Die Säge des Todes (1981)

Girls are killed at a language-school in Spain.

Director:

Jesús Franco

Writer:

Erich Tomek (screenplay) (as Rayo Casablanca)

Stars:

Olivia Pascal, Christoph Moosbrugger, Nadja Gerganoff

Cast

Cast overview:
Olivia Pascal	...	Angela
Christoph Moosbrugger	...	Alvaro
Nadja Gerganoff	...	Manuela
Jasmin Losensky	...	Inga
Corinna Drews	...	Laura (as Corinna Gillwald)
Ann-Beate Engelke	...	Eva
Peter Exacoustos	...	Antonio
María Rubio	...	Countess Maria Gonzales
Antonia García	...	Elvira
Beatriz Sancho Nieto	...	Rita
Alexander Waechter	...	Miguel

Storyline

Miguel, a young man with a horribly disfigured face, goes on a rampage at a masquerade party and rapes a girl. He then brutally hacks up the young woman with a pair of scissors. Miguel is institutionalized at a mental asylum for five years. Afterward, he is released into the care of his sister, Manuela. Along with their wheelchair bound mother, they operate a boarding school for young woman, called Europe's International Youth-Club Boarding School of Languages, on the Spanish resort of Costa Del Sol. Miguel is intrigued by Angela, a long-haired brunette, whom he first saw on the train ride from the sanitarium. The creepy Miguel follows her around. Miguel meets with Manuela to request that they resume their incestuous relationship. She reminds him that it was this relationship that made him emotionally unstable five years earlier. She says they cannot because nobody understands them: "Only if we could get rid of everyone, then things could go back to the way they were." Then Angela's ...

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Plot Keywords:

mysterious killer | psychopathic killer | boarding school | decapitation | mental patient | 

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Taglines:

Don't Panic... It only happens once in a... Bloody Moon

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Genres:

Horror | Mystery | Thriller

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Country:

West Germany Spain

Language:

German Spanish

Release Date:

17 April 1981 (Spain)

Also Known As:

Bloody Moon

Filming Locations:

Alicante, Comunidad Valenciana, Spain

Company Credits

Production Co:

Lisa-Film,Metro Film,Rapid Film

Technical Specs

Runtime:

90 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Jesús Franco was initially told by the producers that Pink Floyd was going to do the score for this film.

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Goofs

(spoilers) When Inga is decapitated by the circular saw, an obvious plastic head is used...the mannequin (or whatever the head is really attached to) doesn't even face the saw. Inga looks at it from the side of the slab she's tied to whilst screaming, but as soon as the plastic head comes into the scene, the head faces upwards rather than left or right.

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Quotes

Manuela: No, Miguel. I'm your sister. We shouldn't start again. Don't you see that people wouldn't let us love each other. It's that... don't you see... it's everybody that's around us, staring at us and judging us.
[gasps]
Manuela: I'm so afraid. Miguel, I'm terribly frightened. If we could just get rid of everyone around us. Then things could be as they were.

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Connections

Referenced in Discovering 'Evil Dead' (2002)

User Reviews

Wacko slasher from Jess Franco

A derivative but strangely appealing slasher flick from that auteur of Spanish sleaze and zoom lens-inspired madness, Jess Franco, which opens with a masked killer murdering a young girl and being sent to an asylum for the crime - just to prove that Franco's copying HALLOWEEN a little bit too much, we even see POV shots from the killer looking through the eyeholes in his mask! From then on, BLOODY MOON a cheap and nasty swathe through a series of badly-acting young women, as a mysterious villain murders them off one by one. Despite being set in a language school, there are never more than four or five girls around at time, which somewhat betrays Franco's low budget roots. The plot is pretty ludicrous, with a really dumb script - the English dubbing reaches new levels of absurdity with some of the trite dialogue that the girls constantly spew.

The acting isn't much better, and it's obvious that Franco picks his actresses for their looks rather than their acting ability. The identity of the killer is pretty easy to guess, especially seeing that the red herring is so obvious in this case - could it be the mysteriously scarred man who was previously convicted of murder, who constantly lurks around the school watching the girls? I don't think so. Technically, the film is rather poorly made, with sloppy editing and a tendency to shoot scenes in the dark with little lighting, making the viewing experience sometimes a test of endurance rather than genuine entertainment.

So why did I enjoy this movie? Well, it's just plain trash for sure, but Franco never expects you to think it should be anything else. BLOODY MOON is just about a series of young, sometimes naked girls being offed gorily by a perverted murderer, and that's exactly what Franco delivers. His deaths are all mean-spirited and graphically gory, which earned the film some notoriety when released in the UK - in retrospect the effects are all so cheesily staged that the fuss over such "nasties" is simply ludicrous. This is a fun, barmy and genuinely amusing slasher that doesn't pull any punches.