"Miguel, don't look at me that way. I'm your sister. Go back to the dance."
There, watching a young couple and deciding he wouldn't mind a piece of that action, Miguel dons a Mickey Mouse mask to hide his disfigured features and pass as the girl's boyfriend. It works, up to a point. As his advances get too, well, advanced the girl realises something is up and unmasks her boyfriend. Miguel goes psycho and stabs her to death with a nearby pair of scissors…
Five years later and Miguel's sister Manuela arrives at the clinic to return her brother to normal society. The doctor believes the young man is more or less cured, but warns that he should not be subjected to further trauma.
Needless to say, Miguel's arrival in town – well, a resort that seems to consist of the "International youth club boarding school of languages" and the "disco club", both in the same stick on metal letters – coincides with a wave of slayings.
First someone murders the wheelchair-bound Countessa. Maybe it's Manuela, displeased that the old woman disinherited her in favour of her brother? Or perhaps Miguel got wind that he would be the one to inherit? Or maybe it's Alvaro, whose language school – peopled by young attractive women, naturally – is in dire need of a cash injection…
Then someone starts work on the students at the school. Angela finds Inga's body with a knife through her breast, but the evidence vanishes before she can show it to anyone else. Maybe Inga did just go on the boat trip opines Antonio, the resident lady-killer? But, if so, why would Angela hear a threatening message on her language tape and then narrowly avoid being killed by a falling boulder the next day…
With the popularity of the slasher film in the wake of Halloween and Friday the 13th and – more importantly, one suspects, its cheapness to make – the question was perhaps not so much whether Jesus Franco would make one as what he would make of it.
In the event, the German financed Bloody Moon , producer under the aegis of Wolfgang C. Hartwig of Schülmadchen Report infamy, emerges as a relatively impersonal and routine work in which the ideal typical requirements of the slasher and its gialli parent – multiple murder suspects, subjective killer's eye view camerawork, bloody deaths with a plethora of common (and) or garden implements, 'misogynistic' women in peril and 'progressive' final girl scenarios etc – have combined to eliminate most of Franco's more idiosyncratic tendencies.
While more than capable of making genuine art with lesser means – cf. Doriana Grey – or of making (slightly) bigger-budget conventional well made films that provide an avenue for the exploraion of his personal interests – cf. Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun or Justine – here Franco seems to have been positioned between the two by his backers.
Thus for instance, the zoom is used for economy but without a sense of formal exploration. The effects work, meanwhile – excepting an inexcusable cannibal film style scene where a real life snake has its head snipped off – looks intended to be convincing but generally isn't, thereby failing as both 'red' and 'blood' for both the Godardians and gorehounds in the audience. And, although Franco cameos as the clinic doctor, his performance is uninvolved, especially compared to the likes of Exorcism .
Yet, Bloody Moon film remains watchable, trashy fun nonetheless, thanks to the tastelessness of the styles on display; Gerhard Heinz's dire music ("Shake your Baby, Shake Shake" whatever that means) and the enthusiasm with which the director tackles the centrepiece circular saw decapitation and chainsaw attack scenes.
Plus, any film that has the potential to annoy the "house of the mouse" ® for its inappropriate use of their prime property has to get the thumbs up in my book…
At the same time, one's evaluation of Bloody Moon must remain somewhat tentative. Shock's Region 2 DVD looks to present the film more or less in its integral form, without any obvious omissions or alterations to its content. But the full frame 4:3 presentation – almost certainly not the OAR – and adequate though scarcely reference quality transfer mean that there remains the possibility of a unacknowledged classic here, awaiting re-evalution in the same manner as the VIP collection discs have done for the director's Swiss period work. But one doubts it.
The package also includes trailers for the film and Linda and a four page booklet.
Copyright © K H Brown 2002-2005
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