Bloody Moon (1981)

Titles: The Bloody Moon Murders (German: Die Säge des Todes, lit. "The Saw of Death")

Release Date: March 27th, 1981

Tagline: ???

Bloody Moon (1981) is a German slasher film.

Plot
Miguel, a young man with a horribly disfigured face, attempts to trick a girl into sex by pretending to be someone else. When this fails he brutally hacks up the young woman with a pair of scissors. After the crimes, Miguel is institutionalized at a mental asylum for five years.

When his sentence is finished, he is released into the care of his sister, Manuela. Along with their invalid Aunt, his incestuous sister Manuela operates a boarding school for young women, called Europe's International Youth-Club Boarding School of Languages, on the Spanish resort of Costa Del Sol.

Miguel is intrigued by Angela, a long-haired brunette, whom he first saw on the train ride from the sanitarium. The creepy Miguel follows her around.

Miguel meets with Manuela to request that they resume their incestuous relationship. She reminds him that it was this relationship that made him emotionally unstable five years earlier. She says they cannot be a couple because nobody understands them: "Only if we could get rid of everyone, then things could go back to the way they were."

Later, Angela's friends are killed one by one. One, while topless, is skewered from behind by a 12-inch knife that exits her right nipple. Another is coerced by a romantic and masked Spaniard who insists on tying her up in an abandoned lumber mill (which according to her is "kinky,") and is decapitated with a large power saw, an effect complete with ample squirting blood from her neck. A young boy is run over midsection by a Mercedes. Another friend is strangled by smoldering fireplace tongs. There is also the real decapitation of a snake. When the girls start to turn up missing, nobody believes Angela that there's a killer on the loose. She had seen the corpse of one girl, and it was gone as soon as she went for help. Confused and scared, Angela finally looks for help from the people who run the school. - (from wiki)

Review
This movie is basically the infamous Jess Franco having a go at the American-style slasher films that were big in the early 80's, and what's most remarkable about it is how unremarkable it is. It's pretty violent, but except for one nasty knife exit wound there's nothing here that hasn't been done in hundreds of American slasher movies. Why this movie got singled out for a banning in Britain is beyond me. The most lurid thing about it is the original (very misleading)Spanish title "Colegialas Violadas". If they had tried to market it in Britain or the US under a title like that (which literally translates to "Raped Schoolgirls") I could see them banning it, but as far as I know it's always gone under the pretty innocuous English-language title "Bloody Moon". Besides there are no schoolgirls here. It's set at an adult Spanish-language school which seems to cater exclusively to incredibly dumb and slutty German and Scandinavian women. And no one would need to violate these girls--they're more sex-obsessed than the horny male teenagers in "Porky's". Why they're learning Spanish god only knows (other than to pick-up Latin disco kings at the cheesy club next door), but these girls are so stupid it's a miracle they ever learned ANY language beyond primitive clicks and grunts. One of these geniuses actually lets a masked guy she has just met tie her to a log in a saw mill ("This is kind of perverted, isn't it?"). You can pretty much guess what happens (she isn't rescued at the last minute by Shaggy and Scooby).

The girls are being stalked by two of the reddest herrings imaginable. One is a burnt youth in a Mickey Mouse mask (Walt Disney must have rolled over in his cryogenic chamber)who killed a girl years back but has been released into the care of his sexy sister for whom he harbors strong incestual feelings (Franco himself plays the psychiatrist who releases him). The other is a gardener who is always laughing maniacally and coincidentally wielding the exact same implement that has just been used to kill the latest victim. The best thing I can say about this movie it is it is so over-the-top with its dumb victims, obvious red herrings, and ridiculously gory murders that it might have actually meant to be a parody of the slasher film. It also has some competent cinematography and is relatively zoom free. It's certainly not the WORST film Franco ever made.

Review: January 2005 | by lazarillo (Denver, Colorado and Santiago, Chile)

Villain
Alexander Waechter as Miguel - a young man with a marred face.

Cast & Credits

 * Olivia Pascal as Angela
 * Christoph Moosbrugger as Alvaro
 * Nadja Gerganoff as Manuela
 * Alexander Waechter as Miguel
 * Jasmin Losensky as Inga
 * Corinna Drews as Laura
 * Ann-Beate Engelke as Eva
 * Peter Exacoustos as Antonio
 * Antonia García as Elvira
 * Beatriz Sancho as Nieto
 * María Rubio as Countess Maria Gonzales
 * Otto Retzer as Bueno
 * Jesús Franco as Doctor