Sanglant voyage scolaire

Very much a film of slashed throats and ripped off blouses, Killer's Moon bluntly punctuated what was a rather dismal year for British horror movies (think The Cat and the Canary, Dominique and The Legacy). Its exactly the sort of film a minor sexploitation director dragging a cast of nobodies into the Lake District for an inept hotchpotch of A Clockwork Orange, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Please Sir would make. Four homicidal maniacs Mr Smith, Mr Jones, Mr Muldoon and Mr Trubshaw all modelled on A Clockwork Orange's droogs escape from a cottage asylum into the Lake District. Since they've all been treated on LSD dream therapy, they believe everything to be a dream and thus feel free to indulge in drug fuelled sex and murder fantasies. Coincidences find a bunch of 70's sitcom characters as potential fodder for them -an American jogger, a bunch of campers, the Scottish gamekeeper, the Cockney bus driver `they're all mard round ‘ere', the pompous school-marm and a busload of dubious schoolgirls. When the schoolgirl's bus breaks down on the way to a choir contest they're forced to stay in an off season hotel run by an elderly eccentric while outside minor characters stumble off to their deaths `why would anyone kill a gamekeeper with an axe?'. When the maniacs come out of the shadows to siege the hotel they are revealed as the most unashamedly over the top hams since the days of Tod Slaughter, they're really into the proceedings, cackling, growling and grimacing and are soon desperate to get their drug addled paws on the schoolgirls, who despite being cast in the St Trinian mode of carrying teddies and being prone to renditions of Greensleeves are nothing more than Wardour Street starlets cast mainly for glamour nudity. Most of the enjoyment though has to come from the dialogue thats looks as if it was written under the same treatment as its psychopaths. Watch as RADA never weres tackle gems of un-pc dialogue like `look you were only raped if you don't tell anyone about it you'll be alright' and `if we ever get out of this alive well maybe we'll both live to be be wives and mothers'. Amidst the sex and violence, Killer's Moon gradually transforms into a twisted music hall pantomime with girlies chased around the hotel, the help of Hannah the three-legged dog, a transvestite escape plan and one of the maniacs lamenting `why can't I dream of steak and chips, why does it have to be bread and cheese?'- all delivered with a serious candour which must have been hard for a movie that weds its carnage to acid-jazz renditions of `twinkle twinkle little star' and `three blind mice'. Produced in the dying days of the British film industry Killer's Moon really is cheap with the worse editing imaginable, a matte Lake district, while day and night shots are mixed and matched, its hard to believe that the film had a cinema release but it did (in August 1978). The acting is mostly foul as befits the cast of nobodies although living up to the unwritten law `show me a British actor/actress and I'll show you the 70's sex/horror film they'd like to forget', old hams and future soap stars (ie Jo- Anne Good who ended up in Crossroads) can be found if you look hard enough. Killer's Moon scores high with surprisingly strong exploitation elements. The token peek a boo nudity is expected, given Birkinshaw's background but scenes of 25ish year old `schoolgirls' abused by mental patients seem genuinely unhealthy. Screenwriter/Director (the late?) Alan Birkinshaw was indeed one of the more cheaper celluloid barrow boys. His previous film had been Confessions of a Sex Maniac (1975) a low budget skinflick about a Woody Allen-esque architect with a breast fetish who feels obliged to erect a building in honour of his obsession. After the axe came down on UK low-budget film production like Gerry O'Hara he flew to South Africa and hooked up with infamous producer Harry Alan Towers- Birkinshaw's work for Towers manifested in some Poe adaptations are widely reviled. Birkinshaw is also largely believed responsible for the shocking gore sequences tagged on to Don't Open Till Christmas. Managing to keep out of the reference books ever since its initial release, Killer's Moon now enjoys a mini revival in the UK, mainly due to the fact that the filmmaking is more fumbled than some of the victims. Killer's Moon does have great trouble with whose been murdered and who hasn't, famously a main character disappears halfway through the film only to appear as a corpse in the final shot as if an afterthought. Yet interest in Killer's Moon isn't just for laughs but also genuine nostalgia, looking back from a time of the dearth of truly eccentric British films the era of Killer's Moon seems a long time ago. Killer's Moon remains as sleazy and British as a night time trip down Soho, the quintessential bottom half of a fleapit cinema double bill, remember `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'.

This is an interesting piece of sleaze from that morally upright island off the northwest coast of Europe. I first saw it on a double bill with "House on Straw Hill" and I have no idea why the latter got branded a "video nasty" in Britain but this one didn't. Three homicidal maniacs who are fed LSD and believe they're dreaming terrorize a broken-down bus full of schoolgirls in the Lake District. You might ask yourself several questions: Why would anyone feed homicidal maniacs LSD (not to mention dress them in bowler hats like the droogs in "A Clockwork Orange")? Why would LSD make someone think they're dreaming? (Do the lecherous sleazeballs who made this have no firsthand experience with drug abuse?) If the characters think they're dreaming, why do they talk to each other? Finally, and most importantly, why would being doped up on LSD make homicidal maniacs any more frightening than they already are?

Some people found the fact that the victims are schoolgirls quite offensive. Well, it would be if the buxom, overage East End strippers they cast in this movie, dressed in schoolgirl outfits, and handed out teddy bears to were remotely believable as schoolgirls. What is more offensive is the cavalier attitude the movie has toward rape. One girl tells another not to be upset because she was "only raped" by the maniacs (if she'd been murdered THEN she could complain). The movie shows such empathy for its characters that one major character simply disappears halfway through and her dead body shows up as an after-thought in the closing credits. And if this movie isn't enough of a geek show, there's a three-legged dog wandering around, and, oh never mind. I'm trying to find something good to say about this movie--well, if you fall asleep and dream (or you are given a strong dose of LSD) you can imagine that you're watching "Breakfast at Manchester Morgue" or one of the other good horror movies made in the Lake District.

As sleazy horrorsploitation ideas go, you can hardly imagine any better than "Inmates escape sanitorium. where they are undergoing 'LSD therapy,' and thus think they're dreaming everything when they attack a girls' choir and their minders whose bus breaks down in the English countryside."

The thing that is most impressive about "Killer's Moon," however, is that it's so ineptly made there is almost no lurid camp value--and, needless to say, no suspense or terror. The acting is highly variable, from competent under the circumstances to laughably bad. But no one is helped by the terrible, plodding dialogue--which, incredibly, author Fay Weldon (who contributed to the script because her brother was the director) later bragged about, feeling in retrospect it was a mistake to gift her excellent writing to such an otherwise poor film. Well, she certainly sank to the occasion, even if obviously her ego survived the experience. It's the crap dialogue that provides the rare unintentional laugh here.

The violence here is for the most part laughably mild (in fact mostly off-screen), the behaviors psychologically ridiculous, the continuity gaps mile-wide, and the pacing deadly. I really hoped for some guilty pleasure with this one, but it is just a slog.

"Quite possibly the sleaziest film ever made in Britain". These aren't my words but a quote from a certain I.Q. Hunter, who's a respectable author and acclaimed cult cinema expert. Mr. Hunter was a guest at the local film festival in my country and provided this film – as well as a few other flamboyant British horror outings – with an interesting foreword. This man surely knows what he talks about and I definitely enjoyed listening to the trivia items that he shared with the audience, but I'm really not sure if I agree with this review's opening statement. "Killer's Moon" is a sleazy piece of work, no argument there, but I still don't think it compares to – for example - "House of Whipcord", "Prey" or "Inseminoid". What struck me most about "Killer's Moon" is how much better and more significant it easily could have been… This film doesn't necessarily require a bigger budget, nor a more professional cast or even more action/atmosphere. It already has everything, only a slightly more skillful direction and a bit of coherence in the script would have been welcome. The ramshackle bus of a school of choir girls and their two uptight teachers breaks down in the middle of the godforsaken English countryside, and they are forced to spend the night in a castle-hotel that normally is closed for the season. Not a problem, you'd think, except for the fact that four escaped asylum patients are at large in the area. As a result of oddball drug-experiments, these four are high on LSD and under the impression they tripping around in a dream. They break into the hotel and joyously begin raping, murdering and philosophizing, whilst the shrinking group of girls seeks the help of two tough campers. It's a rather preposterous and laughable to assume that mental patients are fed LSD as treatment, let alone that they can freely run around without any kind of authorities searching for them. There are numerous of other improbabilities in the script, like characters suddenly vanishing and that sort of stuff, but I advise not to let them bother you too much. Furthermore "Killer's Moon" is stuffed with gratuitous nudity and "incorrect" misogynic dialogs ("you were only raped, as long as you don't tell anyone about it you'll be alright. You just pretend it never happened"), like a truly rancid product of the late 70's ought to be! Writer/director Alan Birkinshaw's decision to dress up the four lunatics and let them behave exactly like Alex DeLarge and his companions in "A Clockwork Orange" is either a funny homage or a shameless imitation, I don't know. My guess is that it was just a silly idea that popped up in his mind, like the heroic three-legged dog.

This can best be described as the British version of The Last House on the Left. It has a real sleazy feel as the victims are all virginal high school girls on the way to a choir competition.

Put into the mix a group of psychopathic criminals that just escaped custody. They are drugged and believe themselves to be innocent.

Naturally, the bus carrying the girls - did I mention virginal teens - breaks down right where the criminals are currently trampling the countryside. Oh no.

I would not imagine that many horror fans watch The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, but your partner may have talked you into watch Dancing With the Stars. One of those Housewives/Dancing Stars was Lisa Vanderpump. Back in her early days, when she was just 18, she had one of the killers vanderpumping her funbags. This was the highlight of the film.

Yes, there were more breasts and bush, but it was really brief. This was Jane Hayden's greatest film, but again, it was a brief exposure.

The film was more camp than horror. There was killing, but it was mostly off screen except for the strangling.

I doubt if any virginal teens were harmed in the making of this film.