Killer's Moon

This movie does what is currently the norm in slasher/horror films of current day. It promises a gutter trash plot and delivers none of it.

Four psychos, or pouncy overacting stage actors, I'm not sure which, escape from a mental hospital and wreck havoc on the land. Convienently, A bus load of nubile teenage girls is passing through the area and not surprisingly the bus breaks down. Now, The fun begins, right? Sorry, Not in this movie. The loonies, who are high on experimental LSD treatment, tend to annoy the girls more than terrorize them. There are a few nude scenes by the various actresses but they seem more thrown in as an afterthought, or a way to convince somebody to see this movie because the plot or acting surely won't do it. Basically, A bad movie with bad special effects, bad lighting, and bad acting. Case in point, One of the girls, in her nightgown of course, flees from her attacker and runs all the way to the lake, where she gets the back of her nightgown caught on a nail and the nightgown rips down the front in a perfect tear! Explain that one if you can.

Four criminal psychopaths undergoing LSD therapy (!) that escaped from a lunatic asylum. A group of stranded schoolgirls lodged in a mansion/castle. The four psychos will make their way to the girls through a string of murders. When they meet the girls, there will be a massacre - rape and murder.

"Killer's Moon", story wise, is the exploitation buff's dream, but there's no real nudity (just some bits of flesh), sex is more suggested than shown, and there's violence (not very explicit) but no gore. But this isn't really important because the story is violent and sleazy.

"Killer's Moon" may not be a great film but I've quite enjoyed it - besides having a good story, it's ironic, involuntarily funny and bizarre (suffice it to mention the three-legged dog!).

Recommended for those who love the 70s exploitation films.

"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.

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.

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.