Four mental patients - who, due to unauthorized experiments, believe they're living in a dream and have shed all moral imperatives - escape and find their way to the nearest bus-load of stra... Read allFour mental patients - who, due to unauthorized experiments, believe they're living in a dream and have shed all moral imperatives - escape and find their way to the nearest bus-load of stranded schoolgirls.Four mental patients - who, due to unauthorized experiments, believe they're living in a dream and have shed all moral imperatives - escape and find their way to the nearest bus-load of stranded schoolgirls.
- Director
- Writers
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Joanne Good
- Mary
- (as Jo-Anne Good)
Christine Winter
- Carol
- (as Christina Jones)
- Director
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- All cast & crew
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just dreaming - raping and killing
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.
"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 recipe for fun...burnt in the oven
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.
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.
No shocks, not even crude ones
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!
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!
He tends to believe that other people are the devil and in need of obliterating.
This can best be described as the British version of The Last House on the Left. It has a real sleazy feel as the victims are all virginal high school girls on the way to a choir competition.
Put into the mix a group of psychopathic criminals that just escaped custody. They are drugged and believe themselves to be innocent.
Naturally, the bus carrying the girls - did I mention virginal teens - breaks down right where the criminals are currently trampling the countryside. Oh no.
I would not imagine that many horror fans watch The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, but your partner may have talked you into watch Dancing With the Stars. One of those Housewives/Dancing Stars was Lisa Vanderpump. Back in her early days, when she was just 18, she had one of the killers vanderpumping her funbags. This was the highlight of the film.
Yes, there were more breasts and bush, but it was really brief. This was Jane Hayden's greatest film, but again, it was a brief exposure.
The film was more camp than horror. There was killing, but it was mostly off screen except for the strangling.
I doubt if any virginal teens were harmed in the making of this film.
Put into the mix a group of psychopathic criminals that just escaped custody. They are drugged and believe themselves to be innocent.
Naturally, the bus carrying the girls - did I mention virginal teens - breaks down right where the criminals are currently trampling the countryside. Oh no.
I would not imagine that many horror fans watch The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, but your partner may have talked you into watch Dancing With the Stars. One of those Housewives/Dancing Stars was Lisa Vanderpump. Back in her early days, when she was just 18, she had one of the killers vanderpumping her funbags. This was the highlight of the film.
Yes, there were more breasts and bush, but it was really brief. This was Jane Hayden's greatest film, but again, it was a brief exposure.
The film was more camp than horror. There was killing, but it was mostly off screen except for the strangling.
I doubt if any virginal teens were harmed in the making of this film.
"Was my performance lacking? It usually is."
Drugs, psychopathic criminals, underage sex - it's all going on in this low-budget British shocker. One of the schoolgirls is played by Jane Haydon, sister of horror legend Linda (most famous perhaps for her role as Angel Blake in 'Blood on Satan's Claw').
A busload of stranded girls spend the night in an unfinished hotel 'in the wilds of nowhere', where nearby asylum inmates, tanked up with LSD as part of their experimental therapy, escape and cause horrific carnage.
The escaped inmates' atrocities are very much in the style of the ultra-violence on display in 'The Clockwork Orange', where this film takes a lot of its cues - especially main escapee Mr. Trubshawe (David Jackson - possibly most famous for playing Gan early on in BBC TV space opera Blake's 7). Apart from the subject matter being distinctly unsavoury, there is a lack of pace to the proceedings.
Some of dialogue is alarming. "See - you're better," one girl assures her friend who has just been raped, when she accepts a cup of coffee.
With all this going on, events are surprisingly slow and turgid. Never quite aspiring to the disturbing levels of 'A Clockwork Orange', this is ultimately an average rip-off. My score is 5 out of 10.
A busload of stranded girls spend the night in an unfinished hotel 'in the wilds of nowhere', where nearby asylum inmates, tanked up with LSD as part of their experimental therapy, escape and cause horrific carnage.
The escaped inmates' atrocities are very much in the style of the ultra-violence on display in 'The Clockwork Orange', where this film takes a lot of its cues - especially main escapee Mr. Trubshawe (David Jackson - possibly most famous for playing Gan early on in BBC TV space opera Blake's 7). Apart from the subject matter being distinctly unsavoury, there is a lack of pace to the proceedings.
Some of dialogue is alarming. "See - you're better," one girl assures her friend who has just been raped, when she accepts a cup of coffee.
With all this going on, events are surprisingly slow and turgid. Never quite aspiring to the disturbing levels of 'A Clockwork Orange', this is ultimately an average rip-off. My score is 5 out of 10.
Did you know
- TriviaHannah, the three-legged dog used in this movie, was cast from a local dog agency, and she had lost her leg after saving her master in a robbery at the pub that she lived in.
- GoofsAfter the Doberman enters the tent, Pete produces a length of gauze about 2 feet long to dress its wounds. When the dog later hobbles off into the woods, it is bound up with several yards of bandage.
- SoundtracksThe Beginning
Words and Music by Jayne Lester
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- £170,000 (estimated)
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