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Killer's Moon (1978)

Dir: Alan Birkinshaw.

This British psycho flick is very obscure, and after watching it I know why.

Four psychotic criminals are undergoing an experiment in a hospital to control their murderous instincts by having them act out their nasty deeds in their dreams. Unfortunately they escape during the treatment and think that they are still dreaming and can do whatever they want.

A bus carrying a girls school choir through the countryside breaks down near a village in the Lake District, the same area where the loony dreamers are roaming around.
The schoolgirls and their two teachers, Ms. Lilac and Mrs. Hargreavesm head down the road to find help and shelter. They bump into a gamekeeper who feels that there is something wrong about the woods. Basically he comes across as a more sedate (we are talking a British film after all) version of the "You're all doomed" crazy Ralph character from "Friday the 13th".
He leads them to the local Hotel, that just happens to be remote and run by a Mrs. May who lets the group in to stay the night. Their driver (played by the wonderfully named Chubby Oates) heads back to the bus.

We also have two men camping nearby; one an American named Pete (Anthony Forrest) and the other a Londoner called Mike (Tom Marshall).
While Pete is out jogging Mike is hammering his tent peg into Mrs. May's daughter, Julie (Jane Hayden).
As Julie gets dressed a dog that has had it's leg chopped off staggers into their camp! Pete comes back and helps Mike bandage up the dog as Julie heads back to the hotel. She never makes it and later appears back at the tent and says some men have raped her. This is very strangely handled as we actually see nothing of this and are left to wonder where Julie suddenly vanished to!
Brave Mike gets on the case.

Meanwhile, back at the hotel, Ms. Lilac is leading the girls in a sing-song before bedtime while one of our crazies busies himself with chopping the tail off the gamekeeper's cat (a truly bad effect) before sticking the knife in the gamekeepers wife's throat (just another day in the country).
All the while the other three are breaking into the hotel to tuck the girls in for the night.....

 

Oh dear, where to start with this curio?
Well we have really bad acting from all concerned to start off with, with special mention for 'best imitation of a plank of wood' to Tom Marshall as Mike.
The psychos are laughable in the extreme, walking around in a daze and speaking bizarre gibberish about what a jolly strange dream they are all having, and how they can't go and search a cellar because it's "the dark side of the mind".
One of them, Mr. Trubshaw (David Jackson) wanders around with a bowler hat on which, when combined with their white overalls makes him look like a 'Droog' reject from "A Clockwork Orange".

This film is a real mess in the way it's plot is structured too.
We have to assume certain things because we are never shown them, like the three legged dog who we guess was wounded by the psychos because we have never even seen the dog before and have only had one quick glimpse of the crazies themselves.
We also learn of events that have happened second hand as nothing is ever shown of them, not even a suspenseful build up. Not only is Julie's rape handled this way but also the death of the gamekeeper, he was indeed fine the last time we saw him.
Mrs. May also disappears and yet no one misses her and she is never mentioned again! Her fate is discovered, but only at the very end. And what a weak end it is!

The gore is minimal and not very well done, the best effect being an axe in the neck but that's not saying much believe me!
It's in the brief sexual assaults that the film gets nasty. One of the girls is raped by a crazy and, although the actual act is not explicit the build up, the scene where her night gown is ripped open and her breasts fondled, as the other crazies look on, is the kind of sequence that would be frowned upon nowadays just before a rape. Another of the girls is chased and strangled (this is shown to be ridiculously easy and quick) but before she is her gown gets torn open on a strategically placed nail, for some more breast baring action.

And what a car crash treat the hysterical dialogue is. After the mysterious dog reappears to deal out a bit of revenge, in an extremely badly done attack, Julie and one of the schoolgirls, Sandra, stumble upon it panting its last and as it dies Sandra, in her best squeaky voice, says "Thank you dog for saving us". Sadly for drippy Sandra the dog doesn't answer back.
One of the psychos asks Mr. Trubshaw if he dreams in colour, he answers "Yes, because I like the flesh tones".
But the worst (and most offensive) is when one of the girls, Agatha (Georgina Kean) comforts her friend who's been raped (a third rape on a kitchen table) by saying "Look, you were ONLY raped, as long as you don't tell anyone about it you'll be alright. You pretend it never happened, I'll pretend I never saw it and if we get out of this alive, well maybe we'll both live to be wives and mothers".
Well there you go that's one rape victim sorted out. Next!

The music is as strange as the rest of the film. We have annoying, screeching jazz mixed with renditions of 'Three Blind Mice' during a chase and a bizarrely sung version of 'Humpty Dumpty'. There is also a truly appalling song over the end titles that was written by the Director of this trashy fodder, Alan Birkinshaw.

And the aforementioned Mr. Birkinshaw's direction is extremely flat. The action scenes are badly handled and the film sits there like a TV show, which it also looks like thanks to the equally flat photography by Arthur Lavis. The camp site is also an obvious indoor set that looks like it's from a school play.

"Killer's Moon" (the title seems to come from the fact there are killers around and that the, er, moon is out) still holds a twisted fascination, mostly due to it's sheer badness but also because it is uniquely bizarre in it's style and is proudly unlike anything else seen from the UK Horror scene, even in the far out 70's.
And I ask you, who wouldn't want to watch a movie that contains an avenging three legged dog that gives us the best acting of the entire film? Exactly, makes you proud to be British.