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9 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
Not as bad as people make out, 2 February 2004
Author: RareSlashersReviewed from London

Not to be confused with Bloody Moon, Jesus Franco's gore feast of 1980; this Australian lensed slasher imitates the popular ‘killer on campus' plotline that's so frequently used by its US counterparts. It's fairly amusing just how much Alec Mills tries to make this as American as he possibly can, but thankfully he refrains from asking the cast to perform unconvincing accents. As a matter of fact, the characters that are actually supposed to be from the States still speak in flawless Aus! Hmmm!

In the small town of Coopers Bay, there are two Hi-schools situated right next door to each other. There's Winchester, an all boys comprehensive and St Elizabeth's, a girl's only Catholic faculty. They are separated by woodland where pupils from both can meet and engage in things that they'd rather their teachers didn't witness! An unseen killer begins murdering the youngsters as they fornicate, strangling them with a length of barbed wire before removing their eyes and burying them under the soil. Mary, the daughter of a Hollywood movie actress, becomes involved when the killer targets her and Kevin, her boyfriend. But who is this twisted psychopath and why does he want to kill all the kids?

Blood Moon opens with a terrific score courtesy of Brian May and some superb cinematography. The dense woods in which the kids are pursued is brilliantly lighted and I was immediately rather impressed by the general production. After a couple of murders, were introduced to a predictable troupe of troublesome teens and our obvious final girl. There's an interesting subplot that sprouts as one of the local poor kids falls for Mary, the daughter of an actress. The rich Winchester boys hate the local working class, so it's almost like a homage to Romeo and Juliet or West side story but without the Rock and Roll (Instead we get ‘reach for the earplugs' Heavy Metal!). Shakespeare and the slasher genre, what a combination! I bet the poor author would turn in his grave!

There's one really gruesome – if not graphic – murder, involving a desk, a young girl's head and a deranged killer! But aside from that, there's hardly any gore and most of the killings are left to our imagination (boo!). The performances are fairly poor throughout, although Leon Lissek gives a decidedly nasty portrayal. Although it mostly keeps things directly by the book, there are a few twists that you probably won't guess and we also get some background on the reasons for the killer's insanity.

British born Alec Mills' lackadaisical direction left a lot to be desired and he failed to generate as much suspense as was needed. He's better when he works as a camera man as he did on Return of the jedi and various James Bond movies through the seventies and eighties. It's a fairly slow-moving story, but when the killer is revealed things begin to perk up right up until it ends rather suddenly leaving one or two unanswered questions. Like what happened to Kevin? Did he survive? Even though the bodies start piling up toward the finale, the story certainly could have benefited from a few more excursions into the well-lighted woodland with the killer and his length of deadly barbed wire. As it stands, there was too little horror and an excessive amount of teen frolics that didn't really do the movie any favours.

You can ignore most of the bad reviews that slate Blood Moon; it really isn't all that bad. Its just that its not particularly memorable, the sort of film that you'll watch once and forget about immediately after. Perfect for some late-night slicing shenanigans on the TV, but hardly worth the effort of hunting down. As far as Australian slashers go, it manages not to feel as cack-handed as Houseboat Horror, To Become One or the over-rated Cut, but then that's still not much of a worthy compliment. Oh and make sure to place them earplugs back in as soon as you see the end credits. The last songs a killer: `Blood moon is rising, stay home tonight' and `Blood Moon arising over building and over hill, take care if you will!' You get the picture!

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4 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
Not awful, not good, 2 November 2002
Author: Insomniac_moviefan

Those were the days... Where this kind of slashers were a reason for staying home on a Friday night when being 12 or 13 years old.

I remember this movie airing on USA NETWORK almost every 6 months, but it wasn't until the 10th time it aired that I decided to watch it. The first 10 minutes are kind of creepy, then the movie gets boring until the expected end. The killer is no way scary, and even the plenty of gore and hot girls doesn't help "BLOODMOON" being a slasher to be remembered.

Just for die hard fans of the genre.

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4 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
Wretched slasher, 5 January 2006

Author: fertilecelluloid from Mountains of Madness

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Wretched slasher from director Alec Mills should have had its negative impounded and burned by parliamentary decree. Mills, who shot some Bond films, shows no enthusiasm for the genre and doesn't have a clue about generating suspense. Despite the fact that the film had a reasonable budget, it is overlit and totally lacking in mood. There is little gore and most of the murders happen quickly and off-screen. The entire affair has an American feel to it, but the film was lensed in Queensland, Australia, and was released in that country with a William Castle-style gimmick -- patrons too terrified to watch the film all the way through could ankle it to the "chicken cage" in the cinema foyer and collect a refund. As slashers go, it's right down there with "Final Exam". Brian May clearly did this gig for the money, just like the director. Some of this film's producers would later be involved with "The Matrix" films, the godawful "Torque" and the very average "Hurricane Smith".

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2 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
Bloodmoon, 21 January 2009

Author: Scarecrow-88 from United States

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Bloodmoon is one of those rare instances where a rather demandingly tedious first half is redeemed by a thoroughly satisfyingly suspenseful and shocking second half. The plot centers on an Australian community which contains a private boy's school and female boarding school right nearby each other and the students often engage in sexual activity and relations outside of classes. The headmistress and her pu$$ywhipped biology teacher husband of the St Elizabeth's Catholic School for Girls arrived from California fleeing a sordid situation where boy-girl couples were found slaughtered near a lover's lane. We discover that Virginia Sheffield likes young boys and that she has a psychological stranglehold over her husband, Myles(Leon Lissek)using his inability to sexually satisfy her as an object of ridicule, which in turn causes a psychotic mania which motivates a rage to kill girl-boy couples that make love(..have sexual rendezvous)in hidden places. The first section of the film plays like a saucy after-school special featuring local boys who often bicker and fight with the rich snobs of the private school, while the Catholic school girls get naked a lot, freely agreeing to meet males away for some action. Kevin Lynch(Ian Williams), a middle class local surfer with a kind heart, and American Catholic school student Mary Huston(Helen Thomson), whose mom is a Hollywood movie star with a career that seems more important than her daughter's life, blossoming romance is highlighted because Myles is fixated with her. Their relationship and well being will be threatened as Myles makes preparations to execute them, arranging a meeting between the two in the woods(..a place which separates both schools and is used as a means to hook up for making out and having sex). We also see how Myles is mistreated by Virginia who insults him, and this unpleasant relationship, and her naughty behavior with a male student from the private school, are peeks inside a very volatile marriage.

I think if the viewer can make it through the opening thirty or so minutes, where we are treated to the lives of school girls and boys, their misbehaving and other minor melodramas, the film rewards your patience when Myles goes off the deep end and we see the monster for the first time when he viciously attacks two female students who break into his biology class to steal exam questions and instead find a bottle of fingers and eyes, keepsakes of the psychopath from past "conquests." What makes the attacks as shocking is that the girls actually look like real teenage students and Myles just can not stop himself from really inflicting damage. He repeatedly bashes one poor girl's face into a table, several times after she's clearly dead. The chase of another girl, who hurts her ankle falling down steps attempting to flee frantically as the killer is in hot pursuit, only to reach the building's exit, locked by Myles as he buries the knife in her back, is another well established terror scene(..not to mention what she does to him with a cutting tool used for dissection, attempting to escape as he tries to assault her). He loves sticking blades into the torsos of girls as well. We see the aftermath of one teenage boy's murder, his eyes gouged out. The strangulations from a barbwire garrote aren't elaborated for effects, we simply know that this is a method for which he uses on them. One chilling scene has Myles sticking his knife into the stomach of a young girl used to set up Kevin's meeting with Mary, and we see her falter as blood runs down her shirt with the deranged madman escaping as the camera pans back..a very well designed and cold-blooded sequence which might be the best of the film. Great aftermath of acid to the face and Leon's toady bug-eyed killer is a very effective creep. Christine Amor as Virginia is quite a nasty piece of work, really cutting her husband to the bone with accurate skill..we can see that this has been occurring for quite some time, and the profound impact on Myles' behavior is quite visible. I think composer Brian May's work bugged me more than anything else. His music during the opening of the movie reeks of sugary soap opera and episodic television..and, while more effective during the suspense scenes at the end, the music can be so loud across the soundtrack that the dialogue is hard to hear. Not a bad Aussie attempt at the American slasher(..which, in essence, is a reworking of the Italian giallo sub-genre)..does feature enough gratuitous elements to satisfy the desired audience, I believe. A lot more nudity than I was expecting and the dialogue can be raunchy at times. The teens of the film are coming of age with a sexual awakening which does contribute to such lurid details provided throughout. The film also follows the small town chief as he eyes Myles as a possible suspect responsible for a growing number of student disappearances.

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1 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
Only for completest of the genre, 6 May 2010

Author: Friendend from United States

Basically this is a horror movie done Australian style. I can tell you it doesn't add up to Wolf Creek. It's your basic whodunit serial killer type story. There's naked Australian girls and an average, run of the mill storyline as well. I would recommend this only to completest of the genre. I give it a 4 which is high. I guess the naked Australian girls is what made me take it up a few notches... Since I'm a collector of 80s horror movies I ended up having to give this a viddie. Not that I regret it or anything but I don't see myself pulling this one off the shelf again anytime soon. But still not all that bad for a one time view...

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1 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
Sex equals death., 13 March 2010

Author: lost-in-limbo from the Mad Hatter's tea party.

By reputation "Bloodmoon" doesn't seem to stand up so well, nonetheless it just seemed to draw me in (well captivating poster artwork helps a lot too) and since it just got a local DVD release (thanks to the 2008 documentary "Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!") it was easy to get a hold of. It turned out to be competently stylish, but a generically penned (if sexually charged) Aussie slasher that after the opening sequence it seems to find itself in soapy TV material. This aspect is rather distracting and stodgy, before it finally goes on to build a head of steam for the last half hour of outrageous acts and jarring suspense. While not particularly successful as a whole, as it can be sloppy it still kept me watching. Something about the choice of locations constructs an effective small coastal town atmosphere (very similar to that of 1981 quirky Australian slasher "Dead Kids") and it's lit with moody visual shadings by director Alec Mills. The stalk and slash scenes are actually well executed and framed, especially in the latter half with a couple twisted acts of uncontrollable violence… but when the focus (during some long periods) is on the dramas / antics of the locals and a group of neighbouring boarding schools (girls and boys -- who are on heat with constant flashes of female nudity) the suspense is truly forgotten about and its kept grounded with an authentic flavour but the cheesy handling doesn't help and so did the lack of any development of recurring characters / side-stories. The patchy story doesn't really offer any surprises (well maybe one moment --- a death towards the end) and the revelation of the killer midway though shouldn't really come as a surprise. Actually I thought it was better off unmasking the killer, because it was obvious but their choice of weapon a piece of barb wire would leave an unpleasant mark. The performances are surefooted with the likes of Christine Amor (immensely dominating), Leon Lissek (unusually picture-perfect), Ian Williams and Helen Thomson. Australian music composer Brian May has crafted out some stunning scores, but on this occasion it isn't one of his best in what is a vibrant, but heavy-handed arrangement. When it was being ominous it worked, but for those softer and playful cues it doesn't come off. It just lacked the fineness. Nothing sensational, but a better than labelled slasher.

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1 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
Two movies for the price of one., 9 April 2003

Author: gridoon

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

The first half is a generic slasher film that follows the sex-and-death formula dutifully, has waaaay too much filler and suffers from a strange lack of central characters; the glimpses of gratuitous nudity are virtually all this half has going for it. Then the killer is revealed, and the rest of the film looks as if it was made by a different director; one who knows a thing or two about suspense, and how to actually quicken your pulse. There are two major confrontations with the killer, and they are both particularly well-handled. I really don't know what happened midway through production, but just as you're ready to give up on the movie, it surprises you by turning out not-too-bad after all. By the way, be careful when you read some of the other reviews for this movie, they include some pretty big spoilers! (**)

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2 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Christine Amor can Really Make A Scene!, 11 March 2007

Author: ThrownMuse from The land of the Bunyips

Teenagers on a college campus are brutally murdered while doing the dirty. This starts out as a typical crap 80s slasher snoozer. For the first 40 minutes I kept thinking to myself "Wow, the late 80s/early 90s was an even WORSE time for style and horror in Australia than it was in the US!" Teenagers with side-ponies stripping out of their stonewash jeans are everywhere! The theme of this slasher seems to be a killer with a circular barbed wire thingie that he uses to choke, causing his victims to see a, um, bloodmoon? I have no idea. What I DO know is that about halfway through, this movie turns from a below-average slasher, to a fabulously trashy episode of "Dynasty Down Under," thanks to the camped-out performance by the hilarious Christine Amor (who was likewise the only good thing about the Linda Blair crapfest "Dead Silence". Oh yeah, be careful because most reviews (and even the Netflix envelope) feature spoilers, but it doesn't really matter because the movie is only worth watching for the soap operatics in the second half.

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2 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Inane Rubbish.One of the worst films ever made!, 25 April 2005

Author: pandaeyes42 from Australia

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

What we have with "Bloodmoon" is an extremely poor copy of your standard slasher film. By the late 1980's, everyone and his sister had made a slasher film;this particular type of horror film had been, if you'll pardon the pun,done to death! Awful script, even worse directing, acting, cinematography,music and one of the most pathetic fight scenes ever committed to film in recent memory. After seeing the film, I saw a more convincing fight in the cinema foyer!In Australia, we had the "Fright Break". I got to see two thirds of it for free, and caught the rest of it late night on TV about six months later! The really sad thing about "Bloodmoon" is that it's not even enjoyable bad. it's just BAD!Want to see how truly wretched slasher films got in the late 80's? Check this out!Ever heard the expression 'bottom of the barrel'? Well, this is the barrel!!!

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Australia's attempt at slasher, 9 April 2011

Author: acidburn-10 from United Kingdom

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Plot = A private girls school St Elizabeth's becomes a terrifying place to be, when girls begin to get killed off by maniacal killer and quickly buried, the police become baffled at these disappearances in a small town in Australia.

This was Australia's effort at the ever growing popular slasher boom that started in the early 80's but unfortunately this came out in 1990, which was when the slasher boom simply died down, and this really didn't do anything to raise to dying craze.

Okay this isn't a bad movie I actually quite enjoyed it, although the murder scenes are either quite tame or off-screen which I hate, apart from the scene where a girl has her face smashed into a desk, which is this movie's main highlight in my opinion. But what annoyed me at times is the random interactions between the teen cast as some we see for the first part of the movie but when the killings start again we never see them again. And the fact that the killer is revealed quite early on.

The acting is fairly good by some, but fairly bad by others. Leon Lissik was quite enjoyable as the biology teacher Miles Sheffield who I really felt for when he was being cruelly dominated by his wife the head mistress, I also liked how his character quickly developed his true colours ranging really well. His wife Virginia (Christine Amor) did okay playing a total bitch but other than that she was a terrible actress. Helen Thomson played the final girl pretty well, very likable and attractive a character to root for and the nun played by Hazel Howman really kicked ass, especially in the end when she throws acid in the killer's face, she was cool.

All in all a routine slasher flick that won't break any new ground but was a fun waste of time.

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