Review of Bloody Moon (1981) by Cameron M — 31 Jul 2009

Sleaze-maestro Jess Franco jumps onto the early eighties "body count" splatter movie bandwagon, and while he dutifully follows many of the standard tropes (lots of red herring suspects, much groping and bickering amongst a cast of horny young things, and of course the requisite gruesome kills), he thankfully also brings along his unique visual style and flair for perverse plot twists.

While the body count itself is fairly slim by today's standards, the kills themselves are rather gory, with the showstopper being a truly spectacular decapitation at a stone mill. Regrettably the pacing is distractingly lax, with a few too many scenes of the heroine (pretty Olivia Pascal) roaming around, aimlessly trying to suss out the weird goings on around her, and it doesn't help much that virtually all of the characters behave in bizarre ways that defy both logic and simple human emotion ("There's a dead body in there!" is followed immediately by "Oh, that's ridiculous.

Let's make out instead of worrying about that!"). It's pretty hard to care what happens to characters when they're all acting like they come from another planet. The inexcusable (real) on screen death of a snake further knocks "Bloody Moon" down a peg or two.

It's certainly no classic, but in its own demented way it is unlike any other slasher flick you've ever seen.