Deathmoon

Death Moon (1978) is an awful movie that is boring and a tedious watch. I had the unfortunate opportunity was actually renting this garbage a while back. The videotape cover tricked me. It promised me a straight forward horror flick. All I got was a snooze fest of a television movie that was the same tired old tripe. I thought I saw some bad productions in the past but this has to rank with the worst of the bunch.

A dude is vacationing in Hawaii (I guess that's where they spent the budget) and is troubled by the natives. He infuriates them with his presence. One night he wakes up and discovers he's been cursed. By whom or what we don't know. If you want to find out why or what he's cursed with (one is appearing in this stupid movie) you'll have to go to your local independent video store and find out for yourself. Be warned this movie stinks on ice.

Not recommended. It'll neither please werewolf fans or bad movie lovers.

Deathmoon (1978) - I've gotta say, Jason Palmer (Robert Foxworth) is one really nice guy.

But boy, does he make dumb decisions.

I mean, the poor guy is completely stressed out at work, and he's having vague, sweaty nightmares about crazy voodoo ceremonies on an island.

His doctor tells him it's time to chill out. Urges him to take a nice vacation.

And what does Jason do?

He sees a poster for Hawaii, and one of the images on it is a voodoo mask.

Sure, why not? Sold.

Now to be fair, Jason also goes to Hawaii because his grandfather was a missionary worker there back in the day. It was a bit of a nostalgia trip for him. He isn't aware, though, that the old man ran afoul of a voodoo priestess, who put a curse on the family.

I'm not sure that if Jason had just stayed in California - or gone to chill in, like, Vegas, he'd have started sprouting extraneous hair and fangs. But when he goes to grandpa's old stomping grounds, it sure brings out the beast in him.

This kind of throws a monkey wrench into a budding romance Jason has with a woman he meets at the resort named Diane (Barbara Trentham). Needless to say, he becomes a pain in the neck as well for the other vacationing guests on the island.

Lieutenant Russ Cort (Dolph Sweet) and out-of-sight ladies man and hotel detective/handyman Rick Bladen (Joe Penny), meanwhile, have their hands full trying to sort things out.

We're talking Made-for-TV here, so the gore is at a minimum, and the naughty bits are very, very, very tame. I wasn't on the edge of my seat very often, either. But there were some cool werewolf attack scenes in between the filler romantic overtures between Jason and Diane.

I've read a few complaints about wolfie's "look," but quite honestly, I didn't have a problem with it. There was one full transformation scene, and again, I liked it better than most. I guess I'm easy to please.

One bonus for me was that Debralee Scott made an appearance as a vacationing stewardess named Sherry Weston. Such an appealing, wonderful performer. Left acting too early and died too soon.

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.

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.

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!