Bloody Moon (1983)

People are voting emotionally.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

OK, look, this is a Jess Franco flick, so know - up front - that it is tacky, Eurosleaze garbage. (Even Franco himself calls the film "s%@#" in the DVD's interview feature). Taken within the confines of the genre, however, I suppose "Bloody Moon" delivers an interesting blend, as a gaillo/slasher hybrid, but the film's dreadful B-movie script and zero believability place it somewhere between camp and outright refuse. The picture has the standard Eurotrash cachet (e.g. retro fashions, pencil thin people, synth-pop soundtrack, etc.), but with more attractive women, a surprisingly clean print, and pervasive chauvinistic undertones. The girls are quite hot, really, and genre fans might recognize the lead - Olivia Pascal - from her role in the infamous "Emanuelle" clone: "Vanessa." Expect about five topless scenes, five gory kills, and endless scenes of Olivia gasping in terror, only to find out her fear is unfounded. Typical Franco calling cards abound, including marginal camera-work, wacko scene direction, and general Eurosleaze tastelessness. The dubbing is terrible, which makes much of the already preposterous dialog sometimes quite funny. Here is an exerpt: (Girl): "Angela - this is Antonio - our gardener, tennis ace, and the best piece of property in Los Olvidos. That's not all! As a lover, he's fantastic. Antonio - am I wrong or right?" (Antonio): "If you'd really want to see, try me out one night.....You're not bad at all, why don't we go inside?" Beautiful....Ultimately, though, and despite some very hot girls and funny moments, "Bloody Moon" was pretty darn pointless. It wasn't boring, really, just a little too average for my tastes. ---|--- Reviews by Flak Magnet

Although technically poor, ineptly scripted and badly acted, this American style slasher from Spanish horror auteur Jess Franco is actually pretty entertaining, thanks to plenty of two of the most important ingredients of the genre: gratuitous gore and female nudity.The silly plot sees Miguel (Alexander Waechter), a disfigured killer, released into the care of his sister Manuela (Nadja Gerganoff) after five years of rehabilitation, and returning to the exact place where he killed his victim: a language school at which every student appears to be an attractive female twenty-something. Not long after his arrival, someone begins to whittle down the numbers attending the school, using a variety of nasty implements. Is Miguel carrying on from where he left off, or has someone else taken over as the school's resident murderer?Franco directs with his usual lack of finesse, but includes plenty of sleaze 'n' cheese to ensure that, this time, I didn't doze off halfway through his film. There are some excellent 80s disco moments for fans of dodgy dance scenes (the best being a roller disco/rock 'n' roll scene accompanied by the worst song ever); a smattering of incestual behaviour between Miguel and Manuela; several red herrings and multiple suspects to throw viewers off the scent; and a spot of real-life animal death (a poor snake loses his head to a pair of shears).And let's not forget about the gore, which is fairly frequent and always pretty vicious: Miguel's brutal scissor attack occurs only minutes into the film, and this is followed by several other bloody scenes that helped Bloody Moon secure a place on the notorious BBFC Video Nasties list. Gorehounds will not be disappointed by the film's two nastiest deaths: a knife attack which sees the blade exit the victim via her breast, and the graphic beheading of a another girl using a massive rotary stone-saw.The film is also good for some great unintentional laughs, and I defy anyone to keep a straight face as the film's heroine, Spanish student Angela (Olivia Pascal), narrowly escapes being crushed by a huge, cuboid polystyrene rock, and is scared witless as a door is opened painfully slowly by.... a cat!Not a good film, by any stretch of the imagination, but definitely a fun one if you like trashy Euro-horror. 6.5 out of 10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb.

The plot line, a group of young girls residing at a language school in Spain become the target to a series of bloody thristy murders to a unknown killer, could it be the deformed man who've murdered before or someone else. Bloody Moon could have been a whole let better, I'm not saying it's bad, but simply average. There are a couple of genuinely tense scenes and cinematography is good and it is one gory little movie- the film's most (in)famous moment comes when a girl lets herself get tied up by, unbeknownst to her, the killer, "I'm game for anything!" she squeals, before being messily decapitated by a huge buzzsaw. (I bet she wasn't game for that!). But the bad things about this movie is the acting isn't very strong, probably due to the fact the dubbing is terrible, the film is also so dark at times you can't even see what's going on. All in all Bloody Moon is probably worth seeing.

"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