Deathmoon

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!

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.

Oh my God, this movie stars Joe Penny!! I thought he never did anything apart from that horrendous cop show "Jake and the Fatman" and maybe some other cheesy TV-crap! Even in the late 70's already, he was a lousy and stupid-looking actor who exclusively portrayed womanizing macho men with limited brain capacity. And "Deathmoon" is everything you expect from a cheap and anonymous 70's TV-production! It's really boring with an incoherent plot and a complete lack of excitement! The basic given is perhaps original – werewolves in Hawaï – but the elaboration is truly poor and amateurish. Robert Foxworth (another antipathetic TV-actor) plays a overstressed businessman on vacation in Hawaï, but there he transforms into a hungry werewolf and kills fellow hotel guests. Apparently the reasons for all this is that his ancestor the missionary upset some of the aboriginals back in 1870 and they placed a werewolf curse upon his bloodline. Joe 'Jake' Penny plays the hunky hotel security guard who seduces stewardesses and wears idiotic shirts. The wolf make-up effects are miserable and there's absolutely no action on screen. Everyone always talks about horribly torn apart corpses, yet we don't get to see a single drop of blood. That's just unforgivably weak, even for a TV-movie. There's too much tedious exotic dancing going on and the dialogs are dreadful! Pure crap, avoid it like the plague.

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.

Oh yeah, this absolutely looks and feels like the TV movie that it is, from the moment it begins. Modest production values, overwrought presentation, and as we almost always inevitably discover, a declination of the same level of violence and darkness that would surely characterize a theatrical release of the same material. For good measure find a VHS (or digitization thereof), making the 70s aesthetics and production sensibilities all the more endearing. Of course, that the premise effectively amounts to "Werewolf in Paradise" really says a lot about what producer Jay Benson concocted to air on CBS; moreover, there's nothing particularly new or original here, with the vibes and the story being very familiar. Yet that's the nature of this format, and if you're looking for something that ostensibly fits into the "horror" genre but which is on the much lighter side of things, you could do worse than 'Deathmoon.'

Filmed in Kaua'i, we get a lot of footage of the beautiful surroundings, a fair amount of footage of beautiful and scantily clad women, and a very light, carefree tone that dominates for a long time in these ninety minutes. There are some extra nice touches throughout, even in the extra insouciant first act, but it's not until one-third of the runtime has elapsed that the story especially starts moving. This picture isn't the place to find a majorly gripping narrative, let alone thrills, but the tale is suitably engaging as workaholic Jason is directed to vacation by his doctor, and he discovers something about himself while in Hawaii as strange goings-on mount at the resort where he's staying. Benson and George Schenck's screenplay could have been more dramatic and impactful, yes, and likewise the realization by director Bruce Kessler, but the foundations are solid enough, and there's just enough strength in this iteration to keep us watching.

Paul Chihara's music is one of the more plainly admirable elements on hand. The score is sometimes varied to the point of being kind of scattered, but it helps to lend some atmosphere to the proceedings. That's helpful, in this case, since the title mostly operates as a mystery, and even though there's one attack earlier and hints of more substantive plot, it's not until the end of the second act that we're first treated to a scene which notably carries itself with more vibrancy. Nonetheless the narrative and scene writing is capable such as it is, and Kessler - and his cast - do as much as they can to facilitate the sobriety and vitality, lesser but still present, that this does boast. Among others, this is certainly a credit to lead Robert Foxworth, and co-stars including Joe Penny and Barbara Trentham. Furthermore, I appreciate the lighting that lends ambience while allowing nighttime shoots to remain duly discernible, and some sharp instances of editing, and in broad terms this is basically as well made as we'd suppose of like contemporary fare, including production design and art direction.

Among other tidbits, the feature could have done more to explore and play with the origins of Jason's condition, and more generally the angle of supernatural doings. I can understand violence being downplayed given the television format, but it's pushed to an unusually small corner even for that medium. It's also noteworthy how very, very little we see of the transformed werewolf - mere flashes, really - though in fairness that may be for the best, since the "special makeup" in this example is all but the absolute minimum. Still, for all the many shortcomings in 'Deathmoon,' it's not as if the flick is specifically flawed. It's ably made, at large, and at its best, it's fairly sharp with a minor buzz of electricity. By no means is this something that demands viewership, and anyone who has a hard time abiding TV movies won't find anything here to change their mind. For all that it is, though, 'Deathmoon' is reasonably enjoyable, and it's worth checking out if one happens to come across it.