Killer's Moon (1978)

The Worst Film Ever

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Every fan has their guilty pleasure, the one film they enjoy whilst just about everyone else hates and loathes it. KILLER'S MOON is such a film for me, an infamously shoddy bad-taste production in which just about everything is god-awful: sub-par editing, atrocious acting, dialogue written as if by a drug-addicted loon. Director Alan Birkinshaw (a very minor personality in British exploitation stakes) goes out of his way to deliver helping upon helping of over-the-top nastiness which amazingly managed to get through the BBFC with an 'X' certificate back in the days of its first release. A video release followed in the very early '80s, but otherwise this crummy wannabe slasher-epic has rarely seen the light of day and is mostly forgotten by fans of mainstream horror. KILLER'S MOON transcends its many limitations to become a schlocky masterpiece of so-bad-it's-good entertainment; a laugh riot throughout and for all the wrong reasons.Birkinshaw seems to be going out of his way to make an offensive movie right from the start, when a bleeding, three-legged dog limps into view - apparently the fourth limb has been severed, by persons unknown! The setting is an effectively barren Lake District, which is one of the film's finest points: the isolated atmosphere of the British landscape really comes across and gives the movie an ideal setting, as in much the same way as a film like THE LIVING DEAD AT THE MANCHESTER MORGUE for instance. Cold, gloomy, yet still attractively lush with greenery in places, the setting is ideal. Into this forbidding landscape comes a coach full of clichéd '70s schoolgirls, all into singing "Greensleeves" before their trip goes awry when the coach breaks down and they are forced to trek through the woods to the nearest place of salvation - a closed down hotel.So far, so good, although you'll have already realised by now that this isn't the paciest of movies. The slow nature of the film may be off putting to those looking for faster, more serious scares, but let's face it, nobody here had a lot of budget to work with so things necessarily must be dragged out and laboured. And just as the film looks to become a bit boring, in come four of the most outrageous film characters to liven it up. Nevermind that they're all loonies from the local asylum - here the mentally ill are portrayed as evil, twisted psychopaths with no redeeming values, three ending up brutally killed as a result of their own crimes, the fourth finally resembling a pathetic child of a man. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE is the big influence here, both in the characters' attire and their choice of names ("Mr Smith, Mr Muldoon... Mr Trubshaw" - I mean, please!), and also in the way in which they casually go about raping and murdering all in their path. The idea that they believe they're living out all their worst desires in a safe dream-world is a clever one, giving the movie the one spark of minor originality and interest which it otherwise lacks.What follows is a catalogue of atrocities, all played out in a commendably straight-faced manner. Cats have their tails cruelly lopped off; shrewish housewives are pinned to their own doors with kitchen knives; all manner of young and attractive schoolgirls are stripped and violated by the scheming mad men (watch those nightdresses, which seem to fall off suspiciously easily). Even the comedic coach driver (as played by the inimitable "Chubby" Oates - I wonder what became of him?) gets an axe in the head. It goes without saying that the minor gore effects here are pathetically done and very unconvincing, with the body-on-the-door gag being the only real "special effect" of the bunch. Of course, what goes around comes around, and eventually the bad guys are offed by dog-mauling, fire, and scythes to the back, in that order. The fourth guy (get this) dresses up the charred corpse of one of his former friends in a female wig and shirt and cries in its lap, apparently looking for comfort from his "mother"! The acting is unbelievably bad, all amateurish and no familiar faces to be seen. The actresses playing the schoolgirls have all obviously been picked for their lack of inhibitions rather than anything else, whilst the guys playing the killers go way over the top with some of the most outrageous, hammiest acting you're ever likely to see in a British horror production of the '70s. Even the American (?) hero, Mike, is played by a really wooden bloke. So why does this film work for me? For a start, the dialogue, which is positively ringing with classic gems of priceless ineptitude, including the legendarily bad summing-up of the situation the characters find themselves in: "Blood on the moon, one mangled dog, one missing axe, and one lost girl who just found a body at the wrong end of the axe. How's that for the great English outdoors?". Then there are the over-acting guys, who turn the wannabe figures of terror into laughable buffoons, the abundance of poor effects work, unpredictable events and cheesy heroes. Birkinshaw, I salute you, for making one of the last great stands in British exploitation cinema history!

A bus with eight young female choir singers and a pair of uptight, matronly chaperons on board breaks down on a country road, prompting the ladies to walk until they can find shelter. They eventually stumble upon a huge, unoccupied hotel and settle down for the night, but a quartet of recently-escaped psychos decked out like Droogs for God knows what reason are on the loose and show up there to terrorize them. Also thrown into the mix are a hotel keeper and her slutty daughter, a gamekeeper and his wife, two male campers and a, uh, three-legged dog. There's ONE potentially novel angle present in this cheap "thriller:" the killers were all subjected to an experimental drug back at the nut-house prior to escaping. The drug puts them in an alternate state of conscience where they believe everything that's going on is only a dream so they can indulge in their darkest fantasies guilt-free. Why this angle was introduced in the first place is anyone's guess as it's poorly handled and proves to be utterly pointless. The escapees are already deranged so it's not outside the realm of plausibility they'd indulge in these activities regardless, so why even bother with the drug scapegoat? It would have been far more interesting had this detailed the effect of the drug on NORMAL people.I really wanted to like this one and expected to get at least something out of it considering many of the reviews here are positive. The initial set-up is serviceable (albeit overused), but the incompetent direction, terrible screenplay and a deadly slow pace quickly turn it into a repetitive bore. It falls into that uneasy gray area of B entertainment where it's too poorly-made to take seriously, too silly to ever be disturbing and far too tame to be a guilty pleasure. There are some mildly bloody moments, like an axe to the head and a knife through the throat, but the killings nearly all take place off screen and we just get to see the body afterward. The goriest moment is actually a throwaway WTF bit where one of the nuts chops off a cat's tail with a cleaver (!) Likewise, a few of the actresses go topless and there are a few rape scenes, but these moments are too brief, too tame and too poorly done to please sleaze hounds. You can see the same exact material handled far more compellingly and convincingly in dozens of other films of this type.Another problem I had was that there are so many pointless characters wandering around that not even the director can keep track of all of them. People go off to do things and disappear for such long stretches of time you complete forget about them by the time it returns to them. Others are at one location one minute and somewhere completely different the next. None of the choir girls are given even the slightest glimpse of personality or individuality and the director refuses to ever settle on a protagonist to give us a focal point to ground the action. I can't really comment on the acting because even Laurence Olivier would have a hard time selling some of these lines. During the film's most jaw- dropping moment, one of the girls nonchalantly tells her recently- violated friend, "You were only raped. As long as you don't tell anyone about it you'll be alright. Pretend it never happened."The final nail in the coffin is the laughably lazy visual presentation, which is so bad they can't even pull off something as simple as night convincingly! The exteriors set during the night were shot in the day with dark filters, but the sky ALWAYS looks sunny and bright. The indoor footage is perhaps even worse because they don't even bother with giving it a darker look or even closing the curtains so there's always bright light flooding in through doors and windows during the "night." For numerous scenes supposedly taking place inside a tent, they hang up a huge tarp behind a few of the actors that not only is five times bigger than it should be but not even the same color as the tent show in long shots! These scenes have clearly been filmed somewhere on a stage with ridiculously unconvincing matte backdrops, which had me wondering why they didn't just set up a few spotlights and use the nice Lake District locations already at their disposal.

Killer's Moon (1978) * 1/2 (out of 4) I had never heard of this film before picking up a copy of Video Watchdog where this film was mentioned during a segment on THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT and those films that ripped it off. I found the comparison to the Wes Craven film to be a bit far-fetched as it appears this movie basically wants to be an exploitation version of Stanley Kubrick's A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. The story is pretty generic as a bus load of girls are left alone all night in a creepy house after their bus breaks down. Around the same time four nuts from a mental asylum escape and plan on torturing and raping the girls because they think they're in a dream and none of the bad stuff they're going to do will actually happen. This British film is so dry and boring that it's a wonder anyone was able to stay awake until the end of the flick. For the life of me I can't understand certain British movies that are clearly aiming at an exploitation crowd yet they do nothing but fill the film with countless dialogue scenes that add up to nothing and their only purpose it seems is to expand the running time. We get a 90-minute movie but the dialogue takes up at least forty-minutes and everything else just doesn't have enough energy to make up for it. There are a couple murder sequences but the special effects are mixed at best. There's an axe to the head which looks decent and I thought it was effectively done as it happens out of no where and the movie doesn't really give you time to expect it so this was a plus. Another scene has a body part getting sliced and it looks quite generic. Other deaths include a shotgun blast and a cat who gets it tail cut off. The performances range from fair to poor and it's easy to see that most are wishing they were somewhere else. The actors playing the nuts aren't nearly effective enough because it's hard to be frightened of them as the performances never make them very menacing. Another problem is with some of the adult characters who just do one stupid thing after another including one lady who decides to rehears some music after a couple of the girls go missing. I think some of the dumbest moments happens with a group of people "living" in a tent. The tent is obviously rather small but the scenes inside of it are clearly being shot in a much larger space and the way it's lit just makes it look silly. KILLER'S MOON is a bland genre film that doesn't have very much going for it but at least the three-legged dog gives a good performance.

Killer's Moon starts in the isolation of the Lake District in England as a coach of school choir girls travel onwards to a concert they are going to perform at. Meanwhile in central London a government minister (Hugh Ross) is giving a psychiatrist (James Kerry) & prison governor (Graham Rowe) a right going over as they try to explain away the escape of four mental patients who all have sexually violent convictions, the psychiatrist says that they were being treated with an experimental drug in which the patient would think he was in a dream. Back to the Lake District & the coach has run into difficulties & has broken down with the driver (Chubby Oates) unable to repair it. The supervising teachers Mrs. Hargreaves (Jean Reeve) & Miss Lilac (Elizabeth Counsell) decide to try & find a hotel which they eventually do, the owner Mrs. May (Hilda Braid) finds rooms for them all. Unfortunately for them the four escaped lunatics who now call themselves Mr. Smith (Nigel Gregory), Mr. Trubshaw (David Jackson), Mr. Muldoon (Paul Rattee) & Mr. Jones (Peter Spraggon) are on the loose & doped up on drugs ready to rape & murder. The girls only hope are two campers Mike (Tom Marshall) & Pete (Anthony Forrest) & whether they can contact outside help...This English production was co-written, co-produced & directed by Alan Birkinshaw & I have to say I liked it to a certain extent but a few things let it down. The script by Birkinshaw & an uncredited Faye Weldon has a nice premise & lots of potential but it becomes too bogged down in unnecessary nonsense as it drags badly towards the end with endless shots of people walking around in the dark & overall it becomes rather dull around the hour mark & it never really recovers. Then there's the expected sleaze, sex & violence which when actually seen is a bit too tame for my liking & Killer's Moon reputation is way over hyped & doesn't deserve to be described as 'Nastily Exploitative' or 'One of the Sleaziest British Movies Ever Made' as it has been. Killer's Moon has a certain British eccentricity & quirkiness about it that I liked while some of the dialogue is really funny & lightens the tone a lot, one of the lunatics to another after having raped one of the girls "Mr. Jones I feel we may have done something wrong" & one of the girls comforting another "you were only raped, as long as don't tell anyone about it you'll be alright" are just two of the absolute gems that can be heard in Killer's Moon.Director Birkinshaw does an OK job but it's hardly the best looking film ever, he also throws in a bizarre three legged dog that pops up on occasion & there's a Clockwork Orange (1971) thing going on with the way the lunatics are dressed in white & the way they speak to each other. I thought Killer's Moon had a nice sleazy atmosphere to it as a film dealing with the rape & terrorising of school girls would have, having said that I never forgot that I was watching a film & couldn't take it seriously. I just wish the pace of the film had been tightened up & that there was more gore in it rather than lots of silly dialogue. The gore is actually a little tame, an axe in someones neck, a slashed cheek, a dog with it's leg cut off & a cat has it's tail chopped off, a woman is impaled to a door with a knife through her throat, a burned body & someone is stabbed with a sickle with none of it being particularly convincing or graphic.Technically Killer's Moon is quite good, it's competent & the location shooting helps. The acting was OK & those thick English accents are just great aren't they? What a country I live in!Killer's Moon was a nice & pretty sleazy film to a certain point but unfortunately there are too many flaws for me to be able to wholeheartedly recommend it. I think it's worth a watch for horror fans but most casual viewers will probably hate it. Maybe one for most people to give a miss even though I thought there were a few decent moments in it.