BLOODY MOON

Aka DIE SAGE DES TODES.

Aah, BLOODY MOON. The first video nasty I ever owned on VHS ...

The opening pre-credits scene of this dodgy German/Spanish co-production sees disfigured Miguel getting lucky at a fancy dress disco with a young lady. Taking her back to an empty bedroom, the two get it on - until she removes his mask and freaks out at the Dick Smith-for-beginners make-up before her.

Miguel, ever the sensitive type, responds by reaching for the nearest pair of scissors and ramming them repeatedly into the unfortunate babe's stomach.

Above the girl's blood-spattered face, the title BLOODY MOON flashes in yellow.

Two years later, Miguel's sister Manuela picks him up from the asylum and takes him home to their aunt's luxury Spanish villa. Their aunt just happens to be a rich Countess with a huge estate ripe for inheriting ... strange, then, that moments later she has been burned to death in her bed!

The villa is situated on the estate, neighboured to a Spanish language school which appears to be available exclusively to pretty, sexually proactive female teens.

It's not long after Miguel arrives on the estate that strange things start to happen. Students from the language school go missing, Spanish-training language tapes are tampered with to include murderous threats, and - would you credit it? - young women are chased, scared, impaled, lacerated, slashed and decapitated!

Miguel - a psycho from the opening frames, and later revealed to be both a voyeur of the young students, and incestuously linked to his sister, is of course the prime suspect as the murders ensue. But with a total lack of evidence (didn't they have forensics in the 80s?!?!), it would appear that the law aren't worth calling in ... and in true Euroshlock fashion, once the murderer's identity is revealed their nearest and dearest would rather sort out the mess themselves than unnecessarily involve the police!

BLOODY MOON shouldn't work. It's crap. But it does work, and is arguably the archetypal video nasty ... for better or worse.

The film is badly dubbed. It has hideous dialogue that is not helped one iota by the inept dubbing. The plot is preposterous and anyone who hasn't worked out the 'twist' ending within the first five minutes should really be declared brain dead. The disco soundtrack is ugly on the ears, and repetitive. The FX are pure bargain basement crapola. The violence is sexist and mean-spirited.

But ... it's all of these elements combined that make BLOODY MOON such a must-see!

Okay, I'll come clean ... if you're into latter-day Asian horror flicks, you might as well stop reading now. If you like your thrills to be a little cerebral and arty, then you're wasting your time. If you want a dumb but fun, fast-paced (and mean) stalk-n-slash film for unapologetic gorehounds, then this should satisfy most.

In it's favour, I will say that some of the cinematography is nice and the pacing is brisk. It's horror clichés (pulsing soundtrack; corpses falling from every wardrobe etc much to the heroine's horror) are well executed ... And there's a murder setpiece every 7 minutes or so ... hey, they're spoiling us!! In fact maybe a second opinion is required because I obviously hold a candle of nostalgia towards this particular turkey - can someone even the balance?!

The picture quality on this Italian Shock disc is better than any previous VHS version. It's full-frame and some night scenes look washed out. The odd day scene appears to be soft, and there are occasional specks and vertical lines (very few) on screen. But the film is very watchable without these apparent flaws being annoying ... believe me, I'd say if they were! In fact many day scenes look great, and the quality improves as the movie moves along.

Audio is 2.0 mono (English dubbed soundtrack) and is as good as it could be. No hiss, pops or drop-outs. Clear and clean, a nice job done. Dutch subtitles are optional.

It should be mentioned at this point that the film here is fully uncut (unlike Vipco's 18 cert video release, which was cut by the BBFC by 1 minute and 20 seconds).

Extras include a trailer (curiously, the picture quality is better than the main feature - approx 1.37:1, and the night scenes are clearer!), a trailer for the very interesting sexploitation flick LINDA, a pointless 'slideshow' of screen-grabs from the film, and a fold-out booklet with text synopsis and some interesting, gory photos.

The scene selection menu offers animated chapter options (8 chapters). The static menu pages in general are basic but nice.

Region 2 PAL encoded. Comes in a black keepcase.

Review by Stu Willis