Moonchild

A young man (The Moon Child) is reincarnated every 25 years, with each life ending in a stay at a mission hotel.

There he meets characters from his first life, all of whom are doomed to relive their roles in his life (and death) as well.

The cycle will end when his spirit reaches a state of perfection by purging its negative (violent) impulses.

Actor John Carradine is The Walker of The World, an otherworldly poet who is there to observe, and record for posterity, the proceedings.

Supposedly this was shot as a student film. I find that hard to believe considering the impressive cast. This film is not going to wow you, but it sure does deserve a better than 2.0 rating that it currently has here on IMDb. And certainly deserves to re-discovered for a cult following.

It's well filmed and very strange in a compelling sort of way. It's shocking that the director never worked again! Wish there was more info on him somewhere. He was talented.

Even if this movie wasn't a hit, the directing alone -- as a student film -- should have gotten him offers. Hell, David Lunch went on to make a movies after that Eraserhead which put me to sleep!

It's so well filmed (even if you can see the boom mike shadow in a scene or two). The framing is spot on and the color is superb.

It's a weird surreal trippy film. Give it a chance.

'Moonchild' is an odd little movie. Originally made as a student film, it would have been better if went for about an hour. As it is it gets a bit too dull and repetitive for my liking. Unknown Mark Travis plays a young art student who wanders in a strange and mysterious hotel where he meets a bunch of oddballs. He doesn't know it but he is stuck in a kind of spiritual limbo and the eccentric figures he interacts with may determine his ultimate fate. The only real reason to watch this silly and generally boring movie is because the cast includes horror legend John Carradine, star of countless movies, Victor Buono ('Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?') and William Challee ('Five Easy Pieces'). Apart from that, there's very little to recommend it. Writer/director Allen Gadney never made another movie after this and after you've watched it you won't wonder why.

Shot in 1971 as a student film under the title FULL MOON and given a brief theatrical release as THE MOON CHILD by Filmakers Limited in 1974, Alan Gadney's sole directorial effort tells the story of a student (Mark Travis) whose pursuit of artistic perfection leads him to a desert mission-cum-hotel where a wandering `keeper of words' (John Carradine) introduces him to a small society of odd personalities – the pious Maitre D' (Victor Buono), the granite-faced Manager (BULLET's Pat Renella), a kindly old man (William Challee, from BILLY THE KID MEETS DRACULA) and his beautiful daughter (THE SWIMMER's Janet Landgard). Before the youth has passed his first night under their roof, his wildly combative hosts set themselves in fervid competition for receipt of his immortal soul.

As far as overeager allegories go, THE MOON CHILD isn't bad and predates Stanley Kubrick's somewhat similar THE SHINING by nearly a decade (it also can be said to anticipate other full circle thrillers as ANGEL HEART and THE SIXTH SENSE, albeit taking a less horrific tack in favor of New Age notions of circularity and karma filtered through the visions of Jean Genet, Samuel Beckett and Luis Bunuel). Long neglected, and too often written off as a bad horror movie (a classification it does not deserve), THE MOON CHILD is, if not entirely persuasive, at least a refreshing reminder of a time when film students sought to use the medium for a purpose higher than attention-getting.

After opening with the most jaw-droppingly godawful theme song ever conceived: "Moonchild! Moooonchild! Moo-ooo-ooon-chiiillld!", MOONCHILD begins.

A student (Mark Travis) is taken on a strange journey by a man called Mr. Walker (John Carradine). A journey filled with nonsense and pseudo-symbolic claptrap. This includes Victor Buona hamming it up so much that it fries the brain! He showed far more subtlety as King Tut on TV's BATMAN!

MOONCHILD can't simply be excused or justified by saying "It was a 1970's thing". No, this was mind-numbing bilge upon release, and is about as entertaining as a nail through the foot!

Watching it now makes one long for drugs, any drugs, especially fatal ones!

BRAVO FOR: The "hog's head" scene, which manages to be both idiotic and gross!

This could be called an "art film", in much the same way that a lead pipe to the head can be called a "cure for migraine".

Just plain terrible...

I sat through this preponderant ayahuasca head-trip twice, and I'm still rather unresolved with my feelings about it. The story, while not at all uninteresting, is extremely vague(and probably deliberately so). As I see it, a deceased killer's soul is forever damned to seek lodging in an incommunicado mission-style villa, tenanted by an odd assemblage of necromantic characters. It's a bizarre Hell in which he's forever bound to perpetually relive one brief sequence from his mortal existence.

I personally found the quizzical exposition of MOONCHILD intriguing, though these fustian art-house ambitions result in a drastically muddled narrative and exegesis. The film is further injured by lengthy torpid stretches, and a passively limned central character who's overshadowed effortlessly by the veteran support players.

I appreciate the creative vitality which fuels experimental cinema, and I did find a unique polestar to this project. One chief debilitation, however, is the dizzyingly inchoate illustration of an umbilical concept that's already quite abstract. This eccentric stagecrafting gives rise to a vaporous psychedelic quality which might appeal to the cannabis clique...a rank-and-file viewership, on the other hand, will likely be left in a fog.

5.5/10