Bloody awful (Bloody Moon (DVD))

Name: hogsflesh

Hello doyoo user, You have to be logged in to use these functions... Login or register Close window

Send message to member

Product:	Bloody Moon (DVD)
Date:	25.03.08 (74 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Funny disco scenes

Disadvantages: Everything else about it

A review of just the film.

This is a video nasty from 1981. It's a real stinker; I don't know why I thought it might be otherwise, to be honest. It's directed by probably my least favourite exploitation director, Jesús Franco. A Spaniard, his quest to make low-budget horror and porn led him all over the world; he's directed hundreds of films and is still active, making horror again after spending much of the 80s mired in the hard porn ghetto. Bloody Moon was financed and shot in West Germany.

This isn't as bad as some of Franco's films, but it doesn't have any of the features that make some of his 60s and 70s films at least interesting on paper. At a language school someone is murdering the (seemingly exclusively female) students. Could it be the suave handyman, a blandly pretty lothario; or the nephew of the owner, a disfigured psychotic fresh out of the asylum; or the bald, mute handyman, who acts suspiciously every damn time he appears? Well, I wouldn't want to give anything away, although I'm pretty sure none of you will ever see this.

It's only 80 minutes long, and doesn't drag quite as much as most Franco films. But the pace is leisurely to say the least. Lengthy shots of women walking through the grounds of the school at night are presumably supposed to generate suspense, but they go on for too long to do anything of the sort. At no point does anything happen to make you jump; the bits where people are attacked are signposted a mile off. This sometimes leads to unintentional amusement. One potential victim, Angela (the heroine, for want of a better word), is always interrupted by someone innocuous when she's about to be attacked, like a weird parody of those old sex farces where the amorous couple are continually interrupted by clergymen, mothers-in-law etc. This goes to semi-Pythoneque extremes: just when we expect someone to jump out of the wardrobe and stick a knife in her, for instance, she is interrupted by a small child going door to door selling 'souvenirs' in the middle of the night.

It's that kind of film - completely lacking self awareness or competence, its attempts to be clever are profoundly stupid. Angela sees one of her friends murdered, but the corpse mysteriously vanishes. Everyone else treats her like an idiot and assures her she's imagined it - which goes on until about ten minutes before the film ends. This annoying plot strand might just about pass muster in an episode of Scooby Doo, but here it buggers belief.

This lacks Franco's trademark bad sex scenes - normally there would be a lot of sex and nudity (and usually a lesbian scene in a nightclub). A few bits of toplessness and some half-hearted fumbling early on are all we get. ("Caress me everywhere. Everywhere. Yes, like that.") The gore is actually better than expected, including a rather nice (if totally unconvincing) decapitation. There's one unforgivable scene where someone cuts a (real) snake's head off, which is probably enough to ensure this will never be released uncut in the UK, but otherwise the gore is about the best thing on offer here.

A particularly unwelcome Franco trademark very much present is the constantly moving camera. You sometimes wonder if he couldn't afford a tripod. He's also very, very fond of zooming in on things (usually actresses' faces, but here he tries desperately to focus on the moon quite often, too; Franco often has problems getting things in focus). Directorial flourish or lack of time to set shots up properly? You decide...

The acting is pretty bad. Everyone is dubbed, usually with desperate incompetence. Dialogue is blurted out with indecent haste in an attempt to get it to roughly match lip movements (the worst offender is Franco himself, in a small role as a doctor. He hardly moves his mouth at all). Most of the actresses look like they're unused to saying much on camera beyond "Oooh, it's so big. Mmm, harder! Oh yeah baby all over my face..."

The one endearing thing about Franco's earlier films is that they often have incredible jazz/lounge soundtracks (the soundtrack album for Vampyros Lesbos belongs in everyone's collection). Here, regrettably, we get dreadful early-80s Euro disco music. The main theme plays interminably. Other themes half-heartedly rip off 'Live and Let Die' and 'Star Trek'. There are quite a few disco scenes, though, and as always in cheap horror, they're a delight. So many great outfits, so much bad dancing, such terrible music. ("Shake your baby. Shake. Shake shake shake.")

Anyway, I could go on at length about the absurd plot contrivances, the seemingly significant dialogue that goes nowhere, the awful polystyrene boulder, but I think I've made my point. You don't need to see this film. You'd never even have heard of it if not for this review, so in a sense the joke's on you; but I had to watch the damn thing. It would set you back about £12 from amazon if you were going to buy it. But you aren't.

Summary: One of the worst video nasties, which is saying a lot