adriangr I think if it wasn't for the fame that being a "video nasty" brought it, "Bloody Moon" wouldn't be enjoying anything like the longevity it currently has. Set in a Spanish language school for girls (how original), the story sees our heroine Angela in peril as her friend begin to die around her, and nobody believes her. Suspects are all over the place, one gory murder follows another until the truth is revealed. The thin plot is a threadbare mechanism with only enough substance to it to drive the most basic of story events, and all attempts to generate mystery and tension fall completely flat. A lot of this is due to the English language soundtrack which has the most inept dubbing I've seen for a long time. There's an excess of "sexy" giggling and gossiping that goes with every scene of the female cast members, unless they are being stalked or terrorised, in which case it changes to an excess of screaming and wailing. None of the vocal performances match what the actresses appear to be saying in the slightest. Trying to work out whodunnit is hampered by the appalling direction, in which red herring characters pop up and down every few moments before and after a murder scene, making you wonder if anything you are seeing is by design or just random. Truly awful film-making is here in abundance, in such scenes as the one where Inga is merrily driven to a saw mill and tied up, gabbling the entire time, or the one in which Angela sees a shadow on the wall, walks backwards (??) towards it and stabs the figure hysterically and then runs off, or the one where a snake dangles into view and is snipped to death by hedge cutters, or the one where a huge foam rock bounces out of nowhere to menace Angela, or all the time we spend watching the girls in their language class and nothing actually happens, or the one with Inga (again - she's particularly bad) bouncing on her bed pretending to be having sex, with a dead body in her wardrobe that it would be impossible for her not to notice, and many, many more. The only strength the film could possibly claim to have is the graphic gore, but these scenes are also pretty poorly done. Some work well for being crudely violent (the sawmill decapitation and the knife through breast killing), but the death by neck- clamp is blatantly out of focus, and most of the others are amateurishly accomplished. If you only want to see a lot of boobs and blood, plus some of the worst 80's knitwear ever put on celluloid, then treat yourself. Otherwise, this is almost laughably terrible. Even the soundtrack, which underscores the drama with lots of deep "bloop-bloop" noises is unforgivable. The 2 stars are for the saw mill murder as it has become almost iconic, and at least the film has enough energy not to be boring.

GL84 Starting a new school-year, the staff of an all-girls language school in Spain come to find that the savage killings of the campus' students lead back to the deformed killer supposedly wandering the grounds and must find a way of stopping his rampage.This here is quite the fun and enjoyably sleazy slasher opus. What tends to work so well with this one is the fact that it manages to accompany the traditional slasher realms with the over-the-top sleaze and violence usually associated with the director's films. The way this one manages to exploit it's slasher leanings, from the opening shot of the killer wandering through the party in a mask while a girl mistakes him for her boyfriend to the tragic past of the brother and the ingenuity of many of the set-pieces here are straight from the playbook of the modern slasher movement at the time, and the decision to feature so much of the film through the killer's eye-view in order to distort their identity is a rather impressive series of call-backs to that scene. As well, the rather suspenseful stalking and tormenting here comes into play straight from those elements as well with the taunting on the headphones while she's in class, the suddenly disappearing bodies of his victims and the quick-shot scenes that show her supposedly being targeted by the killer off in the shadows including dodging a boulder pushed off a cliff and avoiding a poisonous snake hanging from a tree, which when combined with the spectacular series of chases and brawling found in the final half it makes for a stand-out slasher effort. That final half, where the killer runs rampant against the girls resulting in utterly brutal and graphic set-pieces as the sequence in the abandoned mill, her being barricaded in her room with all the furniture stacked up against the walls before finding the bodies scattered throughout the house that becomes quite thrilling overall as the action picks up and the thrilling scenes makes for a wholly enjoyable sequence. Alongside this, the film also goes for the usual sleaze route here with copious amounts of nudity featured here that goes for not only the strange notion of the girls' night-time habit of flashing the moon, the incestuous relationship subplot and the cheesy feature of the lecherous school- teacher screwing everyone which all provides this one generous amount of trashy, sleazy fun. These here hold this one up quite well over the film's few problems. The main issue is the fact that the film doesn't really make any sense as to what's going on with the killer, as the finale revelation is quite at odds with what's going on and really doesn't make any sense as to why that goes through when it rearranges sections of the film beforehand for no reason. As well, the film's so incredibly cheap and somewhat slapdash that it manages to get a lot out the inherently crude work here that makes this look quite lower than what it really could be for those looking for a little more coherent and competent effort here. Otherwise, there's much more to really like here.Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence, Full Nudity, Language and strong violence against children and animals.

Scott LeBrun Legendary European exploitation master Jess Franco makes his own contribution to the slasher film boom of the early 1980s with "Bloody Moon", a silly and trashy affair. Nadja Gerganoff plays Manuela, a young woman with a scar faced, mentally unbalanced brother named Miguel (Alexander Waechter). Manuela and her associate Alvaro (Christoph Moosbrugger) run a language school, and one of the students is Angela (Olivia Pascal), a hottie with a taste for sordid murder mystery novels. Angela becomes paranoid when she finds the dead body of a friend, and then the body disappears. She becomes convinced that at some point the killer will target her."Bloody Moon" is alright, and worth seeing if only by devoted followers of this genre. The thing is, they have to be patient for about 75% of the film. Despite being handsomely shot and full of gorgeous women, the film has a body count that never kicks into overdrive. The faithful are rewarded with a fair amount of breast shots, as well as a little bit of gore. Fortunately, everything gets kicked up a notch with the final quarter, which can boast one very memorable decapitation. The scar face makeup on Miguel is pretty unconvincing, and always *looks* like makeup.In the tradition of cheesy and sleazy European genre fare, the on screen actors are hilariously dubbed by people giving excruciating vocal performances. The music score by Gerhard Heinz is nice but sometimes hilariously inappropriate. The use of disco on the soundtrack helps to firmly date things as well as add to the level of viewer amusement. It's also a gas to see characters wearing Mickey Mouse masks during the obligatory "first murder set piece" sequence. And the scenery is quite pleasant throughout.Not a great slasher but a reasonably entertaining one.Franco has an uncredited cameo as a doctor.Six out of 10.

lastliberal This is a video nasty that was banned in Britain, and released with 1 minute and 20 seconds cut in 1993, and released uncut November 2008.The movie heavily influenced by Halloween, and there are elements of Friday the 13th, as well. In other words, a typical slasher film.Miguel (Alexander Waechter) was just released from a psychiatric facility following a brutal murder in the past. His sister Manuela (Nadja Gerganoff) works at the same boarding school where the murder took place. Of course, the relationship between brother and sister is definitely different from Halloween.It's a European (Spanish/German) film, so the girls sit around the pool topless. They also party a lot instead of studying.Angela (Olivia Pascal) just happens to occupy the same room where the murder took place, and gets the feeling of being stalked. Of course, Eva (Ann-Beate Engelke) drops in at the wrong time. However, the body disappears before anyone but Angela sees it.Next up is Inga (Jasmin Losensky), who yaks incessantly while she is being tied up thinking she is in for something kinky. What she is in for is the infamous scene on the DVD cover. I can imagine that was the scene cut in the British release.I just realized that I haven't seen the killer's face. can it be that Miguel is not the killer? Angela is a death-magnet as Laura (Corinna Drews) shows up and is soon dispatched.The plotters run their mouths off without paying attention and their plot is overheard. But there are many more surprises in store in this bizarre film.