eyes on the genre. The director also doesn't shy away from lifting stuff from other films and that includes the opening sequence of Halloween and Mario Bava's structure to Twitch of the Death Nerve also seems to have been an influence here. Those expecting an American slasher are going to be disappointed but if you're a fan of Spanish cinema or Franco then you'll certainly want to check this out just to see how Uncle Jess handled it differently than what we'd normally see.

"Bloody Moon" is one of the Franco's more marketable films, and is certainly a worthwhile slasher as well.**SPOILERS**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.Rated R: Nudity, Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, themes of incest and animal violence