Bloody Moon (1981)
Severin DVD (region 1)
d. Jess Franco; pr. Wolf C. Hartwig; scr. Rayo Casablanca (aka Jess Franco); ph. Juan Soler; m. Gerhard Heinz; ed. Karl Aulitzky, Christine Jank; cast. Olivia Pascal, Christopher Moosbrugger, Nadja Gerganhoff, Alexander Waechter (81 mins)
Avant-garde Spanish eroticist Jess Franco takes on the slasher film in Bloody Moon, a stylish disco-music saturated look at sexual / moral freedom and the forces which conspire to take advantage of and even punish women who enjoy such, a theme also in the concurrent Severin Films DVD release of Franco’s erotic cannibal movie Devil Hunter.
In contrast to his more improvisational early works Franco here is working with strict genre formula– the juxtaposition in slasher films between sexual freedom and sexual repression, expressed as murder. Hence, the killer here is a man whose facial deformity makes him unattractive to the women he would seduce – when they reject him, he kills them. Under psychiatric treatment, he is released under the condition he find a stable, emotionally secure environment in his sister’s care. His attachment to his sister border on the pathological and at her urging he may (or may not) have resumed killing women.
Bloody Moon is a competent slasher flick, engrossing in its latter stages after a deliberately paced build-up. It knows the genre’s needs and delivers them with efficiency.
Family squabbles and associated petty resentments underlie the characterizations as Franco unveils the social forces corrupting and destroying a wealthy family. Generations of women are contrasted in this film, all targets of a murderer who stabs, burns, beheads them (in a scene at home in a modernized Edgar Allen Poe allusion) and otherwise obliterates them. Family secrets, inheritances and sexual desire coalesce into a nudity-drenched tale of murder and mayhem in a giddy visual style of zooms, slasher-cam points of view and rife with leering voyeurism.
Explicit murders here often have a perverse eroticism that recalls some of the work of Lucio Fulci in his more realist films, The New York Ripper for instance. In Bloody Moon, Franco brings his talents as an eroticist to the gender allegory of the slasher film formula. The emphasis is less on outright scares (initially) than on tortured psychology and the gender politics facing a generation of women post sexual revolution. Cumulative horror erupting into stylized violence is the agenda here. It’s a functional film, solid and dependable but perhaps overly familiar to viewers with experience of this genre. But then part of the fun of the slasher film was the tiny variants on a tight formula and Franco introduces some clever touches in his combination of nervy suspense, character intrigue and erotica.
Ultimately though, it’s the sexual decadence that interests Franco more than the horror and the revelations of incest and a demented manipulation are genuinely intriguing in their psychological implications.
Although the film has ideas about generational conflict and contemporary gender hierarchy / expectation in the wake of the sexual revolution, formula exposition ultimately wins out over discourse – as it does in so much of Franco’s works – and Bloody Moon quickly becomes a calculated exercise in its middle stages. Franco’s visual sense is evident in isolated compositions and set pieces. Plot and character intrigue at a language school add a novel setting for the formula thrills and the emphasis on young women adds a decorative context. Indeed, in contrast to the excesses of the slasher film, Bloody Moon is at times prettified, light and bright rather than dark and shadowy.
But that’s also finally the success of Bloody Moon, what distinguishes it from so many slasher films intent on darkness and shadow – how brightly lit, pretty and decorative moments slowly reveal evidence of violence and madness, eroding the sense of fun and enjoyment these girls would otherwise experience in the setting. Although the naturalistic lighting in much of the films works against the creation of suspense or nuance as found in more traditional slashers, Franco’s suggestion of the horror underlying the fun everyday veneer of youth is palpable throughout. Thus, although a lethargic starter, as Bloody Moon steers ever closer to dizzying, voyeuristic decadence it recalls Franco at his best. The sense of terror here often has a dangerous glee as the sexual erupts into overwhelmingly graphic horror. Bloody Moon captures the director’s juxtaposition between the exciting and the terrible, investing the film’s latter stages with a captivating energy.
Though admittedly formula, and apparently not a film Franco particularly relished making, Bloody Moon is spritely assembled.
In addition is a trailer and an informative interview with Franco about the circumstances of the film’s making, his views on the horror genre and the package proposition he was confronted with in the making of Bloody Moon, which at an initial stage was planned to include music and participation by Pink Floyd. Viewers interested in Bloody Moon may also wish to consider the Franco film Devil Hunter, a concurrent release by Severin Films. The Severin DVD of Bloody Moon (and Devil Hunter also) present this once banned film uncut and uncensored, remastered and in high definition, for the first time in America making these releases of definite collector interest.
