La lune en scorpion

A dangerous lunatic escapes from a hospital, killing a doctor and a salesman in the process. Worried about a potential scandal, the hospital hires private investigator Richard Vargas (Don Scribner, who looks like Christian Bale) to find the missing patient. The investigation leads to a yacht where the only passenger, a catatonic woman (Britt Ekland), stabs Vargas in the stomach.

A few days later, the woman, Linda -- now in hospital and a little more lucid -- explains to Dr. Khorda (Robert Quarry) the events leading up the disappearance of her fellow passengers: her newlywed husband Allen (John Phillip Law), his wartime buddies Burt (William Smith) and Mark (Louis Van Bergen), and their girlfriends Claire (Jillian Kesner) and Isabel (April Wayne).

When a film clearly isn't working, at what point do you call it a day, cut your losses, and shelve the whole thing? In the case of Moon In Scorpio, not soon enough. Not happy with their movie, the producers tried to salvage something from director Gray Gravers original cut by re-editing it, turning it from what was apparently originally intended to be a supernatural horror into a cheesy slasher. It didn't help: the film is still incredibly bad.

The direction is about what you might expect from a porn film-maker like Graver, but one would hope for more than porn-level acting from the cast: sadly, the usually reliable Smith is seriously off-form, and both Law and Ekland prove that it was looks and not talent that got them noticed in the first place. Kesner and Wayne were obviously hired for their bodies and a willingness to flash their boobs when asked.

Whoever re-edited this garbage had an unenviable task, but failed to rise to the occasion, the final film an incoherent mess that should have been consigned to the trash. Ekland provides a voiceover to try and help explain matters, but it doesn't help any: half the time, the actress is merely describing exactly what is happening on screen ("Alan tried to strangle me"... WE KNOW!).

Perhaps if the killings had been more creative and gorier, the film might have been bearable, but the deaths are unimaginative, repetitive, and not all that splattery (I've had bloodier paper cuts than some of them). The killer's spiky glove weapon with retractable barbs is certainly unique, but isn't put to good use.

1.5/10, rounded up to 2 for the gratuitous bare breasts, and the wholly unconvincing Vietnam war scenes -- dense jungle has never looked so much like the local park.

Well, the video box was nice. The color is primarily blue, a dusk or night scene of a ship with tattered sails, clouds suggesting the form of a skull, and the shadowy shape of a giant scorpion rippling in the water. The movie's title on the front and back covers and both spines is embossed. The ship on the front cover, and a detail of the scorpion on the back cover are similarly raised.

According to the director's website, Moon in Scorpio is a "supernatural thriller set on the high seas with a vampire and astrological plot involving several decadent characters was re-edited many times by the producers." The producers must have reedited it, because it was not supernatural at all, nor was there a vampire. The plot didn't seem astrological, though one of the characters says about four times that the "Moon is in Scorpio" which she explains as being a time of fear, retribution, etc.

Reediting might also be to blame for the movie's structure. It begins (and ends) with a shot of a ship bobbing with its sails down. From there, someone kills a doctor, and then kills someone in the hospital's parking garage, stealing his car. Then, the hospital hires someone to find the killer. He winds up on the ship where he gets killed by the only woman they find on board. The woman is hospitalized and she tells her story of how she came to be the only person left on the ship.

She and her husband are going on their honeymoon. They are joining two other couples on a ship. The three men had been in Vietnam together. There are some stock footage clips of Vietnam, and we also see them there. At one point, one of them seems to struggle with a gristly skeleton in water. Perhaps that was part of the supernatural plot that got dropped?

A man in the harbor gets killed by someone dressed in black, by an odd spiked weapon. Later, people on the ship get killed by an odd spiked weapon worn on a hand or by a spear-gun and pushed overboard. At no point do people know there is a killer on-board, until there is only the killer and the survivor left. Throughout this back-story, the survivor breaks in as a narrator, often repeating things we just saw and heard.

The ending is quite bad, as a hospital official ushers the survivor out, suggesting she might be able to get married again sometime to have the kids she wants. The ending might also have suffered as a result of reediting.

Not recommended, unless a director's cut comes out in which case this might deserve a second look, maybe.

Moon in scorpio is an 80s slasher about some people going on a honeymoon on a boat.

It has decent acting. There's one actress i've seen in other movies her name is Britt Ekland known from the wicker man, one of the James Bond movies and the hills have eyes, one of my personal favourite horror movies.

The characters are wierd and bad, it almost doesn't seem like they've ever met before.

In the first fourty minutes of the movie almost nothing happens. I think they chould have done something more those foury minutes.

The mystery is really easy to solve and you probably won't be suprised at all who's killing people.

Some of the scenes in the movie should have been cut and maby it whould be better.

Overall Moon in scorpio deserves a 3,4 out of 10 i whould maby rate it a little bit higher, but that's probably because i love bad movies. So i enjoyed it even with all the flawes in it, i can't really say that i recommend it, but if you are one of those people like me who loves wierd slashers i recommend you should watch it.

Despite numerous bad reviews I still for some reason decided to watch 'Moon in Scorpio'. I should have listened to those reviews...

'Moon in Scorpio' is another movie where I didn't care one bit about any of the characters. It was also hard to tell who the protagonist or antagonist is. The incoherent script is really bad, the dialogue is bad, and it was very badly acted, as well.

'Moon in Scorpio' is all over the place with too much going on that wasn't interesting at all. In fact, the film was slow and boring. The events of the fateful nights aboard a yacht is revealed through retellings of Linda (Britt Ekland), who is in police custody. Ekland was unconvincing and I couldn't really make out whether she was making up a story, or actually telling the truth. Truth is, I couldn't care less. This was a complete waste of time and a film I'd like to forget, but probably will remember for how bad it is. It also has an abrupt ending without motivation for what happened. Ugh...!

Would I watch it again? No.

My review was written in January 1988 after watching the movie on TWE video cassette.

"Moon in Scorpio" is a ridiculous attempt at a thriller, combining three sets of separate footage (plus stock footage) into an indigestible whole. TWE quietly released the pic to video stores last year.

Original intent undoubtedly was to fashion yet another unwanted film about a Vietnam vet suffering oodles of angst over his war guilt. Accompanied by horrendously phony reenactment footage of war atrocities in a California forest area plus poor stock footage, John Phillip Law is the sufferer.

Gary Graver, who has several differnet careers as cinematographer, director and Adult filmmaker, is credited with the principal footage and it is very dreary. Perhaps he was aiming at his late mentor Orson Welles' "Lady from Shanghai" or unfinished "The Deep" in the central motif of a group of scabrous individuals traped on a yacht together, as part of a wedding gift to Law and his bride Britt Ekland.

In any event, Fred Olen Ray and finally Alan Amiel were brought in to try and save the picture. Result is a lot of extraneous footage, some of it lamely building a cover story involving an escaped lunatic who slashes various people to death including most of the cast of Graver's film; round-table discussions by shrink Robert Quarry (playing Dr. Horda, his character name from Ray Danton's 1972 film "The Deathmaster") and his associates James Booth and Donna Kei Ben; or idiotic voice-over by Ekland matched with additional footage of her interviewed by Quarry. End result is risible, with exposition spoon fed and reinforced repetitiously to the viewer, who is assumed to be brain-dead.

Technical credits are poor, and the cast is awful, particularly hammy Ekland, and, in undoubtedly his worst performance, William Smith. Graver's starlet (from his "Party Camp" pic) April Wayne is embarrassing.