Bloody Moon, 1981

Is a Spanish-German slasher film directed by Jess Franco. It is an English language movie opposed to being Spanish, which I suspect was more aimed towards the American Market at the time.

It is a typical run of the mill slasher with some over the top gore moments compared to other slasher films of the time. It starts off with Miguel, a young man with a facial disfigurement (looks like a burn mark) who at a party tricks a girl back to hers for sex, she thinking it is someone else she likes. However, once discovering it is not the person, she thinks it is, a fight breaks out between them, and Miguel ends up murdering her.

Miguel is then sent to an institution and is released five years later into the care of his sister Manuela who we later find he was having an incestuous affair with. They return to the place where he committed his crime - his aunt, Maria owns the place which is now become a boarding school of languages ran by his sister. She runs it alongside a teacher called Alvaro. 

Manuela tells Alvaro that her aunt is trying to get rid of her as Maria thinks she is only after her money which disclosed that once she dies everything goes to Miguel.

Soon the killings start, first with Maria and then the students are slowly taken out one at a time, until the final girl is left, and all is revealed to who the real killer is....

Bloody Moon (Die Säge des Todes) as I said is a fairly run of the mill slasher film, I don't believe it to be Franco's best work as it seems a bit out place compared to some other films he is known for. That said he has upped his game in terms of gore especially with the infamous sawmill beheading and maybe going a bit too far with having a child brutally ran over by the killer! 

Bloody Moon was also on the video nasties list and has been released uncut in the past decade or so, however due to it being cut that the now reinserted cut scenes do look a bit more blurred compared to the rest of the film after it had been restored. It isn't a big deal, but some scenes do look slightly darker.

I did like the film and will probably watch it again as it does kind of live up to its video nasty status! Nowadays I think that it's a bit weird that back then some of these films caused moral outrage and some films now that have a higher violence or bloodshed rate are left alone (to some extent!), though also with the internet and news we have access and are shown real world violence on a much larger scale!