Warlock Moon

"Warlock Moon" offered B-movie suspense, coupled with a small budget. The film was made in my hometown of Livermore, CA in 1972, but was held from release until 1975 because of reasons already commented upon by another poster.

The premiere was held at the Vine Cinema in Livermore. As I recall, the theater was packed with teens, mostly from the two high schools in town (Livermore and Granada). It was on a double bill with "The Other." Girls screamed in horror throughout the film, although in hindsight the film had little horror. One teen got tired of the screaming, and told the audience to shut up, which brought some laughs.

It was interesting to see scenes of Livermore on the screen...the public library, the abandoned TB center, the old Vineyard shopping center. If you grew up in Livermore in the 70s, you might remember this little film.

The premise of Warlock Moon is actually pretty simple: girl meets intriguing boy, boy courts her, takes her to a mysterious building, strange things happen, mystery becomes terrifying and then not so, and then ends in a scream. In effect, this is a Gothic Mystery!

Gothic stories always center around an old ruin or haunted building which acts as a center of mystery. The plot device serves to ratchet up the tension by challenging the heroine (sometimes a hero, but not often) to distinguish between what is real, and what is a result of their own nervousness. H.P. Lovecraft used the same sort of device in his famous horror stories. A proper Gothic creates its own atmosphere of mystery and creeping terror. Unlike a mystery, however, a Gothic tale also has an element of romance in it; if, however, the romance can survive the fear that ensues.

Warlock Moon fails, however, because the characters never really emerge from their cardboard-cutout status. It's hard to root for the heroine, Jenny McAllister, because you always want more from her. She foresees the poisoned drink, but never quite breaks free from the mysterious events surrounding her.

Compounding the problem is the stultifying pace of the film. Sometimes it seems as though the actors themselves are deliberately moving slowly so as to use up time blocks. It doesn't help that at times the picture seems to have a "frosted glass" effect on the fringes of the screen, adding to the Gothic feel of the movie.

Filmed in the small town of Livermore, California, the movie still has a bit of celebrity status in that community. When Warlock Moon had finished production, it had a Grand Opening show at the local Vine Theater. All the local residents including notables like the mayor made a great show of attending the premiere screening. Of course the film bombed, which made the event all the more enjoyable, sort of in the style of MST3K!

The setting for the film's climax was at an abandoned tuberculosis treatment facility, which burned down about ten years later. That area is now the site of Camp Arroyo, and is almost unrecognizable from the mysterious ruins shown in Warlock Moon.

A member of the Livermore Heritage Guild, a local historical society, is looking for a copy of Warlock Moon for posterity's sake. He has asked me to relay word to any other filmmakers that he's also looking forward to seeing a much better film made in Livermore.

WARLOCK MOON is one of the overlooked little classics of the American horror film's fascination with witchcraft & satanic covens that spawned dozens of adventuresome, low budget films that became staples of cult cinema: RACE WITH THE DEVIL, THE DEVIL'S RAIN, BLOOD SABBATH, NECROMANCY, ENTER THE DEVIL, WEREWOLVES ON WHEELS, "Brotherhood Of Satan", etc. Europe had its vampires & werewolves, but the satanic witch covens seemed to be a predominantly American fad, and if the production of this gem had not lead up the blind alley that it infamously went it would have been regarded as a classic of the form.

This time out we meet a perky, cheerful young college coed played by "Eight Is Enough" actress Laurie Walters, who spends the first half of the film wearing a skin-tight sheer blouse that looks painted on with nary a coconut brassiere in sight. If girls dressed like that nowadays we might not have had time for the War On Terror at all let alone going to Mars. I mention her attire only because the first time through her chest was the sole focus of my attention for her entire duration on screen, resulting in my missing a delirious little nightmare of a world that the filmmakers contrived out of next to nothing.

The key feature is the beguiling location they utilized to shoot the bulk of the film: A dilapidated, creepy, run down, unwholesome looking unused health spa out in the middle of nowhere. The place is a marvel of decay, gloom, and Gothic menace worthy of a Euro Horror castle with its misty passageways & cobweb infested dungeons. Only this time its a huge, maze like series of interconnected structures that used to serve as a health resort. The walls are all falling down, the doors half off their hinges, discarded rubbish, broken glass, and household oddments litter the empty, twisting hallways that go nowhere other than claustrophobic little rooms. Some of them have padlocked meat lockers, some have cabalistic symbols drawn on the floor, and the whole setting is something right out of a nightmare.

The story concerns Ms. Walters being smooth talked by a young guy claiming to be a newspaper photographer to accompany him on a semi-romantic picnic in the country. Played by "Hill Street Blues" favorite Joe Spano, the guy comes off as charming & professional, and even though she called the newspaper looking for him and they had never heard his name before, she agrees, and he takes her to see the old spa first. There they encounter a dear little old tottering lady, living alone in a small furnished room where she makes tea and sandwiches and quickly ingratiates herself onto the young couple. The young lady gets lost in the maze of passageways, encounters ghostly figures and bizarre occurrences that the others have a hard time believing.

That's about all I want to say about the plot, which contain just as many twists, empty rooms, and unexpected ends as the spa location itself. To ruin any of the fun would be unthinkable, though it should be added that there are aspects of the movie that might strike some as shortcomings, the most important being the actress playing the elderly woman. Yes she overacts and hams it up, but I would argue that it is exactly what the film required and that she created a memorable character.

And in fact I'd say that one of the film's strengths is how it plays up this idea of forced politeness when confronted with someone so unrelentingly creepy. The social pressure to be polite in situations where things seem a bit odd is something we have all had to endure. One can sympathize with the young woman's natural urge to want to be nice to the lady, and the film does a marvelous job of taking that idea to an almost surreal barrage of increasingly creepy behavior that eventually pushes the girl over the brink in the film's most ingenious scene.

The film is ultimately perhaps more tightly written than its execution might suggest, and filled with startling little touches like the two berserk guys running around with axes, a theme involving cannibalism, some eye popping still frame photography and an unrelenting atmosphere of claustrophobia. The double twist ending is also fun, with the film ending on a decidedly downbeat paranoid 70s note that seems to have predominated in the form. Fans of the genre will be very pleased, and the background of how the movie came to be is even just as fascinating if not more.

7/10

Jenny, a college student meets John, a cub reporter and together they find horror at an abandoned spa.

Like many others, I discovered this on late night TV when WOR in New York showed low budget and forgotten horror films. This is low on gore but great on atmosphere and shocking twists. Laurie Walters (later on Eight Is Enough) and Joe Spano (Hill Street Blues) are likable as the couple. Edna Macafee is creepy as the initially kind old woman they meet. She is the kind of scary old hag you may see in other films of the time like "Lemora-The Lady Dracula" and "Don't Look In The Basement". The low budget and grainy photography, so prevalent in early 1970s horror are great assets in this film. This also touches on subjects such as Satanism, cannibalism and ghosts. Other similar films are the well known "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and the lesser know "Terror At Red Wolf Inn".

Don't miss this one if you like these type of films, the ending is a shocker!

A college girl from Berkely and her new beau (Laurie Walters and Joe Spano) take a trip for a picnic and wind up at a rundown spa resort. They meet the old biddy living there (Edna MacAfee), but something weird seems to be going on, possibly even sinister.

"Warlock Moon" (1973) starts out with bits reminiscent of "Night of the Living Dead" before eventually taking a path similar to "Let's Scare Jessica to Death" and "Necromancy," the latter with Pamela Franklin and Orson Welles, which was reissued as "The Witching" with extra (unneeded) sensationalistic footage in 1983. Tobe Hooper obviously borrowed from it for his "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," upping the ante in every department.

This is easily the least of these due to its sparse cast and tediously mundane happenings, not to mention the one-dimensional setting of the dilapidated spa resort. Yet there are enough highlights for those interested and it deserves credit as an early slasher before the craze kicked off five years later.

The working title was "Blood Spa" and it was released to TV & video as "Bloody Spa" in the USA & UK. While that's certainly a fitting name, "Warlock Moon" isn't exactly a misnomer, as some maintain. (Skip the rest of this paragraph if you haven't seen the movie, as there are slight spoilers). To explain, certain characters are definitely involved in ritualistic sorcery, including at least one male; and a warlock is a man who practices sorcery, aka witchcraft. As for "Moon," it's obviously nighttime when this ritual is performed, so there's certainly a moon in the sky (regardless of whether or not clouds cover it). 'Moon' in this context would simply refer to the dead of night (pun intended).

Likable Laurie Walters costarred in the amusingly risqué (but eye-rolling) "The Harrad Experiment" just before this and eventually went on to TV fame with Eight Is Enough from 1977-1981 (which I've never seen, but practically everyone has seen pics or clips from that show).

It runs 1 hour, 22 minutes, but there are several minutes of deleted scenes worth checking out on Youtube, particularly the cops pulling the couple over in the first act, which explains a couple of things later on. It was shot at the University of California in Berkeley, which is north of Oakland, and 37 miles southeast of there in Livermore (the spa resort), which is east of Dublin.

GRADE: C+