"Quite possibly the sleaziest film ever made in Britain". These aren't my words but a quote from a certain I.Q. Hunter, who's a respectable author and acclaimed cult cinema expert. Mr. Hunter was a guest at the local film festival in my country and provided this film – as well as a few other flamboyant British horror outings – with an interesting foreword. This man surely knows what he talks about and I definitely enjoyed listening to the trivia items that he shared with the audience, but I'm really not sure if I agree with this review's opening statement. "Killer's Moon" is a sleazy piece of work, no argument there, but I still don't think it compares to – for example - "House of Whipcord", "Prey" or "Inseminoid". What struck me most about "Killer's Moon" is how much better and more significant it easily could have been
This film doesn't necessarily require a bigger budget, nor a more professional cast or even more action/atmosphere. It already has everything, only a slightly more skillful direction and a bit of coherence in the script would have been welcome. The ramshackle bus of a school of choir girls and their two uptight teachers breaks down in the middle of the godforsaken English countryside, and they are forced to spend the night in a castle-hotel that normally is closed for the season. Not a problem, you'd think, except for the fact that four escaped asylum patients are at large in the area. As a result of oddball drug-experiments, these four are high on LSD and under the impression they tripping around in a dream. They break into the hotel and joyously begin raping, murdering and philosophizing, whilst the shrinking group of girls seeks the help of two tough campers. It's a rather preposterous and laughable to assume that mental patients are fed LSD as treatment, let alone that they can freely run around without any kind of authorities searching for them. There are numerous of other improbabilities in the script, like characters suddenly vanishing and that sort of stuff, but I advise not to let them bother you too much. Furthermore "Killer's Moon" is stuffed with gratuitous nudity and "incorrect" misogynic dialogs ("you were only raped, as long as you don't tell anyone about it you'll be alright. You just pretend it never happened"), like a truly rancid product of the late 70's ought to be! Writer/director Alan Birkinshaw's decision to dress up the four lunatics and let them behave exactly like Alex DeLarge and his companions in "A Clockwork Orange" is either a funny homage or a shameless imitation, I don't know. My guess is that it was just a silly idea that popped up in his mind, like the heroic three-legged dog.
