Luna sangrienta

Not to be confused with Bloody Moon, Jesus Franco's gore feast of 1980; this Australian lensed slasher imitates the popular ‘killer on campus' plotline that's so frequently used by its US counterparts. It's fairly amusing just how much Alec Mills tries to make this as American as he possibly can, but thankfully he refrains from asking the cast to perform unconvincing accents. As a matter of fact, the characters that are actually supposed to be from the States still speak in flawless Aus! Hmmm!

In the small town of Coopers Bay, there are two Hi-schools situated right next door to each other. There's Winchester, an all boys comprehensive and St Elizabeth's, a girl's only Catholic faculty. They are separated by woodland where pupils from both can meet and engage in things that they'd rather their teachers didn't witness! An unseen killer begins murdering the youngsters as they fornicate, strangling them with a length of barbed wire before removing their eyes and burying them under the soil. Mary, the daughter of a Hollywood movie actress, becomes involved when the killer targets her and Kevin, her boyfriend. But who is this twisted psychopath and why does he want to kill all the kids?

Blood Moon opens with a terrific score courtesy of Brian May and some superb cinematography. The dense woods in which the kids are pursued is brilliantly lighted and I was immediately rather impressed by the general production. After a couple of murders, were introduced to a predictable troupe of troublesome teens and our obvious final girl. There's an interesting subplot that sprouts as one of the local poor kids falls for Mary, the daughter of an actress. The rich Winchester boys hate the local working class, so it's almost like a homage to Romeo and Juliet or West side story but without the Rock and Roll (Instead we get ‘reach for the earplugs' Heavy Metal!). Shakespeare and the slasher genre, what a combination! I bet the poor author would turn in his grave!

There's one really gruesome – if not graphic – murder, involving a desk, a young girl's head and a deranged killer! But aside from that, there's hardly any gore and most of the killings are left to our imagination (boo!). The performances are fairly poor throughout, although Leon Lissek gives a decidedly nasty portrayal. Although it mostly keeps things directly by the book, there are a few twists that you probably won't guess and we also get some background on the reasons for the killer's insanity.

British born Alec Mills' lackadaisical direction left a lot to be desired and he failed to generate as much suspense as was needed. He's better when he works as a camera man as he did on Return of the jedi and various James Bond movies through the seventies and eighties. It's a fairly slow-moving story, but when the killer is revealed things begin to perk up right up until it ends rather suddenly leaving one or two unanswered questions. Like what happened to Kevin? Did he survive? Even though the bodies start piling up toward the finale, the story certainly could have benefited from a few more excursions into the well-lighted woodland with the killer and his length of deadly barbed wire. As it stands, there was too little horror and an excessive amount of teen frolics that didn't really do the movie any favours.

You can ignore most of the bad reviews that slate Blood Moon; it really isn't all that bad. Its just that its not particularly memorable, the sort of film that you'll watch once and forget about immediately after. Perfect for some late-night slicing shenanigans on the TV, but hardly worth the effort of hunting down. As far as Australian slashers go, it manages not to feel as cack-handed as Houseboat Horror, To Become One or the over-rated Cut, but then that's still not much of a worthy compliment. Oh and make sure to place them earplugs back in as soon as you see the end credits. The last songs a killer: `Blood moon is rising, stay home tonight' and `Blood Moon arising over building and over hill, take care if you will!' You get the picture!

Those were the days... Where this kind of slashers were a reason for staying home on a Friday night when being 12 or 13 years old.

I remember this movie airing on USA NETWORK almost every 6 months, but it wasn't until the 10th time it aired that I decided to watch it. The first 10 minutes are kind of creepy, then the movie gets boring until the expected end. The killer is no way scary, and even the plenty of gore and hot girls doesn't help "BLOODMOON" being a slasher to be remembered.

Just for die hard fans of the genre.

Bloodmoon (1990)

* (out of 4)

Ozploitation about a serial killer going around an all girls Catholic school where he wraps a piece of barbed wire around the victim's necks. BLOODMOON is one of those films that seemed to build its reputation on hype and then when people actually saw the picture they realized that there really wasn't much to it. The idea of barbed wire being wrapped around someone's neck makes one think that you're about to view something graphic but that's certainly not the case. It almost seems as if the filmmakers watched a few American slashers and decided to copy them. It also seems like they read some negative reviews to stuff like Friday THE 13TH that put the films down for not having any sort of character development. It further seems that the filmmakers wanted to "get it right" so we're given non-stop scenes with so-called character development. There's no other way to put it but this movie is extremely bad from start to finish. There's an incredibly drawn out and downright boring dance sequence, which seems to run as long as the wedding sequence from THE GODFATHER. This scene just keeps going on and on and when it's over you realize that there wasn't a need for it. No need for it is something that most of these scenes here have going for them. The entire picture just drags along and at times you wonder if the filmmakers forgot they were making a horror film. The first hour drags by so poorly that most will probably hit the eject button. The majority of the death scenes take place off camera so we're not given too much there. What little blood there is comes from scenes showing the victim's missing their eyes. The film does offer up quite a bit of nudity but this here isn't enough to save the picture. Fans of the genre will probably be curious about this one due to its hyped reputation but sadly the film itself is quite poor and well worth skipping.

BLOODMOON had major airplay on the USA NETWORK on Friday nights during some years. After 1997 I haven't seen this slasher but I can remember about it.

It's night, full moon, a killer with a barb wire terrorizes a girls school. Great premise for a slasher! The murders are so so as the killer has only a way to kill the ladies. Anyway this is pure slasher fun, much in the style of HOUSE ON THE SORORITY ROW. The plot tries to be somewhat complex, but fails on being interesting and turns to be dumb. You discover who the killer is after 30 minutes of the movie. Slasher fans do not care about it! Don't expect too much from this slasher, just watch it and have some fun. It gets boring at some point, but it's worth a watch.

I recommend it only for slasher fans, watch it at your own risk.

3/10 -Terrible but tries to stand out of the garbage

Teenagers on a college campus are brutally murdered while doing the dirty. This starts out as a typical crap 80s slasher snoozer. For the first 40 minutes I kept thinking to myself "Wow, the late 80s/early 90s was an even WORSE time for style and horror in Australia than it was in the US!" Teenagers with side-ponies stripping out of their stonewash jeans are everywhere! The theme of this slasher seems to be a killer with a circular barbed wire thingie that he uses to choke, causing his victims to see a, um, bloodmoon? I have no idea. What I DO know is that about halfway through, this movie turns from a below-average slasher, to a fabulously trashy episode of "Dynasty Down Under," thanks to the camped-out performance by the hilarious Christine Amor (who was likewise the only good thing about the Linda Blair crapfest "Dead Silence". Oh yeah, be careful because most reviews (and even the Netflix envelope) feature spoilers, but it doesn't really matter because the movie is only worth watching for the soap operatics in the second half.