Case of the Full Moon Murders

This movie stayed with me because it was the first porn movie I saw--very much by accident, as it was apparently released in both a hardcore and softcore version, and the theater I saw it in put it on a bill with a terrible R-rated British sex comedy called "Not Now Darling," clearly unaware that they had been shipped the hardcore version by (I'm assuming) mistake. I wonder if before the week was out someone ratted out the movie's "adult" nature to the management. I sure didn't, although at age 15 I did feel like I was probably committing a crime just sitting there.

Anyway, my memory of it was that it was deliberately cheesy and silly and kind of likable, with the explicit parts not very potent (ahem) due to the general air of spoofy nonsense that surrounds them. And that's exactly what it turns out to be like all these years later. The hardcore footage has supposedly long since been lost--Something Weird's release is of the softcore-only version. But beyond being shorter, the effect is pretty much what I remember seeing circa 1977. (Who knows why this 1973 film was playing a midwestern multiplex four years later--but then "Not Now Darling" had also taken that long to get there.) There's nudity, but the sex scenes are all jokey, and sometimes in sped-up motion for slapstick effect.

The satire of "Dragnet" with two poker-faced police detectives investigating "full moon murders" by fatal B.J. (needless to say, this turns out to be due to a female "vampire" thirsty for something other than blood) is heavy on groan-worthy double entendres. Yet everyone here works in a deadpan mode, as opposed to the sometimes labored, juvenile, yuck-yuck cartoonishness that 70s porn flicks trying to "funny" often resorted to. You get the feeling that everyone here was actually having fun, and that the two party scenes (on a yacht, and at a house with a pool) were full of the filmmakers' actual friends.

Further on the plus side, there's some pretty groovy music soundtracked that's above-average for this kind of joint at the time. The women are pretty, Harry Reems is amusing as usual in a sort of running cameo (with guest-star billing), and the whole thing is over before you know it. It's trivial as hell, of course, but it's not boring, sleazy, depressing, downright amateurish or a lot of the other things that similar films from the period often are. (This is presumably because, as others have noted, several participants had already made "legit" movies like "Last House on the Left," notably co-director Sean S. Cunningham of the later "Friday the 13th" and my favorite 80s grade-B teen comedy, "Spring Break.") It's the kind of movie that makes being smack in the middle of the Sexual Revolution in the Me Decade--not something that was conspicuously going on in my small town then, mind you--look really fun, which no doubt it was.

Long before "Friday The 13TH", Sean Cunningham made this little beauty. It's actually the best movie he's ever made!

The story goes like this. A young girl realises she needs nourishment in the form of blood, and what better way to get it than through felatio!!!

So she breaks into people's houses during the night and does the dirty with the sleeping male occupants. The police (very akin to the Keystone Cops/Dragnet) are baffled by these dead males with massive erections and grins on their faces....

I dont really want to give to much more away, but I will say this... SEE IT! It is genuinely a hilarious movie, especially Harry Reems running around with his penis spray painted silver!

On a final note, take no notice of the supposed X rated version.

It does not exist!!!

I first saw this movie in the mid-1970's at the local drive-in. It was very popular in Australia both in mainstream movie theatres and then at drive-in theatres (whatever happened to them?).

It's now out on DVD.

The nudity and sex are mild by today's standards. The "Dragnet" style dialogue is amusing and effective.

Not a classic but worth watching.

Sean S. Cunningham's sexploitation comedy Case of the Full Moon Murders (AKA The Case of the Smiling Stiffs) originally existed in both soft-core and hardcore version, but the XXX cut has been lost in the mists of time. At least a more explicit version would serve a purpose.

The soft-core cut is pointless-terrible in almost every department, failing to excite, amuse, scare or entertain in any way. A pathetic parody of TV show Dragnet, the film sees two hard-boiled detectives, Joe (Fred J. Lincoln) and Frank (Ron Millkie), investigating several murders, the male victims having been left with a smile and a hard-on. The killer is Emma (Sheila Stuart), a vampire who sucks the life out of her prey, but not from their neck.

Case of the Full Moon Murders is from the same makers as gritty shocker The Last House on the Left, but with cheap production values, terrible acting, diabolical schoolboy humour, and not-in-the-leat-bit-arousing sex scenes, it makes that film look positively polished by comparison. If you thought that the comedy cops in Last House were bad, wait till you see this film's lawmen, whose deadpan delivery of their supposedly funny lines will leave you more stony-faced than Joe and Frank themselves.

The dreadful plot serves to link several saucy scenes, the naughtiness including a couple having some role-play fun, a swinging party on a yacht, a sped-up game of strip poker that turns into naked leap frog, and a pool party (complete with groovy '70s rock band) that ends with newspaper reporter Silverman (porn legend Harry Reems) chasing Emma, the man holding his giant silver(!) schlong in his hand.

Clearly in it for the money, Cunningham went on to make the highly influential and incredibly profitable slasher Friday the 13th, leaving the smut to those who know what they are doing.

I've been wanting to see this for some time now because it is the X-rated movie Sean "Friday the 13th" Cunningham, future director Steve Miner, and an uncredited Wes Craven made right after "Last House on the Left". Supposedly, this was once a full-blown (pardon the pun there) hardcore feature, but the only existing version is a nudie/softcore one that only comes anywhere near hardcore sex in one scene near the end where Harry Reems chases the female vampire villainess around naked and tries to "stake" her with his giant, but probably fake, painted erection.

The plot involves a number of males that are found dead with big smiles on their faces (thus the alternate title "Case of the Smiling Stiffs"). The responsible party is a female vampire who does all her sucking below the belt. This same idea was handled somewhat better and certainly more seriously by Jesus Franco in "Female Vampire", and the death-by-sex angle was also used in the exploitation classic "Invasion of the Bee Girls"and the superior XXX "Jaws" parody "Gums". This movie is rarely funny, but it's not without its charms as a very low-rent, Miami-lensed "Dragnet" parody.

Interestingly, the two most recognizable 70's porn actors here are both males. Harry Reems plays a horny reporter (who has all his sex scenes off-screen), and Fred Lincoln (who had a "straight" role as one of the creeps in "Last House on the Left") plays one of the investigating officers and provides the "Joe Friday" narration. The two female roommates (Sheila Stuart, Cathy Walker ) who play the main suspects are both attractive, but had no subsequent porn (or legitimate) careers to my knowledge. There is one FUTURE porn starlet who has a cameo role here (and if she had an explicit part in the original XXX version that might explain its MIA status). I'm sure I'm in a minority, but I actually prefer 70's porn flicks WITHOUT the generally unappetizing hardcore porn scenes, so I kinda liked this.