Bloody Moon

For those who are less familiar with Jesus Franco, allow me to elaborate. Jesus Franco is considered one of the most prolific directors in history, with more than 200 films under his belt. Some even call him the Spanish equivalent of Roger Corman. When it comes to Jesus Franco, his films (especially for me) are either hit or miss and his fans are often divided. Bloody Moon is no exception, fans of Franco are often divided as to whether the film is one of his best or one of his worst. Personally, I'm not really a huge fan of Franco's work. I personally prefer 1987's Faceless, 1970's Count Dracula, and 1973's The Demons, over most of his other work. I personally consider Bloody Moon to be one of his better efforts as well. It's almost his version of 1982's Pieces, slightly. That being said there's a complete lack in Spanish slasher films, which is kind of a shame. Especially since Spanish horror films often have a lot of style. Alright, so onto my review of 1981's Bloody Moon.PLOT: Having murdered a girl a few years prior, a disfigured man named Miguel is released from an institution and into the care of his sister. Together they live with their aunt (if memory serves right), although the estate is located on the grounds of a university or college. My memory's a bit shoddy, but I know it's a school and I believe the aunt works there. Anyway gruesome murders begin to occur around the area.REVIEW: The aura I had felt while watching Bloody Moon, is that Franco was inspired by both Italian giallo and American slasher films. Although Bloody Moon was mainly intended for the German demographic. Bloody Moon felt like a "best of" movie, in terms of what it borrows from other similar films. Especially when it comes to some of its plot elements. However, I can't really go into detail because I don't want to spoil anything. While the film retreads familiar territory, it does it in such a bizarre way. A lot of the characters are odd and even some of the dialogue, especially when it comes to the dubbed track. However, the film feels fresh and at least has a lot of energy to it. In fact the film goes by at a pretty brisk pace. There's almost never a dull moment. The film's characters are a little rough around the edges and the acting is too at times. However the film's interesting enough to hold attention to it. This being a Jesus Franco film, there's a decent helping of violence, especially in the gore department. Other Franco fans may be disappointed in that there's not a whole lot of "skin," but the film's entertaining enough as it is. Bloody Moon also actually musters up quite a bit of atmosphere as well though and even builds some mood. Franco displays some nice visual style here as well. The film's score is okay, it's not very memorable unfortunately. Although the film's main theme is pretty good, even borderline creepy to an extent. All in all, Bloody Moon is a pretty great genre effort and it has some decent twists throughout it. Jesus Franco fans may want to check it out as well as slasher or giallo fans. It'd certainly make a great double feature with 1982's Pieces. Newcomers to Franco may want to start here as Bloody Moon is more mainstream than some of his other films. Newcomers to Spanish horror, may want to start with a Paul Naschy film or something similar like The Blood Spattered Bride. That being said, Bloody Moon is pretty great, I love it. The dvd for it is courtesy of Severin Films, who did a fine job restoring the film's print and who have given it a pretty decent release.DISC CONTENT:Main FeatureJesus Franco InterviewTheatrical TrailerRATINGS: Bloody Moon-3.2/5 Stars, DVD-3/5 Stars

The only reason why I purchased a copy this movie is because there were clips of it and "Blood and Black Lace" by Mario Bava in the beginning titles for Matador, the only movie by Pedro Almodovar I like. The character played by Paco Rabal in "Tie me up, tie me down" also feels to me like a homage to Jess Franco. I figured there had to be something special about this particular movie if someone so highly regarded by scholars and people with superior intelligence would quote from it, right? So far, I couldn't see why he had such a big fan base. With the exception of "Virgin among the living dead" (which had a surreal quality to it), most of the movies I'd seen by him so far where the only unforgivable thing in my book : unbelievably boring! This is actually a lot of fun to watch and, dare I say, even had some flair to it! First of all, he was ordered to reenact the 50 "highlights" of the incipient "slasher" genre. He probably didn't quite hit the mark, but the references to Halloween (I and II for that matter) and Friday the 13th are there but, most of all, blend pretty well in a whole where the sanity of the required "final girl" is played with in such a way that I found myself asking if the whole thing was, indeed, her delusions. The dilemma is resolved in pure Mario Bava's style so, I appreciate Franco knowledge of where to look for such references and, given the accomplishment of this "for hire" task, a good horror director as such. The POV stalking scenes and the killings are original and the tension is kept steadily throughout. My only ifs would be that I found the sex-driven female "slasher meat" a little bit overdone (even though, considering this is Franco, there's relatively few nudes) and the annoying bald stalker, who I thought was unnecessary since there was the deformed guy already doing exactly that. The DVD, as usual with Severin, looks just almost as beautiful as a blu-ray print. There's an interview with Franco, in which he tells how he was promised Pink Floyd for the soundtrack, among other things. Even though he seems to know a good from a bad horror film, he stroke me as a pretty typical European "b grade" director (as he describes himself) in that, when telling his story, he's the hero and everybody else is the villain. The disco- driven soundtrack and incidental music where not that bad, if not even remotely comparable with Harry Manfredini or John Carpenter and, much much much less, Pink Floyd (even though the "main theme" does "rip- off" the instrumental section of Comfortably numb). To me, if Franco ever made anything right, despite what he says (because, I suspect, he didn't make all the creative choices in this case), this is probably it. I was actually surprised this was the same guy as the responsible for Killer Barbys or Snakewoman. A much better film than Pieces by Juan Piquer Simón, which came out at around the same time, rips off The House that Screamed by Narciso Ibáñez Serrador, and seems to be its "auteur's" masterpiece...

This is a slasher flick that takes far too much time getting down to the business at hand..........wholesale slaughter.The story begins with a prologue featuring the stabbing of a girl by a disfigured man. He hacks her up with a pair of scissors and before you can say whoops, it's off to the loony bin for him, for a mere five years, then he's released into the care of a sister he's had unsisterly relations with in their sordid youth. She takes him to the most logical place to recoup, a boarding school for young women!!! This killer quickly forms an unnatural interest in one of the women (Olivia Pascal as Angela). He spies, stalks, and sneaks around her, gawking in a manner most foul. Finally, a murder is committed on campus, in Angela's bungalow. From that point on, she becomes the girl who cried MURDER!!! She boo-hoos to anyone who'll listen, a girl has been killed. But where's the body? Where's the blood? Is someone trying to gaslight her? As more girls go missing and still no one seems overly concerned, will Angela ever figure out that she might be talking to the wrong people?The deaths range from the expected/typical to inspired and grotesque. This film not only dares to kill a child, a (real) snake loses its head during a pivotal scene. Did PETA know about this? Is there a statute of limitations on snake killing?The acting is marginal, the dubbing is hilariously dreadful, the dialog is ridiculous, the situations/plot is hopelesslylimited.......... It has been done before, but definitely not like this. I'm still trying to decide if that is a good thing or not. (It most certainly makes this the guiltiest of guilty pleasures.)I have to say I love the audacity involved.

Severin have done an amazing job with this blu ray transfer. In fact, it's hard to believe it's the same film! Aside from some minor print damage in places, it pretty much looks like a new film. The original artwork on the cover is a nice bonus too. The film itself is open to opinion of course, although its fair to say that you'd really have to be a fan of trashy 1980's Euro-cinema to enjoy it. Personally, I don't think it's as bad as some reviews suggest. It certainly is slow for the most part, but delivers on the gore later on. The circular saw scene is a real show stopper despite the low budget fx. Its certainly not short on beautiful women either! Overall, so long as you accept that's it a million miles from Hollywood, it's well worth a spin for under a tenner.

When Bloody Moon decides to get past its difficult first half then this isn't such a terrible slasher movie at all. Plot concerns a group of girls in an international language school who are getting bumped off one by one by a mysterious killer. The plot of course sounds very familar, and if you don't like slashers Bloody Moon will do nothing for you.First up this is directed by Jess Franco so just to be sure you are watching a dubbed foreign movie and it's been badly dubbed at that. So let's kick off with the negative things about the movie. First up, OK the movie is called Bloody Moon but did we need to see the moon in several different shots? We got the idea after the first two. Other problem is the lagging scenes that go nowhere, this is almost fatal. The first language lesson, goes nowhere, the tennis match goes nowhere, the scene where the girl checks out her apartment, goes nowhere. If the dialogue had been good maybe these scenes could have worked, but the script is very average. The editing of the movie is quite poor in places too. There's also this constant continuation of not believeing our main character when she says that she has witnessed someone die. Oh you must be tired, it must be the book you just read.... yawn.OK onto the good stuff. The second half of the movie thankfully picks up story wise and there are some great death scenes. Let's be honest anyone viewing/ buying this movie is looking at the front cover and thinking gore. And it's here. A stabbed breast, decapitation, and so on. Sure some of it looks too fake, but hey ho, it's still pretty violent stuff. Fans of horror will like the fact that Bloody Moon does deliver on the gore and violence given that many movies which were originally banned as part of the video nasty list don't live up to expectations in this day and age.Bloody Moon is uncut and is a good picture, there is an 18 min interview with Franco included.

A disfigured young man brutally kills a woman and is sent to a psychiatric hospital, 5 years later he and his sister go to stay with their aunt at a language school where a series of violent murders start but who is the killer.Jess Franco tackles the slasher genre here in a very untypical film from him. First off the story and a couple of the characters are fairly decent, the brother and sister who are having an incestuous relationship do start off well with some mystery surrounding them, however as the film progresses it is kind of thrown away into a series of clichés with little screen time. Unusually for a Franco film the story is OK as it holds up pretty well throughout unlike a lot of his other efforts, also the Franco zoom is almost completely missing here thankfully. That's where the better points end though, the dialogue is ridiculous (phony Spanish lover), some of the performances do stretch the imagination a little too far and some of the effects are laughable (the bolder scene for instance). Although the story is OK, for large parts the movie is mind numbingly boring, the mystery element doesn't hold well either the killer and red herrings are fairly obvious from quite early on. The violence can be quite strong and bloody at times which must have helped with it's inclusion on the video nasties list, although the famous saw sequence is ridiculously fake and maybe the weakest gore scene in the film.Not a great film by any means but certainly watchable, and in my experience of Jess Franco films this is one of his best that I've seen.

Someone is killing young women at a Spanish holiday resort. Virtually everyone is a suspect, but chief among them is a recently released deformed killer, who's in an incestuous relationship with his sister, for that matter it could be his sister or the child like resort handyman, the handsome Spanish teacher, a local boy all the girls have a crush on or even the final girl herself.Despite being pretty incoherent and featuring many random elements, such as a small boy trying to sell holiday souvenirs in the middle of the night, Bloody Moon is vastly enjoyable trash of the highest order. It's not as deliriously over the top as Pieces, but there are some fairly nifty kills, a healthy dose of sleaze, some good old disco dancing and even the occasional flash of real style. The Severin disc is uncut, has a crisp picture quality and is region (0). There are no language options. The extras are the original theatrical trailer and an interview with Jess Franco.The Franco Moon interview is almost worth the purchase price alone. The irascible auteur is a hoot, whether fiddling with his cigarettes, swearing about the film's humourless German producers and the lack of his promised Pink Floyd soundtrack or just fidgeting in his chair.I recommend Bloody Moon to collectors of the original video nasties, Jess Franco fans and slasher lovers.

It is not as stated on item descriptions either Spanish or German audio but only English mono with any kind of subtitles. I attach picture for accurate information. Amazon please take care with this in order your customers buy with confidence. Thanks...