Very much a film of slashed throats and ripped off blouses, Killer's Moon bluntly punctuated what was a rather dismal year for British horror movies (think The Cat and the Canary, Dominique and The Legacy). Its exactly the sort of film a minor sexploitation director dragging a cast of nobodies into the Lake District for an inept hotchpotch of A Clockwork Orange, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Please Sir would make. Four homicidal maniacs Mr Smith, Mr Jones, Mr Muldoon and Mr Trubshaw all modelled on A Clockwork Orange's droogs escape from a cottage asylum into the Lake District. Since they've all been treated on LSD dream therapy, they believe everything to be a dream and thus feel free to indulge in drug fuelled sex and murder fantasies. Coincidences find a bunch of 70's sitcom characters as potential fodder for them -an American jogger, a bunch of campers, the Scottish gamekeeper, the Cockney bus driver `they're all mard round ere', the pompous school-marm and a busload of dubious schoolgirls. When the schoolgirl's bus breaks down on the way to a choir contest they're forced to stay in an off season hotel run by an elderly eccentric while outside minor characters stumble off to their deaths `why would anyone kill a gamekeeper with an axe?'. When the maniacs come out of the shadows to siege the hotel they are revealed as the most unashamedly over the top hams since the days of Tod Slaughter, they're really into the proceedings, cackling, growling and grimacing and are soon desperate to get their drug addled paws on the schoolgirls, who despite being cast in the St Trinian mode of carrying teddies and being prone to renditions of Greensleeves are nothing more than Wardour Street starlets cast mainly for glamour nudity. Most of the enjoyment though has to come from the dialogue thats looks as if it was written under the same treatment as its psychopaths. Watch as RADA never weres tackle gems of un-pc dialogue like `look you were only raped if you don't tell anyone about it you'll be alright' and `if we ever get out of this alive well maybe we'll both live to be be wives and mothers'. Amidst the sex and violence, Killer's Moon gradually transforms into a twisted music hall pantomime with girlies chased around the hotel, the help of Hannah the three-legged dog, a transvestite escape plan and one of the maniacs lamenting `why can't I dream of steak and chips, why does it have to be bread and cheese?'- all delivered with a serious candour which must have been hard for a movie that weds its carnage to acid-jazz renditions of `twinkle twinkle little star' and `three blind mice'. Produced in the dying days of the British film industry Killer's Moon really is cheap with the worse editing imaginable, a matte Lake district, while day and night shots are mixed and matched, its hard to believe that the film had a cinema release but it did (in August 1978). The acting is mostly foul as befits the cast of nobodies although living up to the unwritten law `show me a British actor/actress and I'll show you the 70's sex/horror film they'd like to forget', old hams and future soap stars (ie Jo- Anne Good who ended up in Crossroads) can be found if you look hard enough. Killer's Moon scores high with surprisingly strong exploitation elements. The token peek a boo nudity is expected, given Birkinshaw's background but scenes of 25ish year old `schoolgirls' abused by mental patients seem genuinely unhealthy. Screenwriter/Director (the late?) Alan Birkinshaw was indeed one of the more cheaper celluloid barrow boys. His previous film had been Confessions of a Sex Maniac (1975) a low budget skinflick about a Woody Allen-esque architect with a breast fetish who feels obliged to erect a building in honour of his obsession. After the axe came down on UK low-budget film production like Gerry O'Hara he flew to South Africa and hooked up with infamous producer Harry Alan Towers- Birkinshaw's work for Towers manifested in some Poe adaptations are widely reviled. Birkinshaw is also largely believed responsible for the shocking gore sequences tagged on to Don't Open Till Christmas. Managing to keep out of the reference books ever since its initial release, Killer's Moon now enjoys a mini revival in the UK, mainly due to the fact that the filmmaking is more fumbled than some of the victims. Killer's Moon does have great trouble with whose been murdered and who hasn't, famously a main character disappears halfway through the film only to appear as a corpse in the final shot as if an afterthought. Yet interest in Killer's Moon isn't just for laughs but also genuine nostalgia, looking back from a time of the dearth of truly eccentric British films the era of Killer's Moon seems a long time ago. Killer's Moon remains as sleazy and British as a night time trip down Soho, the quintessential bottom half of a fleapit cinema double bill, remember `blood on the moon, one mangled dog, one missing axe, and one lost girl who just found a body at the wrong end of the axe- how's that for the great English outdoors'.
Review of Killer's Moon
