La Lune de sang

"Bloody Moon" is a great slasher film from the master of exploitation Jesus Franco.The plot is obviously inspired by "Halloween" and "Friday the 13th".The acting is pretty average,but there is plenty of gore to satisfy fans of splatter.There is for example very bloody power saw decapitation plus some other killings which involve chainsaws,razorblades and knives.The music score is pretty appalling and the film's theme tune is incredibly annoying.Overall,the film is moderately entertaining,so if you're a Franco fan give this one a look. Here is the plot:"Bloody Moon" takes place in a Spanish language school,where pretty female students are murdered by an unidentified stalker in a variety of grisly ways.

I found this title as "Colegialas Violadas" (Violated School-girls); a title that is far from the movies' purpose. When I first watched this one I was very pleased mainly because I had fun. There are plenty of disturbing moments like the infamous saw decapitation.

The masked killer concept started two years before the movie when John Carpenter's "Halloween" stormed the genre.

The opening sequence gave me the creeps the first time and I think it's the most frightening moment in the movie.

There's plenty of gore but not in great quality. The make-up is very lame but you can't ask much from an 80's slasher. Even worse, I could only get a cut version.

The whole situation to undercover the "real" killer is pretty interesting for a slasher flick with no pretensions.

Watch it only if you're an avid slasher fan and you'll enjoy it, that's for sure.

7/10.

okay, so this isn't as good as most Italian Gialli, but to be fair, it is head and shoulders above 90% of American slashers of the early-mid 80's.

Jess Franco certainly delivers the goods with this one, with lots of bloody stabbings (including a girl stabbed in the back, the knife protruding through her nipple), strangulations, a hedge trimer attack, and an awesome band saw decapitation. the German title of this film is "die sage des todes" which translates into "the saw of death" so they must have been impressed too. it's not too original, the basic "girl stalked by a sex maniac" but, Franco filters the standard formula through his own twisted vision and throws in some incest to keep things lively. also, the film ends with a great twist,twist ending that wraps things up nicely, no sequal here! be on the look out for the Franco Cameo at the beginning of the film, he's the doctor.

Like most exploitation directors from the eighties, Jesus Franco had his own attempt at creating a ‘Halloween' for the once-bankable slasher market. Spanish-born Franco has helmed over a hundred and eighty movies, using up to sixty pseudonyms and he's still working today, even though he will soon reach his seventy fourth birthday! He is reputedly the sleaziest of all European filmmakers, with a (clearly unconfirmed) reputation for making up to three movies out of one production budget. I personally haven't seen many of his wayward creations, but I'm sure that I have an uncut copy of Faceless somewhere in my collection, which didn't impress me too much. To the best of my knowledge, Bloody Moon has yet to garner an unedited release in the United Kingdom, although there are plenty of anaemic copies floating around that leave out some fun gore. I really doubt it will remain restricted much longer, like many of the video nasties that were once deemed ‘offensive', the shocks have become somewhat thin over the years. I was lucky enough to pick up this uncensored print at a recent film fair, which was originally intended for release in Australia!

The psychotic family at the centre of this plot makes the Voorhees look like the Flintstones! There's Miguel, the severely disfigured brother with a temperamental temper. His sister Manuela isn't much of an improvement, and their Auntie – the contessa – gets a little hot under the collar too (quite literally)! It all kicks off when Miguel heads off to particularly ‘groovy' dance party to perve on some of the crumpet that's boogieing away to the ‘inspirational' music. Feeling a little left out just standing around watching, he swipes a Latin Casanova's Mickey Mouse mask and heads for the dance floor! (Cue a steady-cam shot through the eyeholes to show that Jesus' done his research!) There he meets a disco bunny that confuses him with her fancy man and after they cut a rug or two for a while, she decides that they should head for her apartment. His ploy seems to have worked, because once inside they begin tearing at each-other's clothes as the unsuspecting women entices him into the sack with lines like `I've been waiting so long' and `Hold me tighter… take me!' As the heat of passion rises between the twosome, off comes Miguel's mask revealing a rather tainted mush! Clearly shocked, the girl struggles off the hulking and clearly disappointed soon-to-become killer, sparking him to retaliate by stabbing her repeatedly with a large pair of scissors… Five years later Miguel is released from an asylum (keeping things in tradition, of course), although the doctor doesn't seem all that convinced that he's recovered, but frees him anyway. He heads back to a Spanish language school where (hey, what d'ya know) the students are all dumb, attractive teens drowning in make-up that seem to constantly talk about how their Latin lovers measure up between the sheets. Sounds like an execution-worthy slasher sin to me! Before long the plot narrows out our ‘surviving girl', obvious because she's the only one that doesn't slut it up as much as the others. Next up the unseen psycho (with a stocking over his head) begins to murder her buddies while at the same time terrorising her with somewhat leisurely threats that include: ‘ I'm gonna cut you in two… like a piece of wood… with a hacksaw (!)' Before long Angela is being constantly stalked by the wacko and it's our job to guess whom it is!

For a director with as many movies under his belt as Franco, he's managed to make this look like some amateur film-student helmed it on his lunch break. The camera-operator looks as if he's had ‘one too many' and the editor either suffered a temporary hands-only disability or he'd also been ‘out on the sherbets' with the cameraman. But just when you decide that you've written Bloody Moon off as a complete disaster, Franco springs back with a couple of plausible set pieces. The scene where the killer places all of Angela's friend's bodies around her chalet whilst he stalks in the shadows was superb, although one has to wonder how it was possible for him to get the corpses there in the first place. She'd spent the last half of the movie with the windows and doors tightly barricaded! But any credibility is desultory, mainly ruined by the endless jerky zoom shots or the comical dubbing that makes Godfrey Ho and Joseph Lai's Ninja films look like theatrical masterpieces.

There are long spaces when not a lot happens aside from watching the humorous females struggle to look convincing, and at times things feel like they're moving far too slowly. The only redemption is the murders that at least chuck in some imaginative gore. The renowned decapitation involving a girl unwittingly letting her own self be tied up before she looses her head over (or under) a circular saw is about the most fun of the lot. It's especially amusing because she thinks she's actually going to get drilled (if you know what I mean) and instead she gets sawed and totally screwed! The director really attempts to build the shock-factor when a curious child is methodically run down as the killer escapes in his Mercedes. Another girl is stabbed through the breast so that the blade pops through her nipple and one guy is attacked with a hedge-trimmer, which just about rounds off the best of the tacky effects. My favourite thing about Bloody Moon was the wonderfully cheesy disco-tunes that rock when the cast frequents the nightclubs. Listen out for ‘Shake your baby', which sounds like Rolf Harris has reinvented Presley's Blue Suede Shoes for the holiday resort generation! It's hilarious!

This is honestly pretty poor and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone that's not a true slasher collector. It's a twisted beast for sure, but hardly endearing. There are some laughs to be had at the lamely dubbed speech and the endless talk of sex, but if that's want you want then buy a German porno. Someone who can't handle trash cinema probably wouldn't let this get past the five-minute mark and admittedly even I found it hard to keep my interests raised! If you fancy some European slashings, then head over the Mediterranean to Roma where I'm sure you'll find something a little more competent! Put it this way one girl sums the movie up perfectly in her dialogue, `What you saw was not a murderer, but just a dummy!' Exactly

This mediocre slasher packs thrills , chiller , extreme horror ,tension and lots of blood and gore for the grisly killings . It's on the aesthetic and body count of a psychotronic slasher, as the pic was extremely prohibited in some countries , in fact it was considered to be a Video Nasty in United Kingdom . The loathing gore and guts are astonishingly shown as mutilated human limbs , beaheading , slashing in cold blood and using all kinds of cutting instruments to carry out the horrible massacres , such as chainsaws , long knifes , electric cutting machines, among others . It deals with Miguel (Christoph Moosbrugger) , a young man with a horribly disfigured face, who is released from a mental asylum into the care of his sister, Manuela (Nadja Gerganoff) . Along with their wheelchair bound aunt (Maria Rubio) , they operate a boarding school for young woman, called Europe's International Youth-Club Boarding School of Languages, on the Spanish resort of Costa Del Sol. There arrives the young Angela (Olivia Pascal), but things go wrong when at the language-school some girls are being surprisingly killed.

The film stars un unknown cast , exception for Olivia Pascal who played some softcore movies ; it displays thrills , chills , cardboard horror , and lots of blood and gore for nauseating execution . Eerie Euro-horror to want in on the action and with a big influence in the Italian giallo if you put it in the hands of Jess Franco , you end up with this extreme Bloody Moon (1981) . The grisly , disturbing murders are extremely scary and really disgusting with abundant stabbing shots including beheading , slitting and mutilation in which a mysterious murderous makes an authentic slaughter with gruesome and bloody executions . At the end takes place an exciting denouement detailing the persona who exects the scary murders while the victims are massacred at the hands of the sinister and mysterious series killer . The film takes accent as suspense as well as terror with creepy use of images-shock and botcher edition.

This is a delirious motion picture made in the early 1980's , financed in little budget by Wolf C. Hartwig (who produced Sam Peckinpah's Cross of Iron) with nice cinematography by Juan Soler , lousily directed by Jess Frank without originality and following the ordinary Slasher trappings , being a flick attuned to mainstream audiences at the time . A disconcerting horror movie with no much interest and regularly made by Jesús Franco , including a lot of goofs , flaws , gaps and failures . He often used a lot of pseudonyms , among the aliases he used, apart from the names Jess Franco or Franco Manera, were Jess Frank, Robert Zimmerman, Frank Hollman, Clifford Brown, David Khune , Toni Falt, James P. Johnson, Charlie Christian, David Tough , among others. In many of the more than 180 films he's directed he has also worked as composer, writer, cinematographer and editor. Jesús's influence has been notable all over Europe . Jess was a Stajanovist, restless writer, producer, director who played and realized over 200 pictures. His career spans over 50 years with a few successes and lots of flops, making all . From his huge body of work we can deduce that Jesús Franco is one of the most restless directors of Spanish cinema and often releasing several titles at the same time. Many of his films have had problems in getting released, and others have been made directly for video. More than once his staunchest supporters have found his "new" films to contain much footage from one or more of his older films. Jesús Franco is a survivor in a time when most of his colleagues tried to please the government administration. He broke up with all that and got the independence he was seeking and getting , at times great eye for composition. He was a hard-working filmmaker, directing a lot of ridiculous movies. However, making some acceptable films , such as : ¨We are 18 years old¨, ¨Labios Rojos¨, ¨The awful Dr Orloff¨, ¨The Bloody Judge¨ , ¨Miss Muerte¨, ¨Eugénie¨ , ¨Count Dracula¨, ¨99 women¨, ¨Death Whistles the Blues¨, ¨Rififi in the City¨,¨Justine¨, ¨Paroxismus, ¨The Blood of Fumanchu¨, ¨Faceless¨ and a few others. This ¨Bloody Moon¨is only for Jess Frank enthusiasts and followers of banned films labeled as Video Nasties , resulting to be a grand stab fest that still ends up being closer to a giallo than intended.