Killer's Moon (1978)

You won't be disappointed!

Don't Believe the Hype

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Four mental patients -- who, due to unauthorized experiments, believe they are living in a dream and have shed all moral imperatives -- escape and find their way to the nearest bus-load of stranded schoolgirls.What makes this film interesting for me, besides the ethical questions (can the killers be held accountable if they think they are dreaming), is the music. Along with a jazzy version of "Three Blind Mice", we have some music that is dreamlike (appropriately) and also quite moody and dark (also appropriate). It was, for me, the difference between the movie being bad and good.Due to its (fake) animal cruelty and dismissive attitude towards rape, the film has been called "the most tasteless movie in British cinema history." While that is surely an exaggeration, I do think these elements helped give it the cult following it apparently now has. I can see it being mocked by people in a loving way.

A school bus carrying two schoolteachers and their teenage female students breaks down and so they, following the bus driver, sojourn for a spell, as the night begins to bare its presence, looking for shelter until help can arrive. Well, an old timer who lives in the general area leads the group to a hotel (which, by its exterior, looks like a castle) with a proprietor kindly enough to offer them refuge from the cold weather and nightfall. This proprietor is worried about a young woman who assists her, and the phone line seems to be out. Meanwhile, it is established that four lunatics have escaped from a "mental cottage" whose therapeutic techniques concern a type of "dream therapy", and it's only a matter of time before these psychopaths find the hotel, and the women who occupy it. The heroes of the film include two mountain climbers camping in the woods nearby the hotel who attempt to rescue the girls from certain doom. The filmmakers make damn sure to create a sense of foreboding, with characters (like the old man and the hotel proprietor) often expressing a feeling of unease about something being wrong out there. It takes about forty minutes for the loonies to make their presence known, although the bus driver gets it in the neck with an ax, and the old man's wife is strangled not long after slicing her killer with a knife he used to slice off a cat's arm. The killers, as we soon learn when they start yapping after some violence, believe their actions occur within a dream state—there's a bit of irony here, the supposed therapeutic technique used to cure them instead lends to their psychotic behavior. Rape, depravity, and executions on practically anyone they come across results from the failed dream therapy and the cottage's lack of security needed to keep them from escaping. To be honest, I didn't particularly find this movie, rated X by British censors, to be that frightening or sadistic, and it's laborious to sit through, while also occurring mostly at night (it looks like the filmmakers used the "day for night" technique), a murky viewing experience for a good deal of the running time. It's slow and uneventful, with the nutcases going on and on about their dreams. Sure these creeps take the teenage girls, in their nightgowns, forcing them on tables or the floor, delighting in the power they have because of the dreams they inhabit (or believe they inhabit). The gowns split down the middle to unveil the teenagers' breasts as the psychos decide to enjoy what they think the dreams allow them to. One girl is held down, her gown slowly ripped open as the sicko smiles fiendishly, resulting in sexual molestation. Two girls are told by Pete, one of the climbers, that the path to the village is safe, but one of the teenagers is chased away, her run futile as he catches up, ending in strangulation as her gown splits open—this is really as depraved and exploitative as the film gets, girls' gowns splitting down the middle, breasts revealed, a small bit of rape and strangulation to a few of them. Never really quite as potent as these films have a tendency of being, KILLER'S MOON shows how the climbers, because they are not insane, are able to outsmart the wackos who continue to believe they exist within a dream and therefore can do whatever their hearts desire. The weapons of execution include fire, a scythe, butcher knife, ax, and, as mentioned previously, hands—this might be enough to attract interested slasher fans and those who enjoy any exploitation they can get their hands on.

Dreadful. Truly, madly, deeply dreadful. Inept on every level and amateurish in the extreme. Atrociously shot, edited, acted(!) and written, this is the closest the world will ever get to a Carry-On movie directed by Ed Wood - but not quite as accomplished. The plot: Schoolgirls stranded in the Lake District are terrorised by perverse mental escapees who believe they're acting out a dream. Throw in some cheap gore and a cast of British non-actors and you emerge with a mesmerising crash course of how to fail at film-making on every level. Some laughs are there to be had, but you have to be drunk enough to find them.

This is an interesting piece of sleaze from that morally upright island off the northwest coast of Europe. I first saw it on a double bill with "House on Straw Hill" and I have no idea why the latter got branded a "video nasty" in Britain but this one didn't. Three homicidal maniacs who are fed LSD and believe they're dreaming terrorize a broken-down bus full of schoolgirls in the Lake District. You might ask yourself several questions: Why would anyone feed homicidal maniacs LSD (not to mention dress them in bowler hats like the droogs in "A Clockwork Orange")? Why would LSD make someone think they're dreaming? (Do the lecherous sleazeballs who made this have no firsthand experience with drug abuse?) If the characters think they're dreaming, why do they talk to each other? Finally, and most importantly, why would being doped up on LSD make homicidal maniacs any more frightening than they already are? Some people found the fact that the victims are schoolgirls quite offensive. Well, it would be if the buxom, overage East End strippers they cast in this movie, dressed in schoolgirl outfits, and handed out teddy bears to were remotely believable as schoolgirls. What is more offensive is the cavalier attitude the movie has toward rape. One girl tells another not to be upset because she was "only raped" by the maniacs (if she'd been murdered THEN she could complain). The movie shows such empathy for its characters that one major character simply disappears halfway through and her dead body shows up as an after-thought in the closing credits. And if this movie isn't enough of a geek show, there's a three-legged dog wandering around, and, oh never mind. I'm trying to find something good to say about this movie--well, if you fall asleep and dream (or you are given a strong dose of LSD) you can imagine that you're watching "Breakfast at Manchester Morgue" or one of the other good horror movies made in the Lake District.