Killer's Moon

Four mental patients -- who, due to unauthorized experiments, believe they are living in a dream and have shed all moral imperatives -- escape and find their way to the nearest bus-load of stranded schoolgirls.

What makes this film interesting for me, besides the ethical questions (can the killers be held accountable if they think they are dreaming), is the music. Along with a jazzy version of "Three Blind Mice", we have some music that is dreamlike (appropriately) and also quite moody and dark (also appropriate). It was, for me, the difference between the movie being bad and good.

Due to its (fake) animal cruelty and dismissive attitude towards rape, the film has been called "the most tasteless movie in British cinema history." While that is surely an exaggeration, I do think these elements helped give it the cult following it apparently now has. I can see it being mocked by people in a loving way.

"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.

As sleazy horrorsploitation ideas go, you can hardly imagine any better than "Inmates escape sanitorium. where they are undergoing 'LSD therapy,' and thus think they're dreaming everything when they attack a girls' choir and their minders whose bus breaks down in the English countryside."

The thing that is most impressive about "Killer's Moon," however, is that it's so ineptly made there is almost no lurid camp value--and, needless to say, no suspense or terror. The acting is highly variable, from competent under the circumstances to laughably bad. But no one is helped by the terrible, plodding dialogue--which, incredibly, author Fay Weldon (who contributed to the script because her brother was the director) later bragged about, feeling in retrospect it was a mistake to gift her excellent writing to such an otherwise poor film. Well, she certainly sank to the occasion, even if obviously her ego survived the experience. It's the crap dialogue that provides the rare unintentional laugh here.

The violence here is for the most part laughably mild (in fact mostly off-screen), the behaviors psychologically ridiculous, the continuity gaps mile-wide, and the pacing deadly. I really hoped for some guilty pleasure with this one, but it is just a slog.

Four criminal psychopaths undergoing LSD therapy (!) that escaped from a lunatic asylum. A group of stranded schoolgirls lodged in a mansion/castle. The four psychos will make their way to the girls through a string of murders. When they meet the girls, there will be a massacre - rape and murder.

"Killer's Moon", story wise, is the exploitation buff's dream, but there's no real nudity (just some bits of flesh), sex is more suggested than shown, and there's violence (not very explicit) but no gore. But this isn't really important because the story is violent and sleazy.

"Killer's Moon" may not be a great film but I've quite enjoyed it - besides having a good story, it's ironic, involuntarily funny and bizarre (suffice it to mention the three-legged dog!).

Recommended for those who love the 70s exploitation films.

A staggeringly dull and inept horror film, which amazingly enjoyed a national UK cinema release during 1978. Standards must have been lower then.

The inane premise has a busload of schoolgirls meandering bafflingly through the wilds of the Lake District en route to Scotland (why aren't they going up the motorway?) They and their teachers are terrorised by four psychopaths who escaped while being given experimental drug therapy at a cottage hospital (!). You would expect the fells to be knee-deep in police searching for such obviously dangerous characters, but not one is seen until the end, when a patrol car trundles into view.

Even allowing for such illogicalities, the potential is there for crude shocks but director Birkinshaw blows it entirely. Potentially suspenseful scenes are completely bungled and little dramatic use is made of the Lake District setting. The clumsy dialogue and sub-Clockwork Orange posturings of the psychopaths make parts of the film more laughable than terrifying. However, the "National Health Service psychiatrist line" is hilarious and few other horror films feature a moving eulogy to a three-legged dog!