Overall Rating:
Nastiness Rating:
Directed by: Jesus Franco
Written by: Erich Tomek
Bloody Moon is another in a long string of Jesus “Jess” Franco films that not only show up on the Nasty list, but end up being pretty fucking awful. The man just really doesn’t seem to know how to pace a movie, make it comprehensible or, actually, interesting in any way beyond “Oh, look! Boobs!”
The film starts with a young lady (fully clothed, strangely enough) staring into the camera against a dark background. Her lips never move, but she says, “Miguel, I’m your sister. Don’t look at me that way. Go back to the dance.”
Cut to a horrible disco party with everyone in costume, including our “hero,” Miguel. He has a horribly disfigured face that he chooses to cover with a Mickey Mouse mask. He takes a pretty young lady back to her room and almost gets laid. Then she takes the mask off and is instantly disgusted. She no longer wants sex, but he keeps trying, eventually grabbing a pair of scissors and penetrating her the only way he can. (Unfortunately, the scissors stab at an obvious mannequin torso, chipping away plaster instead of cutting through skin.)
Five years later, Miguel is being let out of the psyche ward into the custody of his sister, Manuela. She’s never allowed to mention that “unfortunate night.”
On the train home, Miguel sees a young lady who catches his fancy. Manuela immediately accuses him of killing her when she disappears for five seconds after the lights go off. (“Disappears” is a strong word. More like, “Goes out of frame.”)
Home is a language school that Manuela runs with their mother, an old bat in a wheelchair. Within about five minutes of meeting said old bat, someone attacks her with a BRIGHT LIGHT! Dunno where she goes, but she’s not seen for a long time.
Next up is a pool party at the school where a young man is greeted by two topless girls who promptly push him into the pool.
The girl from the train, Angela, ends up being a student at the school (naturally) and Miguel becomes obsessed with her. He follows her home in broad daylight, probably because of her Grace Jones t-shirt. Of course, it’s broad daylight, so it’s really not particularly creepy. She goes home, showers, gets dressed, leaves the house, meets some friends and…NOTHING HAPPENS. It’s just another boring day in her life except for the horribly disfigured man who was seen occasionally in her vicinity. Even that wasn’t all that weird.
Miguel runs to his sister’s place and proceeds to seduce/be seduced by her. Turns out that they did it all those years ago, but they really shouldn’t anymore. If only they could “get rid of everyone around [them].”
That isn’t foreshadowing or anything.
The guy from the pool (I think…could be a different guy, actually) shows up at the disco. Conveniently, the disco appears to be on campus. The same ladies (topped, this time) greet him and joke around with him. They call him a “Latin lover.” I’m pretty sure he’s not even a little bit “Latin.”
Angela goes home and goes to bed where someone is hanging out with a knife. For a split second, we get “Knife cam”! There’s an arm attached to the camera and the hand is holding a knife. Probably the coolest part of the entire movie. Unfortunately, it’s ruined when Angela wakes up, turns around, and apparently the killer just completely dissipates because she doesn’t see him at all, even though he was right in front of her. Instead, she lets her friend, Eva, in to borrow a sweater. Eva gets killed with a knife to the boob. Angela comes out to see her friend skewered and runs out of the house…in a completely different shirt. (Apparently, she had time for a quick costume change.) One of the guys sees her and tells her how crazy she is. He goes in and, of course, Eva’s body is gone.
Angela is very nearly convinced that she’s just crazy, but she runs around looking for Eva anyway. She goes to one of the gardeners (possibly the same guy from the pool and the disco, but possibly a different dude) and tries to get him to help. He finally consents but ruins it all by trying to help her. He uses his gardening shears to kill a snake. But since Angela has gone a little bit crazy, she thinks he’s trying to kill her in front of people. He also throws the bloody shears (snake blood, not her blood) on the ground when he realizes that she’s scared. Then she runs away from him, refusing to listen to anything he might have to say.
Meanwhile, the other girls (who think that Angela is as crazy as a shit house rat) are outside of another girl’s house, listening to her “have sex.” She’s actually faking it so that they think she’s got a guy in there. They find her out and laugh at her.
Oh yeah, and Eva’s body is hanging out in her closet for some reason. No one notices. At all. Ever.
This virgin girl (who seemed very vengeful towards the other girls) ends up going to some logging castle (?!) with a mystery man. We convolutedly never see his face and she constantly says things like, “I’ve never done anything like THIS before! I’m up for anything! Whatever you wanna do!” as he ties her to a rock slab. Very tightly.
He then starts up the giant circular saw. She then starts screaming her head off.
A little boy happens to be outside and sees the whole thing. He runs in to turn the saw off, only to be batted away by the mystery man. The kid runs off and the girl loses her (again, obviously) mannequin head. Blood gushes out of a hole in the mannequin and the killer gets back in his car to RUN THE LITTLE BOY DOWN LIKE A DOG!
Yep. Jesus has no problem killing children. No problem.
Back home, Angela is packing when Antonio (the guy with the shears…I’m pretty sure this is the first time his name is used) comes over to explain everything. She’s not listening and runs to the other door where Miguel is hanging out. She barricades every door in the place, grabs a knife and waits for morning. When it finally comes, her bedroom door slowly…slowly…PAINFULLY slowly begins to open. Eventually it barely opens and THE PHONE RINGS! Then a CAT JUMPS THROUGH THE DOOR!
Fuck you, Jess Franco. I hate you so much.
Angela runs to the next room for some reason, turns around and sees a vaguely man-shaped shadow…that’s not moving at all. She FUCKING BACKS AWAY FROM IT! You know, instead of turning around to see what it could be. She, of course, runs into the person/thing casting said shadow, turns around and stabs, stabs, STABS! Then she runs out of the room to find Random Girl. She tells her that she’s just killed someone in the next room. RG goes in there to see a dead dummy on the floor.
Angela is painfully stupid.
Random Girl goes out to get some beer and is met by the killer. He kills her with a…um…I’m not really sure what the hell it is. You know those things that people used to use to pick up logs from fireplaces? Fireplace tongs, I guess? These were bigger. Big enough, in fact, to go around a neck with PLENTY of room to NOT kill the person. But it killed her.
Back home, Angela starts to find the bodies of all of her friends…including Random Girl who was JUST FUCKING KILLED!
The killer attacks her and Miguel comes to the rescue.
What? You didn’t ACTUALLY think that he was the killer, did you? Of course not. It’s GOT to be someone else.
Angela runs away and the killer knocks Miguel out with a block of wax? It’s something that smooshes, cracks and yet makes him bleed.
Angela gets to the next house over and one of the mentally challenged gardeners comes at her with the very device that killed Random Girl. She also sees that her teacher (who has been almost completely unimportant until now) is waiting for something. He gets in his car and leaves. She then runs to Manuela’s house.
(Remember her?)
Manuela sends Angela into her bedroom to get some sleep. Then the teacher shows up. (Wait…he left in a car BEFORE Angela. How did he get here AFTER her?!) It turns out that Manuela and the teacher are working together to frame Miguel for all of these murderers so that she never has to see his ugly face again and she can get the money that her hateful mother left to him.
Unfortunately, Manuela is greedy and tells the teacher that his only payment is having sex with her. Otherwise, he’s out of the picture. “Now, get up there and kill the last girl!” They fight.
Meanwhile, Miguel has come to and gets to his sister’s house. He’s figured out what’s going on, goes to her bedroom and attacks Angela, thinking it’s Manuela. Angela sticks a…knitting needle(?)…into his neck, seemingly killing him. She runs downstairs to see Manuela and the teacher fighting. She runs away from the fight to the next room where the mother’s rotting corpse is hanging out.
The teacher sees her and goes after her, but Manuela gets to him first with a big electric saw that just happens to be laying around her living room. (That’s where you keep those, right?) “I just saved your life! Remember that! It was all Miguel and your teacher! Now, go!”
This is when Miguel comes back to life, kills his sister and falls down dead beside her.
Angela runs out of the house and into the arms of…some dude. I have no idea who he was, but he may or may not have been the guy from the pool/disco. Or he could be someone else. I don’t know. These guys were completely interchangeable.
As with all Jess Franco films, I really didn’t know or care what happened through the entire film. I only know that there was gore and boobs, sometimes at the same time. The gore was almost inept but cool in its own stupid way.
No comment on the boobs.
Not a particularly good Nasty. Not totally terrible, but not good, either. I would probably not recommend the movie to anyone unless they just had to see a Jess Franco movie.
If you can’t tell, I’m not really a fan of Jess Franco. He managed to make 14,983 movies that are pure exploitation. Their only reason for existence is to allow Jess to film naked women. All the while, a small faction of people call them “art.” Take The Bare Breasted Countess, for instance. There is NO plot in that movie. It’s all about Lina Romay’s breasts. But some people think that’s high art. It’s actually about Lina roaming around the woods with her kit off. That’s fine, I guess, but after half an hour, I was done. Then it went on for about 15 more hours.
This is a better film than that, but it’s still not good. But none of the women in Bloody Moon could hold a candle to Lina Romay.