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
- Stars
Joanne Good
- Mary
- (as Jo-Anne Good)
Christine Winter
- Carol
- (as Christina Jones)
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Featured reviews
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!
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.
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.
This movie does what is currently the norm in slasher/horror films of current day. It promises a gutter trash plot and delivers none of it.
Four psychos, or pouncy overacting stage actors, I'm not sure which, escape from a mental hospital and wreck havoc on the land. Convienently, A bus load of nubile teenage girls is passing through the area and not surprisingly the bus breaks down. Now, The fun begins, right? Sorry, Not in this movie. The loonies, who are high on experimental LSD treatment, tend to annoy the girls more than terrorize them. There are a few nude scenes by the various actresses but they seem more thrown in as an afterthought, or a way to convince somebody to see this movie because the plot or acting surely won't do it. Basically, A bad movie with bad special effects, bad lighting, and bad acting. Case in point, One of the girls, in her nightgown of course, flees from her attacker and runs all the way to the lake, where she gets the back of her nightgown caught on a nail and the nightgown rips down the front in a perfect tear! Explain that one if you can.
Four psychos, or pouncy overacting stage actors, I'm not sure which, escape from a mental hospital and wreck havoc on the land. Convienently, A bus load of nubile teenage girls is passing through the area and not surprisingly the bus breaks down. Now, The fun begins, right? Sorry, Not in this movie. The loonies, who are high on experimental LSD treatment, tend to annoy the girls more than terrorize them. There are a few nude scenes by the various actresses but they seem more thrown in as an afterthought, or a way to convince somebody to see this movie because the plot or acting surely won't do it. Basically, A bad movie with bad special effects, bad lighting, and bad acting. Case in point, One of the girls, in her nightgown of course, flees from her attacker and runs all the way to the lake, where she gets the back of her nightgown caught on a nail and the nightgown rips down the front in a perfect tear! Explain that one if you can.
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.
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.
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
- How long is Killer's Moon?Powered by Alexa
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Official site
- Language
- Also known as
- Killer's moon
- Filming locations
- Production company
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Budget
- £170,000 (estimated)
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content