Deathmoon

This May 31,2008 marks the 30th anniversary of the premiere of Deathmoon.

I remember when this movie first aired on TV, I liked it then and I still like it to this day. An average horror movie not gory but remember it was a made-for-TV-movie.

An over worked businessman(Robert Foxworth "Falcon Crest") on the advise of his doctor, goes to Hawaii on a vacation to rest and relax...right! He doesn't realize he is cursed and even in Hawaii when the full moon rises "he who is cursed will transform himself from an ordinary man into a vicious beast".

This may have been one of the last werewolf movies which showed the wolf to look like a "wolf-man". Having a wolf head and paws wearing clothes and walking upright,as later on in movies like "The Howling","An American Werewolf in London", and "Silver Bullet" to name a few,showed the wolf to look more like a "werewolf", with the long nose,pointy ears,tail,and walking on all fours and looking so beastly, it would have made little red riding hood's wolf tuck tail and run. That is until years later when Jack Nicholson howled at the moon in "Wolf". This movie also stars Joe Penny,who went on to star in series like "Riptide" and "Jake and the Fatman".

The music was eerie and the movie was great. For fans like me of those 70's made-for-TV horror movies, this is a must.

This flick was made for television and is only available in the US on ex-rental VHS. It was made just before the new rise of the horrors. But this really is a turkey. You really must see the special effects used. It's about a man being cursed by some inmates when he is on holiday. Soon he realizes that he's a werewolf. He hunts his preys on the resort he is staying but I must say, where is the blood. I haven't ween one drip of the red stuff in this flick. There are even shootings and people get hurt but no sign of blood. The best part are the last few seconds when we have a close-up of the face of the werewolf. The werewolf itself looks ridicuulous. The effects used are just done with some cheap editing. It reminded me of The Wolfman of 1941 were they used the same effect. But overall it's more about a love story between a woman and the so called werewolf. The cover of the VHS looks amazing, if that was included in this flick, well, it surely would be a classic. No sign of those hands or even of the naked girl. It also reminded me of Paul Naschy's performances as a werewolf. But the reason why some people track it down is for Joe Perry, here in one of his first full features just before becoming famous in Jake And The Fatman. Rare feature that must be seen to believe.

CURSE OF THE HAWAIIAN WEREWOLF. Terror and horror under a Hawaiian full moon... Jaahaa, sounds cool, doesn't it? Think again...

While technically I remember this to be the very first werewolf film - or one of the first - I saw as a tiny little kid on a late night TV channel, I actually remembered little else of it (aside from the ending terrifying me). Probably because of the complete film being, uh, well, pretty much ballocks. What we got here, is a werewolf in Hawaii, in a motion picture flavored with ancient native sorcery (a curse, always scary stuff!), horribly colored shirts and dangerously short sporting shorts. All this could work, but it doesn't.

So what did I get out of this film? Well,... a lot of muzak (seriously, will you listen to all those hideous tunes on the soundtrack) and some great textbook examples of experimental cross-cutting. Sergej Eisenstein should see this - he'd be proud. And then there's Robert Foxworth running around in werewolf make-up. I imagine this film to be a very tedious watch for the regular viewer, but if you manage to place yourself in the minds of the people who made this, you'll have a hard time wiping that grin off your face. It's just so ridiculous how they put this movie together. Especially the "cleverly planned" romantic interludes between Foxworth and Barbara Trentham are always a hoot to which you can set a timer. But the most painful thing about this film, is that Foxworth is the actual werewolf. The viewer knows this from the start, but Foxworth's character doesn't (It's you, Foxworth! Wake up, man, it's YOU! ...aw, Christ!). He always wakes up every morning, but has no clue about what he'd been up to all night ("Hmmm, must have been too much sun and alcohol..."). Now, any film in which the viewer knows everything from the first minute, but all the other characters are running around trying to figure things out, is just a plain bore to sit through. In this case, an often funny bore, yes, but you'll be glad to see the credits roll after that final "shocking" surprise end-shot.

Finally, I can imagine one of the very first production meetings of this film having went a little as follows. Throw in a producer (P), director (D) and writer (W):

P: "Let's make a film about a guy going to Hawaii on a holiday and have him change into a werewolf every night."

D: "Great! I love werewolf movies. I want to direct one."

P: "Fine! Writer, figure something out to make the guy a werewolf."

W: "Okay, we could put a curse on him, because his ancestors were evil missionaries... or something."

P: "Wonderful angle! I like it! Anything else?"

W: "I could throw in a redundant subplot about a thief, robbing rooms. So the police can run around clueless."

P: "Excellent! Who's going to play the leading guy?"

W: "I suggest Robert Foxworth. He usually doesn't have a clue about the characters he's playing."

D: "Uh, could I direct some romantic interludes too? I like those."

P: "Yeah sure. Romance always works."

D: "What about tits? I want to shoot some naked breasts too."

W: "I could write a gratuitous shower-scene into the script"

P: "Okay for the shower-scene. But no tits. Remember, this is going to be shown on television. And put Foxworth in a shower somewhere too, for the ladies. But don't show his butt, D."

D: "Aw, darn. I like Foxworth's butt."

P: "Okay, all set then. W, you get your script ready in a week. I'll book us some tickets to Hawaii. I could use a holiday myself."

D: "Yipii! We're gonna make a werewolf movie in Hawaii!"

P: "Shut up, D. Go shoot this movie or you're not getting paid."

Sure they got away with this. It was the 70's. They got this movie made.

This TV horror movie from 1978 is about Robert "Falcon Crest" Foxworth playing a burnt out business man spending a week of vacation on Hawaii. As he is suffering from weird nightmares he's trying to find enough relaxation on the beautiful tiki island, but once he has arrived a series of cruel slayers started... He is shocked to find out that a witch has put a curse on him who is turning him to a werewolf at night as his ancestor was a brutal missionary who has violently tried to convert the native Hawaiians some hundred years ago.

For a TV flick, it's a well-done scary movie with a cool setting (cheap werewolf costumes in seventies Hawaii cocktail lounge locations), a weird electronic sound track and a stunning witch queen played by France Nuyen. Though the story and the thrills are a bit weak it's worth to watch!

Deathmoon recycles that hoary old horror cliché, the cursed descendant; in this case it's work-weary property developer Jason Palmer (Robert Foxworth) who pays for the sins of his great grandfather, a missionary who destroyed the sacred altar of a Polynesian tribe. When Jason takes a well-earned vacation to Hawaii, he finds himself cursed by Hawaiian witch Tapulua (France Nuyen) and changes into a werewolf whenever there is a full moon. Numerous guests at the resort are killed, and it is up to hotel detective Rick Bladen (Joe Penny) to try and solve the case.

A made-for-TV movie, Deathmoon is clearly restricted in what it can show in terms of gore and nudity (there's a very coy shower scene and the supposedly gruesome killings occur off-camera), while the meagre budget allows for just the one dreadful transformation scene, which uses clumsy dissolves between the different stages of werewolf make-up (and is no better than Lon Chaney's transformation in The Wolf Man decades earlier).

With limited sex and violence, director Bruce Kessler pads out his film with travelogue style scenery, pointless songs courtesy of a hotel singer, and a boring subplot about a room thief at large. Eye-candy is provided by Barbara Trentham as Jason's holiday romance partner Dianne, who naturally becomes the woman-in-peril in the film's predictable climax.

3.5/10, rounded up to 4 for IMDb.