Horror-A-Day: Killer's Moon

The Halloween march moves forward. Each day brings with it another movie, picked in the moment, and so far picked rather well. So far all of them have been new to me and more of them have been good than not. It is also showing me that there are plenty of movies from the 70's and 80's that I have yet to see. There is always a waiting list looking to fester in front of my eyeballs. Now we have a grey, somewhat overcast day masquerading as fall weather, and a movie masquerading as something else to match.



The movie arrived back in 1978 and has apparently not made much of an impact over the years. It is not a movie I have heard much tell of over the years, any tell really. This is only punctuated by a friend and aficionado of sleazy, grimy films of this ilk who had never heard of it before. Granted, I suspect he may know it by a different title, so many of these movie seem to have two or three or more titles depending on where they are released and if there are different cuts. The movie I saw is called Killer's Moon and I was directed by Alan Birkinshaw, a follow up to his debut Confessions of a Sex Maniac (also known as The Man Who Couldn't Get Enough and Design of Lust, see about the titles?).

Killer's Moon takes bits and pieces of Last House on the Left and A Clockwork Orange, toss them in a blender and pours out a sleazy little concoction that definitely has its share exploitative and uncomfortable sleaze, but it feels hollow and a little dirty. It may have set out to say something about the nature of the evil mind or misguided ways of attempting to control the mind, but somewhere along the way any semblance of message drifted away. The resulting movie is just sleaze and dull direction.

As it opens we find a schoolbus full of choir girls broken down in the countryside. They make their way to a nearby hotel, which isn't quite open yet. There they plan to spend the night and get help in the morning. Meanwhile, there is a couple of guys camping in the nearby woods (hmm, could this be a setup for people to be heroic?). So, with all the good guys and victims in place, it is time for the bad guys.

It takes awhile before the bad guys appear onscreen, but they are a rather incorrigible bunch. We are fist told about them. They are escapees from a medical facility trying out an experimental procedure on them. Much like A Clockwork Orange, the thought is that you can force the nastiness out of them by overwhelming them with it. They were drugged and made to live in their dreams where they could live as nasty as they want.

Well, they are loose, dressed like Alex and his droogies, and they think they are in a dream. Plus, if you could not guess, they were on a collision course with the hotel filled with stamped teenage girls. Well, sexual violence, rape, and murder abound. The bad guys are convinced they are in a dream, free to act out as they see fit, something they do not seem to want to shut up about.

It is not exactly a good movie. It certainly has the sleaze that will make you uncomfortable, but it is missing something. It does not have that reality to real drive home the nastiness home. The acting is mediocre at best and it is shot in such a dull fashion, like an old television drama. Certainly one to be checked out for fans of sleaze, just remember, it is not near the cream of the grimy crop.

Mildly Recommended.