Bloodmoon (1990)

	Director: Alec Mills
	Starring: Leon Lissek, Christine Amor, Ian Williams, Helen Thomson
	Run Time: 100 mins
	Certificate: 15
	Rating:

Outline
A serial killer is on the loose at an all girl boarding school, where they strangle their victims and gouge out their eyes with a barbed wire noose.

Review
An Australian slasher from the end of an era, Bloodmoon promises a bloody massacre given the unusual weapon of choice for the killer but what we get is a film of two distinct halves and very little of interest. I'll give the film credit as it starts off with a shower scene and a bloody murder within the first few minutes - setting exploitation standards high and hopes raised for the rest of the film. Unfortunately it never manages to serve us with anything else throughout the film even half as decent.

Bloodmoon's first half runs like a teen comedy with guys chasing girls, high school rivalries between surfers and preps and stereotypical school hi-jinks such as spiking drinks during parties being ever present. Oh yeah there's an odd killing every now and then to remind us we're watching a horror film and this is usually preceded by the female victim exposing her chest to her doomed boyfriend. This barrage of cheesy soap opera style drama continues for ages until something really weird happens half-way through and we uncover who the killer is. That's the viewer who finds out, not anyone in the film. I guess the writers and director thought that with us knowing who the killer is, we'd be a bit more on the edge by seeing him set up a fiendish plan to kill someone else or try and plot his next move. But it's as soon as we realise who the killer is, that the film changes direction and head into rather strange territory. It can't conjure up any suspense or tension. It can't play around with red herrings. Once you give your big surprise away, there's no turning back no matter how good the writer may be. Bloodmoon has now turned into a weird Psycho style film with a main character who is a little mad and is being driven crazy by a dominant female in his life.

Leon Lissek plays the killer teacher who's wife holds back on the nookie so he resorts to playing with cats and killing co-eds to get his sexual kicks. You couldn't make it up. There are loads of scenes of the teacher being spurned by his wife, who takes pleasure in bedding male students with his knowledge. It's a little weird to see the killer being made the main character, as most of the teenagers aren't fleshed out beyond their names and how horny they are and then how badly they scream when they die. None of the teenage characters are thrust into the limelight of being the protagonist. They're just there to die and get naked. Despite the presence of plenty of nudity, it's the other staple of the slasher genre that is the biggest let down of Bloodmoon. The kills are pretty lame and gore-free despite the cool-sounding premise of a barbed wire noose as the weapon of choice. In fact the best death is when the teacher repeatedly smashes a co-eds face off a desk. It's clearly a dummy that he's slamming hard into the desk which makes the scene even more preposterous but at least we can see what's going on - most of the other deaths occur off-screen much to my chagrin.

Verdict
Bloodmoon is a pretty horrid B-movie filled with nubile co-eds, surfer dudes, bad hair metal and barbed wire nooses. Certainly not what I was expecting when I sat down to watch. But you may like it if you really love your cheesy slasher films.