Must a film be coherent? Eurohorror has so much to teach us.
The American slasher genre filtered through Spanish director Jess Franco in gun-for-hire mode. Accentuated by watching the English dub where the voiceover artists are rushing through dialogue at a speedy clip, another layer to what is already alien onscreen behaviour. A group of blondes looking to score, all obsessed with one stud, while they’re staying at a Spanish-language school. The film is obviously shot at a mid-tier resort with the amount of scenes focused around the centrepiece public pool, which was one of my favourite recurring locations, where students walk to and hang out at the end of every class.
In Bloody Moon (1981), you’ve got the opening sequence, where a scarred loner at a high school party goes sex crazy and stabs a blonde to death. And by the way, this scar that covers one side of his face looks like a caked mud-pack. After five years in a mental asylum, this killer gets released to his sister – who he’s in love with – and their wheelchair bound grandmother who owns the school. But there’s lots of red herrings, including a simple handyman who’s always laughing, a cool guy Spanish teacher who always stands around watching from the periphery, and our final girl, the only one suspicious about the sinister atmosphere. Murdered people disappear, no one believes her, and eventually, there’ll be a gnarly set piece with some cheap and bloody prosthetics where someone gets stabbed or beheaded.
What I liked about Bloody Moon was the atmosphere and what all the red herrings add to the movie, Franco just throwing images in there that have no payoff, but help to create a knock-off Shining/Suspiria weirdness. My favourite being the sister seen naked at a window, caught in some hypnotic state by the sight of the full moon in the dark sky. Moonbathing possession. Coupled with Gerard Heinz’s throbbing score with eerie flourishes, which casts a spell, alternating with more campy, absurd moments backed by Eurodisco tunes like ‘Holiday Feeling.’
Disposable trash but trace elements of curious and surreal flashes, sitting alongside base pleasures of body parts – exposed or severed – and blood. Streamed on Tubi (US). Recommended.
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