Another movie made to try to cash in on the runaway success of the blooming slasher movie genre, Bloody Moon (also known as The Saw of Death - continental European films always seem to get the best alternate titles) was made by the famous - or infamous, depending on your point of view - Jess Franco, whose filmatography includes titles such as Vampiros Lesbos and Sadomania. That should give you a reasonably good idea of what Bloody Moon has in store for its viewers.
The movie begins with Miguel, a young man with a nasty facial disfigurement, being sent back to a dance by his sister, who has apparently rebuffed his advances. Not wanting anyone to see his face, Miguel steals a Mickey Mouse mask and t-shirt from a couple who are making out and manages to pick up a girl. When she sees what is under the mask, however, she gets cold feet, and so Miguel stabs her to death with a pair of scissors. Five years later, Miguel’s sister Manuela is taking him into her care as he is released from a psychiatric hospital, after being warned to keep an eye on him and not refer to the events of that night as he might not be completely cured. So of course the first thing she does is accuse her brother of wanting to kill every girl he sees on the way home. She also tempts and starts to seduce her brother before abruptly changing her mind and telling him that there are people around them who are keeping them apart, as well as dropping some heavy hints as to what he should do about them. Oh, and they all live at an all-girls' language school, which just so happens to be the very place where Miguel got his murder on five years previously. So of course none of us are surprised when the students at the school start being murdered by a strange shadowy figure...
Bloody Moon is a confused film. It’s a confusing film as well, but primarily it is a confused film - because even it doesn’t seem to know who its killer is. We’re led to believe it’s Miguel from the start, because we see him kill a girl in the pre-credits sequence, but even before the reveal that it isn’t him (spoiler alert: it isn't Miguel) we can be sure it isn’t, as we see him at the same time as the killer, somewhere else. There are also far too many suspects for the role of killer - Antonio the gardener who always seems to be lurking where Angela is; Alvero the smooth teacher; and even the bald, mute handyman who also lurks around the grounds and at one point taunts our final girl, Angela, with the tool used to kill one of her friends for no apparent reason. Because of this, by the end of the film when everything is finally revealed things are just an over-stuffed mess of people and plots and double-crossing.
The film also has a wide gulf of quality between some of its kills. One girl gets killed by means of a knife through her back which exits perfectly right through her nipple (which also got the film on the BBFC's Video Nasties list for several years because violence to women's breasts was a big no-no back them), and the effect is quite realistic and even impressive (if you like that sort of thing). Later on, however, another victim is chained to a boulder and decapitated by a stonecutting saw (all the while telling her killer cheerfully that she's up for anything kinky) and it is the most obvious mannequin since the movie Mannequin. Elsewhere there's a bouncing polystyrene boulder that nearly takes out Angela. And the film doesn't have too high a regard of women either; until the end all but one of the victims are female, nearly all are killed in sexual or revealing positions, and when Angela tries to tell someone about her roommate's murder, she is casually dismissed as being hysterical because she was reading a mystery novel. Yes, that was really a plot point in the movie.
In the end though, Bloody Moon is just another low-budget slasher movie in a genre that was getting flooded with them at an alarming rate and, if we're honest, would likely not be remembered by many outside of Franco affectionados if it hadn't been for its placement on the Video Nasties list. It's also, surprisingly enough, considered by some to be one of Franco's better movies, as it has a relatively straightforward plot and reins in the sex and nudity somewhat. Of course, it also wasn't the only film of Franco's to end up on the DPP's list...
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