Bloody Moon (1981) User Reviews

Gory Jess Franco Slasher

[Witchfinder-General-666 · 6/10 · 4 December 2007]

"Bloody Moon" aka. "Die Säge Des Todes" (literal translation: "The Saw Of Death") of 1981 is a gory slasher from exploitation's most prolific filmmaker - Jess Franco. I personally am a big Jess Franco fan, and it must be said that his repertoire of 180+ films ranges from brilliant ("Venus In Furs", "Count Dracula",...) to poor ("Sadomania"). "Bloody Moon" is not one of his truly great movies, but it is definitely a highly entertaining and gruesome flick that should not be missed by fans of gory European Horror exploitation. For Franco standards, this film does not feature a lot of sleaze, but even more gruesome brutality and graphic gore in exchange.

The movie takes place in a language school in Spain, where a bunch of hot German girls are enjoy the sun, alcohol and sex more than practicing the Spanish language. A maniac is loose in the little Iberian paradise, however. A maniac who enjoys murdering pretty young girls in most atrocious ways...

The movie begins a bit slow, but it gets really nasty and brutal later, and actually becomes quite suspenseful. The performances are, of course, not top-notch, but they're not terrible either, and actually quite good regarding what can be expected from young actresses most of whom never appeared in another movie. Furthermore, I found some of the performances amazingly convincing. Sexy Olivia Pascal fits very well in the leading role, for example. Director Franco also once again has a cameo appearance in the beginning of the movie. The eerie score composed by Gerhard Heinz, who has also composed the scores for a bunch of mainstream productions, is probably the greatest aspect of the film, and makes the whole thing a lot more atmospheric.

All said, "Bloody Moon" is a brutal little slasher that I recommend to my fellow Eurohorror buffs, especially Jess Franco fans should not miss it!

Painfully boring 80's slasher

[abduktionsphanomen471 · 5/10 · 27 March 2022]

Bloody Moon - 1981 (This Film Rates a D- ) This film opens with Miguel, a facially disfigured man, attempt to deceive and rape a young female only to brutally kill her with a pair of scissors in her boarding room. Five years later he is released from a mental institution in the care of his sister (Manuela) and two others (the bitchy aunt in a wheelchair and Maria, the countess). Manuela runs a boarding school for young women but also has an incestuous relationship with her brother. It also features Angela who is the student now occupying that same room of the murdered student. She starts having auditory and visual hallucinations and witnesses murders. She decides to pack her bags and leave but winds up barricading herself in the room. Angela is tormented and her friends are killed. Come to find out the brother Miguel isn't really the current killer after all. The ending sequence is just crap. Ufff, the dubbing is truly horrid, over dramatic and just full of so much nonsense dialog. The acting is bad and some scenes are just laughable even though not intended to be so. Cheap and poorly done scares that only prolong the agony between kills. Another horrible cat scare tactic at the 1 hour 3 minute mark. The gore effects are decent but not often enough. What was the fake looking boulder thing at the 46:40 minute mark? There are numerous boobie scenes. Great 80's disco style soundtrack that is one of the only highlights to this film.

Grotty but gory

[adriangr · 4/10 · 19 March 2017]

I think if it wasn't for the fame that being a "video nasty" brought it, "Bloody Moon" wouldn't be enjoying anything like the longevity it currently has. Set in a Spanish language school for girls (how original), the story sees our heroine Angela in peril as her friend begin to die around her, and nobody believes her. Suspects are all over the place, one gory murder follows another until the truth is revealed. The thin plot is a threadbare mechanism with only enough substance to it to drive the most basic of story events, and all attempts to generate mystery and tension fall completely flat. A lot of this is due to the English language soundtrack which has the most inept dubbing I've seen for a long time. There's an excess of "sexy" giggling and gossiping that goes with every scene of the female cast members, unless they are being stalked or terrorised, in which case it changes to an excess of screaming and wailing. None of the vocal performances match what the actresses appear to be saying in the slightest. Trying to work out whodunnit is hampered by the appalling direction, in which red herring characters pop up and down every few moments before and after a murder scene, making you wonder if anything you are seeing is by design or just random.

Truly awful film-making is here in abundance, in such scenes as the one where Inga is merrily driven to a saw mill and tied up, gabbling the entire time, or the one in which Angela sees a shadow on the wall, walks backwards (??) towards it and stabs the figure hysterically and then runs off, or the one where a snake dangles into view and is snipped to death by hedge cutters, or the one where a huge foam rock bounces out of nowhere to menace Angela, or all the time we spend watching the girls in their language class and nothing actually happens, or the one with Inga (again - she's particularly bad) bouncing on her bed pretending to be having sex, with a dead body in her wardrobe that it would be impossible for her not to notice, and many, many more. The only strength the film could possibly claim to have is the graphic gore, but these scenes are also pretty poorly done. Some work well for being crudely violent (the sawmill decapitation and the knife through breast killing), but the death by neck- clamp is blatantly out of focus, and most of the others are amateurishly accomplished.

If you only want to see a lot of boobs and blood, plus some of the worst 80's knitwear ever put on celluloid, then treat yourself. Otherwise, this is almost laughably terrible. Even the soundtrack, which underscores the drama with lots of deep "bloop-bloop" noises is unforgivable. The 2 stars are for the saw mill murder as it has become almost iconic, and at least the film has enough energy not to be boring.

Not the WORST film Franco ever made

[lazarillo · 2 January 2005]

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.

Sporadic laughs

[latherzap · 3/10 · 25 May 2005]

Bad, boring slasher horror movie. But some laughs are scattered about. Some of the women are hot. Some of the music is very dated and funny. There's a great bit of bad, redundant dubbing near the end. A woman is threatening somebody, ordering them to keep their mouth shut. It goes something like this "Just remember it. Don't forget. Remember. And just be damn sure to remember it!".

My favorite scene has a girl visiting a friend's house, only to find her dead in the bath tub. Frightened, she runs out and returns a few minutes later. A man is now at the house, and he takes her to the bathroom to show her there is no body. It was your imagination, he assures her. She JUST saw the dead body, and yet he convinces her that nothing happened. She comes back the next day to snoop around, and now sees that the tub has a significant amount of blood in it. We immediately cut to a scene of her wandering around town calling out her friend's name, as if the girl had only been injured and might still be alive. Hilarious!

I used to own a VHS copy of this, but tossed it in the garbage last summer. I sort of regret that. On the other hand, don't go out of your way to watch it.

Great slasher film.

[HumanoidOfFlesh · 7/10 · 1 October 2003]

"Bloody Moon" is a great slasher film from the master of exploitation Jesus Franco.The plot is obviously inspired by "Halloween" and "Friday the 13th".The acting is pretty average,but there is plenty of gore to satisfy fans of splatter.There is for example very bloody power saw decapitation plus some other killings which involve chainsaws,razorblades and knives.The music score is pretty appalling and the film's theme tune is incredibly annoying.Overall,the film is moderately entertaining,so if you're a Franco fan give this one a look. Here is the plot:"Bloody Moon" takes place in a Spanish language school,where pretty female students are murdered by an unidentified stalker in a variety of grisly ways.

Typical Eurotrash

[saint_brett · 1/10 · 28 November 2023]

I'm not a fan of Eurotrash, but I have a closet full of the garbage for some reason.

There's even 'Strip Nude for Your Killer' on the floor to my right.

I remember as a kid, the poster for 'Bloody Moon' used to greet you with the big blade and those ladies terrified eyes. I always got it confused with the poster of Pam on the meat hook.

Didn't Gary Daniels make a movie with the same title as this film?

With a worried look on her face, Christina Ricci is instructed by a blood moon to party-crash a disco ball. Disco in the 80s?

What looks like Bill Paxton walks around hideously sporting a burnt egg around his eye?

Mickey Mouse takes home a working girl; the mask slips off and reveals the egg-face guy; and the title screen claims the movie is called 'Die Sage des Todes.' In the tradition of spaghetti westerns, the actors mouths are out of sync.

The guy with a burnt egg on his face does a one-minute sentence in a loony bin for murder and is no sooner released and back among the public, desiring more flesh.

He's probably a decoy in this movie, as the killer from 'The Burning' just torched a witch for no good reason.

A language class cuts the English-speaking audience out at the 15-minute mark as they're speaking either Spanish or Italian.

"A capital offense ending in R," asks one actress participating in a pop quiz. I'll answer that for you, toots. Try this movie.

The omelet-face guy looks like someone rasped it with a cheese grater a few times.

The Euros just didn't know how to build suspense for horror movies.

They've all got that same "guessing game" whodunit quality about them.

This movie is like the board game Clue.

Was this the influence for 'Scream?' Another decoy throws the viewer off in the form of Billy Zane. He's not the killer. Don't be so gullible, McFly.

It's obviously a woman who's the killer.

It looks like Daisy Duke plays Angela in this, and the movie's doing everything within its power to kill her off, but she eludes all slippery scenarios.

The weirdo with the fish skin patch on his face looks like someone trod in dog poop and left a boot imprint.

He's definitely scandalous, as he's infatuated with his own sister and dangerously close to the precipice of her goodies.

The incestual sister stares at the moon naked, and she gets a pass mark.

I don't know about her bangs, though. She looks too Beatles-like.

The Euro's had a different way of interpreting our intricacies.

Their expressions are so fundamental and straight-forward.

And for heaven's sake, why does this movie keep looping this stupid guitar strum over and over? It's annoying. There it goes again! Every time it plays, I picture a dog about to be put down, and it blinks in a plea to give it a second chance.

To add some more drama to the Eurotrash, He-Man throws a foam boulder down a cliff in an attempt to euthanize Angela.

Animal cruelty? The beheading of a live snake? Was that necessary?

They're playing that damn dying puppy dog music again!

Was that giant bandsaw scene supposed to be shocking? That head was faker than the Morris brothers ones.

Now, this scene here with the little boy running for his life is what's shocking in this movie.

Did that really just happen? Imagine a modern-day director re-enacting that scene today.

Don't you get to see this Angela chick naked? Come on, lady, take a shower. Show the goods.

Wow, listen to her scream at the end.

In typical European fashion, the killer's wearing a black mask over his head. That's every European horror movie! If not a mask, then a stocking or helmet.

This Angela chick is over-acting her part in the drama stakes.

Egg Face, the masked killer, and Billy Zane all come together at the end, and I don't even care who's revealed as the killer in a minute.

The director has confused both himself and the audience in his attempt to be nifty.

The incestuous sister and Steve Sanders are thick as thieves who are in cahoots to inherit money or estate, so this was all over greed.

Why do they have to kill innocent coeds in order to obtain their goal?

Just frame the idiot sporting the burnt egg on his face with one murder, and all's good.

It's all happening here, folks. Egg Face is killed by Daisy Duke, Incestual Sister kills 90210 with a low-voltage hedge trimmer, and now Daisy Duke and Incestual Sister are cutting a deal to split the riches.

Egg Face raises from the dead sporting a shiv in his neck, as that's the latest chic fashion.

He strangles his incestual sister in two seconds.

Shoddy editing is choppy, and the dying puppy dog music is quickly inserted to roll the credits.

What trash.

Sleazy Spanish Slasher

[tysonrowlands · 6/10 · 15 July 2022]

Lots of murder, incest, and sleaze, but it's all dialed up to 11 so it's hard to take much of it seriously. It plays like a really gory telenovela most of the time. The effects work is pretty good and it kept me entertained.

BEFORE SAW..

[mmthos · 2/10 · 4 July 2020]

...there was this piece of trash. Laughable all the way thru, except for the constantly annoying electronic soundtrack that sounds like it's underwater. Psychotic maniac on the loose in a girls' summer camp. Assortment of mechanical saws as weapons, girl with largest boobs gets a knife all the way into her back, then perfectly aimed, coming out thru her nipple, which is actually the best, and most hilarious, if blatantly misogenistic effect. An old countess, all alone in the middle of her castle, when attacked, cries in her feeble little old lady voice "Somebody help me!" Who, lady? You're all alone in this big old castle where nobody can hear you. A waste all the way around.

pretty good gory slasher

[alucifer · 7/10 · 7 September 2005]

nothing new in this slasher movie from the 80's but every slasher fan should have this in their collection.lots of pretty girls getting killed in a variety of inventive and gruesome ways.i am not going to describe how the ladies get killed because other people on IMDb have already did that.there are quite a few good and gory graphic killings in bloody moon.so if you are like me and love gory slasher movies and not mainstream garbage like scream go and find this movie.just make sure you get a version that is uncut because there is nothing worse than buying a horror movie and all the gory killings have been cut out.so slasher fans go buy this now

Stupidest movie ever

[Dave_douell · 2/10 · 2 February 2019]

I've never seen characters so stupid. If you watch this movie you will be so frustrated that you may do self harm! I don't even know where to start so I'm not. By the end of the movie you will want everyone to die!

A little flawed, but acceptable

[slayrrr666 · 8/10 · 20 December 2006]

"Bloody Moon" is one of the Franco's more marketable films, and is certainly a worthwhile slasher as well.

**SPOILERS**

After being released from a mental asylum, Miguel, (Alexander Waechter) is moved with his sister Manuela, (Nadja Gerganoff) to the Boarding School for young women on the Spanish resort of Costa Del Sol where she works. While hanging around the school, he finds that she's involved in a scheme to gain control of the local Language School where she and boyfriend Alvaro, (Christoph Moosbrugger) work, and students Angela, (Olivia Pascal) Inga, (Jasmin Losensky) Laura, (Corinna Drews) and Eva, (Ann-Beate Engelke) get wind of it as well. When bodies start piling up at the school, the remaining people investigate and find a possible serial killer on campus and are forced to evade the maniac.

The Good News: One of the weirder entries in the early 80s slasher films, this one certainly has a lot going for it. One of it's best features is the skillful mixture of the slasher clichés and Franco's typical sleaziness. The plot is a typical one to be found in the time, being simply an excuse to get a body count available for hacking by the main villain, who has the disheveled appearance in a secluded place with no help possible from the outside. There are the usual subjective shots of the killer watching and stalking the victims, and that the victims are the typical kinds of the genre. Mix these with the typical zooming shots and the large amount of nudity normally found in Franco's films are mixed in together with great ease. The sleaze found in the film also extends into the incestuous relationship found within, and that allows for some disturbing and erotic moments. The one where they're looking longingly at each other through the window naked is the best example of this. It goes as a reminder of the sleaze found in within that mixes with the slasher style. It's refreshing to see these two elements together that fit well together. This is also an exceptionally gory film with some great kills in it. One is set on fire while still sleeping in bed, there's a knife in the back that comes out through a body part in the front, a chainsaw slicing open the chest, several stranglings and a very brutal stabbing in the stomach with scissors. The real highlight, though, is the infamous band-saw decapitation, where a victim is strapped to table with a running band-saw that eventually saws their head off. This wins out for two special occasions. The first is the execution, since it's a quite show-stopping scene that's incredibly realistic and brutal, but the second is the very set-up for it. Truly original and quite sadistic while being pretty suspenseful and quite out of the ordinary. The climax has a real zing to it, where the final character finds their roommates' dead bodies meticulously strewn about her room. This wasn't a half-bad entry in the slasher genre.

The Bad News: There is a couple things in here that don't work in the film. The biggest thing that hurts this film is that it really seems like a collection of scenes from other films put right into the film. The most obvious genre piracy is the reworking of an obvious masterpiece of revenge. The elaborate, knotty embezzlement plot closely resembles that film, with the school property replacing the bay. The film even begins with an identical opening sequence where a wheelchair-bound character is killed by an unidentified assailant. The film also steals liberally from another defining slasher by showing an initial kill from the point of view of a party mask. Even using the clichéd conclusion feels like a rip-off from other films. Finally, it's overly obvious that the school campus is a flimsy substitute for the more familiar and well-worn summer camp setting utilized in countless slashers. The other major big strike is the film really doesn't feature all the usual Franco features. That may not sound like a detriment, but the fact that the zoom seems like a contrivance more than a practical one, and it's not a major factor. That he also tones down on the sleaze is a departure. Rather than exploit the painfully obvious fact that it's at a women's center, there's no scenes that capitalize on this and it's quite shocking when that happens. While these are big factors against it, there's another one that harms it, and that's the slow pacing. It takes a long time to get to anything interesting, as most of the time is spent with the characters talking amongst themselves for a long period of time. The conversations here ramble on for long periods of time, and it mostly feels like they're there simply to pad out the time, and it's a really obvious one at that. The killings don't really begin in earnest until the hour mark, and it's a real sprint to the finish, but the journey to get there is a long one. These factors hurt the film in the long run.

The Final Verdict: While it's a more-than-decent attempt to bridge the slasher cycle with Franco's sleazier side, the plodding pace and obvious genre cliché-borrowing strike this one down. It's still a perfectly capable film, so it's a very worthy look for slasher fans and Franco films, who will find a lot to like in this one.

Rated R: Nudity, Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, themes of incest and animal violence

Wacko slasher from Jess Franco

[Leofwine_draca · 6/10 · 5 December 2015]

A derivative but strangely appealing slasher flick from that auteur of Spanish sleaze and zoom lens-inspired madness, Jess Franco, which opens with a masked killer murdering a young girl and being sent to an asylum for the crime - just to prove that Franco's copying HALLOWEEN a little bit too much, we even see POV shots from the killer looking through the eyeholes in his mask! From then on, BLOODY MOON a cheap and nasty swathe through a series of badly-acting young women, as a mysterious villain murders them off one by one. Despite being set in a language school, there are never more than four or five girls around at time, which somewhat betrays Franco's low budget roots. The plot is pretty ludicrous, with a really dumb script - the English dubbing reaches new levels of absurdity with some of the trite dialogue that the girls constantly spew.

The acting isn't much better, and it's obvious that Franco picks his actresses for their looks rather than their acting ability. The identity of the killer is pretty easy to guess, especially seeing that the red herring is so obvious in this case - could it be the mysteriously scarred man who was previously convicted of murder, who constantly lurks around the school watching the girls? I don't think so. Technically, the film is rather poorly made, with sloppy editing and a tendency to shoot scenes in the dark with little lighting, making the viewing experience sometimes a test of endurance rather than genuine entertainment.

So why did I enjoy this movie? Well, it's just plain trash for sure, but Franco never expects you to think it should be anything else. BLOODY MOON is just about a series of young, sometimes naked girls being offed gorily by a perverted murderer, and that's exactly what Franco delivers. His deaths are all mean-spirited and graphically gory, which earned the film some notoriety when released in the UK - in retrospect the effects are all so cheesily staged that the fuss over such "nasties" is simply ludicrous. This is a fun, barmy and genuinely amusing slasher that doesn't pull any punches.

Painfully tedious and dull Video Nasty

[tomgillespie2002 · 2/10 · 19 May 2012]

The film begins with facially-scarred Miguel (Alexander Waechter) raping and murdering a girl with a pair of scissors at a masquerade party. He is institutionalised for a number of years, but then released into the care of his sister Manuela (Nadja Gerganoff), whom he used to have a incestuous relationship with. Manuela runs a language Boarding School with her wheelchair-bound mother, who refuses to name Manuela in her will. When Manuela refuses Miguel's advances to resume their relationship, the friends of Angela (Olivia Pascal), whom Miguel's seems to be intrigued by, start disappearing. Angela knows they are being killed and even witnesses a murder, but no-one believes her.

When going into a horror film directed by exploitation legend Jess Franco, you know what you're in for. Lots of blood, lots of sleeze, and in particular, lots of tits. Bloody Moon does not fail to disappoint on this front, but unfortunately, it disappoints on practically every other front. On IMDb, he is credited with 194 titles as director, and he has churned out as many exploitation titles as I have s***s after a curry. While I have only seen a small handful of his films (all pretty bad), this is undoubtedly the worst I've seen. As well as ripping off other, more impressive slasher films (Mario Bava's A Bay of Blood (1971) and Blood and Black Lace (1964) are two that I noticed), the film is poorly thrown together in a manner to get as much blood and breasts as possible. While that's not a terribly bad or unoriginal idea, all the in-between parts are painfully tedious and dull.

If you're in it for the blood, you won't be disappointed. There's plenty of outlandishly staged set-pieces here, most notably the scene in which a woman is decapitated by a power saw. The hilarious thing is that the woman volunteers to be tied down in an abandoned lumber mill, inches away from the giant saw, by a masked man. She says she finds it kinky. Well, maybe she deserves to die for being so f*****g stupid. Perhaps I wasn't paying attention or I was so bored I was considering slitting my wrists, but when the big revelation came at the climax, I failed to see why the killer had to kill the girls in order to achieve their goal. Again, Franco was thinking blood and boobs, and all logic went out the window. Perhaps not the worst Video Nasty on the list so far, but it's certainly up there.

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a must for Francophiles

[sangue · 13 August 2000]

okay, so this isn't as good as most Italian Gialli, but to be fair, it is head and shoulders above 90% of American slashers of the early-mid 80's.

Jess Franco certainly delivers the goods with this one, with lots of bloody stabbings (including a girl stabbed in the back, the knife protruding through her nipple), strangulations, a hedge trimer attack, and an awesome band saw decapitation. the German title of this film is "die sage des todes" which translates into "the saw of death" so they must have been impressed too. it's not too original, the basic "girl stalked by a sex maniac" but, Franco filters the standard formula through his own twisted vision and throws in some incest to keep things lively. also, the film ends with a great twist,twist ending that wraps things up nicely, no sequal here! be on the look out for the Franco Cameo at the beginning of the film, he's the doctor.

The Saw of Death, I saw the boredom

[Horst_In_Translation · 2/10 · 16 September 2016]

"Die Säge des Todes" or "Bloody Moon" is a collaboration between West Germany and Spain from 1981, so this film has its 35th anniversary this year. The language is predominantly Spanish (despite Austrian writer Erich Tomek), even if IMDb wants you to believe otherwise. It is probably due to director Jesús Franco and this 90-minute film here is not one of his German-language efforts (with Dietrich for example). The main characters are played by German actors, even if they have Spanish names, but there are also a handful Spanish actors in here playing smaller roles. But it really all isn't that important because it does not matter who is who and where they come from as the script (and the acting too to some extent) turns this one into a really weak showing I must say. There is not that much erotics in here as there is in many of Franco's other works, which may have made this at least a good watch for a horny audience. But the way it finally turned out, it is not a good watch for any audience. The horror components, like severed heads on several occasions, feel rushed in and included just for the sake of shocking people and add very little in terms of the plot or story-telling in general. It was a really boring film and the makers' attempts to make this a scary work or succeed from a thriller perspective did not turn out well at all. Oh yeah, and Olivia Pascal was not half as hot as I remembered her. As a whole, this was a failure with regard to almost everything. I absolutely don't recommend the watch. And don't start with this film if you want to get into Franco's work, because you will probably quit immediately afterward and miss out on some of his better stuff. No idea why this film here is actually among his more known works. Stay away.

Killing beauty queens...Jess Franco Style !!

[Coventry · 6/10 · 25 October 2003]

Die Säge des Todes - probably best known under the title BLOODY MOON - is Jess Franco's response and share to the popular trend of teen slasher films. This subgenre was merely founded by John Carpenter when he released Halloween and it reached his top in 1980, when Friday the 13th came out.

Jess Franco is, apart from being a very creativy filmmaker, also a pretty good marketeer because he immediately joined this trend and presented us : Die Säge des Todes. True, this movie is far from being the master of exploitation's finest achievement...but his fans certainly won't be disappointed and even horror fans and gorehounds in general won't mind watching this film.

Franco's style is clearly present in several aspects of the movie. The violence and nudity is shown very explicit and the murder scenes don't leave very much to the imagination. You need to have a pretty strong stomach and nerve-system to keep watching some of these massacres !! ( if you're interested in the most brutal decapitation ever shown in films ... this is your movie !! ). The acting performances are overall better than I feared and you forgive these actresses for their lack of experience. All of them are just so pretty and the scream in such realistic ways... I hope the leading actress was payed for each yell she gave, she must be a millionaire then. My highest praise concerning this movie goes out to the great use of atmospheric and creepy music. The theme and the sound effects provide the film with a bit of tension at least... The plot is not highly memorable.***SMALL SPOILERS *** It takes place in a Spanish language school which is being led by a middle-aged, fancy looking lady. Well, she leads it but all the money and decisions being made belong to the old aunt of her. Her brother, the horribly mutilated Miguél, just got released from a mental institution and since then ... terrifying murders are being commited. It's seems fairly obvious that Miguél isn't quite cured yet but is he really the murderer ?? *** END SPOILERS ***

Recommended to all kind of horror fans : Those who like exploitation stuff ( especially FRANCO exploitation-stuff ), fans of violent and bloody slasherfilms and even to the extreme gorehounds... Enjoy !

¨Bloody Moon¨ is a Spanish/German co-production by prolific Jesús Franco shot in Alicante

[ma-cortes · 5/10 · 24 October 2022]

This mediocre slasher packs thrills , chiller , extreme horror ,tension and lots of blood and gore for the grisly killings . It's on the aesthetic and body count of a psychotronic slasher, as the pic was extremely prohibited in some countries , in fact it was considered to be a Video Nasty in United Kingdom . The loathing gore and guts are astonishingly shown as mutilated human limbs , beaheading , slashing in cold blood and using all kinds of cutting instruments to carry out the horrible massacres , such as chainsaws , long knifes , electric cutting machines, among others . It deals with Miguel (Christoph Moosbrugger) , a young man with a horribly disfigured face, who is released from a mental asylum into the care of his sister, Manuela (Nadja Gerganoff) . Along with their wheelchair bound aunt (Maria Rubio) , they operate a boarding school for young woman, called Europe's International Youth-Club Boarding School of Languages, on the Spanish resort of Costa Del Sol. There arrives the young Angela (Olivia Pascal), but things go wrong when at the language-school some girls are being surprisingly killed.

The film stars un unknown cast , exception for Olivia Pascal who played some softcore movies ; it displays thrills , chills , cardboard horror , and lots of blood and gore for nauseating execution . Eerie Euro-horror to want in on the action and with a big influence in the Italian giallo if you put it in the hands of Jess Franco , you end up with this extreme Bloody Moon (1981) . The grisly , disturbing murders are extremely scary and really disgusting with abundant stabbing shots including beheading , slitting and mutilation in which a mysterious murderous makes an authentic slaughter with gruesome and bloody executions . At the end takes place an exciting denouement detailing the persona who exects the scary murders while the victims are massacred at the hands of the sinister and mysterious series killer . The film takes accent as suspense as well as terror with creepy use of images-shock and botcher edition.

This is a delirious motion picture made in the early 1980's , financed in little budget by Wolf C. Hartwig (who produced Sam Peckinpah's Cross of Iron) with nice cinematography by Juan Soler , lousily directed by Jess Frank without originality and following the ordinary Slasher trappings , being a flick attuned to mainstream audiences at the time . A disconcerting horror movie with no much interest and regularly made by Jesús Franco , including a lot of goofs , flaws , gaps and failures . He often used a lot of pseudonyms , among the aliases he used, apart from the names Jess Franco or Franco Manera, were Jess Frank, Robert Zimmerman, Frank Hollman, Clifford Brown, David Khune , Toni Falt, James P. Johnson, Charlie Christian, David Tough , among others. In many of the more than 180 films he's directed he has also worked as composer, writer, cinematographer and editor. Jesús's influence has been notable all over Europe . Jess was a Stajanovist, restless writer, producer, director who played and realized over 200 pictures. His career spans over 50 years with a few successes and lots of flops, making all . From his huge body of work we can deduce that Jesús Franco is one of the most restless directors of Spanish cinema and often releasing several titles at the same time. Many of his films have had problems in getting released, and others have been made directly for video. More than once his staunchest supporters have found his "new" films to contain much footage from one or more of his older films. Jesús Franco is a survivor in a time when most of his colleagues tried to please the government administration. He broke up with all that and got the independence he was seeking and getting , at times great eye for composition. He was a hard-working filmmaker, directing a lot of ridiculous movies. However, making some acceptable films , such as : ¨We are 18 years old¨, ¨Labios Rojos¨, ¨The awful Dr Orloff¨, ¨The Bloody Judge¨ , ¨Miss Muerte¨, ¨Eugénie¨ , ¨Count Dracula¨, ¨99 women¨, ¨Death Whistles the Blues¨, ¨Rififi in the City¨,¨Justine¨, ¨Paroxismus, ¨The Blood of Fumanchu¨, ¨Faceless¨ and a few others. This ¨Bloody Moon¨is only for Jess Frank enthusiasts and followers of banned films labeled as Video Nasties , resulting to be a grand stab fest that still ends up being closer to a giallo than intended.

So bad it's good

[dopefishie · 7/10 · 1 April 2022]

So bad it's good.

This is a bad movie. There's no getting around it. But it's also just so bonkers and unpredictable that it's fun. You'll have a good time watching this bad movie if you're already a horror fan. If you're not a horror fan, skip it.

Franco who?

[paulgeaf · 1/10 · 12 July 2006]

I have watched some pretty awful movies but this one... Hmm where to start? When you sit down to a movie like this you know it isn't going to be the best or most professional you've seen, you expect B-movie slasher European horror. You expect bad dubbing. You expect poor dialogue and cheap effects. That's all fine. Usually the expectations fit the movie. I didn't expect to become so mind numbingly bored within the first half hour as to start wishing I would just fall asleep and be done with it instead of hanging on(most likely, in the hope of seeing one more breast on one of the young students). This film is a horror alright. Not scary or thrilling(apart from the odd breast), just absolutely horrible to watch. I am actually looking forward to re-runs of 'Neighbours' after this. AVOID.

Jess Franco Slasher Hilarity!

[ObscureCinema101 · 6/10 · 27 May 2012]

BLOODY MOON is an interesting film for sure. For one, it's directed by Jess Franco, who was notorious for making several porno movies. So what would a slasher movie directed by him be like?

Miguel is a disfigured man who killed a young woman at an all-girls language school five years prior. His sister Manuela, who runs the school, takes him under her wing once he is released from the mental institution. Soon, students at the school begin getting killed off in gruesome ways. Is Miguel up to his old tricks again? Or is it someone else?

BLOODY MOON ranks alongside 1982's PIECES as an absolutely hilarious foreign horror movie. While PIECES was notorious for its hilarious WTF moments, BLOODY MOON remains hysterical for the horrible dialogue. I could basically list every line in this film, but some of my favorites are, "I want you to melt in my arms!" and "Honestly! How gruesome! That's a bit far-fetched!" Make those lines horrendously dubbed and you have an idea what the BLOODY MOON experience is like.

The other strong suit of BLOODY MOON is the gory, violent, and often hilarious murders. There's the infamous decapitation via giant buzz saw, but it comes across as more funny than shocking. For one, it has to be one of the most obvious cases where an actress is replaced by a dummy, and the girl doesn't realize anything is fishy until the killer ties her to the moving rock! There's also the killer stabbing a girl in the back with a knife (and the tip exiting through her nipple!).

However, BLOODY MOON fails to really deliver on other levels. The score is awful because it mainly consists of this really, REALLY annoying guitar twanging during every scene. Aside from the two murders I already listed, the others fail to stand out in any way. The characters aren't likable or memorable, and it also fails to end on any sort of bang.

All in all, BLOODY MOON is a fun watch mainly for that one fantastic buzz saw kill and the dialogue you'll find yourself quoting for weeks. Everything else is just bad. Only worth a purchase if it's cheap. Otherwise, just rent it.

The king of sleaze makes a slasher

[warsystem04 · 5/10 · 5 December 2012]

Jess Franco is well known for his over the top, extremely sleazy and sexualized women in prison and exploitation flicks, but here he makes an American style slasher. Influenced by the stuff that was coming out in the states at the time, this one follows the same general formula and takes a lot from Friday The 13th and the like.

The main upsides to this one are definitely the female cast members, who are all top notch EuroBabes, most of whom get naked. I wish I was the character Antonio... The kills are also particularly brutal, the stone mill watersaw scene being the most memorable. The gore however is pretty laughable, so don't expect a Tom Savini style job here. The plot is neither groundbreaking nor terrible, and figuring out the identity of the killer(s) shouldn't be too tough.

The incest subplot is probably the most "Franco" touch to the whole thing, it's pretty clear he has to implement his filthy flair whenever possible. The film is extremely silly at times, and overall is not incredibly engaging. It is no doubt an entertaining watch though, and any Franco or slasher fan needs to see it at least once. The real hero in "Bloody Moon" though is Miguel's leather jacket... Just WHAT is painted on the back of that thing?!

underrated

[HollysDemoHell · 8/10 · 11 March 2021]

Far as I'm aware this was Jess Franco's lone attempt at a conventional slasher, in a career otherwise more focused on surreal sleaze. I wish he'd made more cause Bloody Moon is a trip. Laughable dubbing and dialogue, insane twisted villain, classier than average girls, a young tennis player character who looks uncannily like Roger Federer from some angles, and an infamous gore set-piece that's so unrealistic that it somehow comes off as *more* disturbing than if it had been done well. (probably). This film is good fun anyway, don't miss it if you like early 80s slashers.

Nasty

[BandSAboutMovies · 6/10 · 22 October 2019]

If you've watched enough slashers, you've reached that point where you say, "There's no way they're going to show a bandsaw tear a woman's head off her body." But when you really title a movie Die Sage des Todes, or The Saw of Death, and you're Jess Franco, you go for it.

Seriously - turn back now all that aren't ready for an incestual slasher that takes no prisoners.

Miguel has a disfigured face, a horrible secret and just got out of being in a mental asylum for five years after stabbing a woman. Now, he's been released into the loving arms - too loving, hence that secret - of his sister Manuela, who operates Europe's International Youth-Club Boarding School of Languages. Now, Miguel has his eye on Angela, an attractive student at his sister's school.

We full-on learn Miguel and his sister's secret shame, as when the two begin to kiss, she reminds him that the last time they went this far, people died. No one can ever understand them and it can never happen again.

Between the disco dancing and constant murders, this European resort town stays hopping. Perhaps the best sequence is the aforementioned bandsaw murder, which ends with its lone witness, a kid who has to be less than ten years old, getting run over by the killer too. Life is cheap - and in this movie, it's cheaper than it ever has been before.

I kind of adore that the producers told Franco that Pink Floyd was going to do the music for this. In what universe would that happen?

Of course, this didn't just end up on any video nasty list. It's one of the category 1 films that was actually prosecuted for obscenity. If any movie on that list deserves it, it's this one.

Severin has re-released this on blu ray, selling it with this line: "just when you thought you'd seen it all, Franco shocked the world by delivering surprising style, genuine suspense and a cavalcade of depravity that includes incest, voyeurism and roller disco." If you aren't ordering this right now, what's wrong with you?

Glad it's over

[Groverdox · 3/10 · 3 January 2021]

When I saw that Jess Franco had made a slasher-type flick, I was keen to see it. After all, a US genre done by a European sleaze maestro should at least be more entertaining than the typical American slasher. At least, there'll probably be more violence and nudity.

My hopes that this would be better than the average US flick of similar genre were crushed in only about the first ten minutes. The movie opens with convoluted, tedious scenes that try to set up the movie's central premise, but they are so badly done they only bore and confuse.

The movie's set in a girls' boarding school - such a generic location for Eurosleaze - and has something to do with the nephew of the owner being released from an asylum, and taunting a recent arrival, who thinks she keeps seeing him here and there.

These scenes are repetitive and boring.

Then of course there's the killings, which are violent but unrealistic and impossible to take seriously.

With one exception. Yes, there is a scene of actual animal death in this movie, in which a snake is hacked in half. When I first tried to watch this movie years ago, I quit after that scene, thoroughly repulsed. This time I knew to expect it, and covered my eyes during that disgusting, unnecessary spectacle.

Not only shouldn't it have been done on obvious moral grounds, it also adds nothing to the movie - in fact gorehounds might reflect that it only makes all the death scenes in the movie look even more fake by comparison.

The ending of the movie reveals it is more of a giallo than a slasher, with a twist that may have been a surprise if anything leading up to it had made sense or been involving in the least. I'm just glad it's over.