Tell me, Joey. Do you like disgustingly bloody horror movies?
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| "Yeah. Keep going......" |
There's just something about horror films that are shot on
video that gets to me. They have this gritty home movie feel and it’s as if you
are not just a voyeur but an active participant in the grotesqueries unfolding
before you. Films shot this way are usually over lit and garish; blood and
viscera seem more red and slimy and everyone’s faces are distorted by harsh
shadows. While it can often look cheap, it also tends to be very effective at
creating a scary atmosphere. The Burning
Moon is an interesting Euro horror offering from Germany that will intrigue
gore hounds and “video nasty” lovers alike.
The Burning Moon is
an anthology of sorts: a drug addled young man is left in charge of his little
sister for the evening and he decides to tell her some bedtime stories to help
her go to sleep. Unfortunately, his idea of tales includes horrible dismemberments,
rape and general mayhem. The wrap-around story is pretty weak and serves only
to introduce the two different vignettes for the audience. The latter story is
the stronger of the two and the one with the best special effects. Since this
is a German film, there is plenty of dark humor and nihilism available; there
are no happy endings here.
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| "Damn mousetrap got me again!" |
This movie was made in 1992, but due to the video style it
looks like a VHS tape from the 1980s.
While I am sure some videophiles will disagree, I feel as if the
compromised video quality adds to the disconcerting feel of the film. If you
remember the days of VHS, often films like these would get copied and passed
around and the video would degrade with each copy. There was nothing scarier
than being in your teens and watching a crappy copy of a scary film as your
imagination filled in the little details. The
Burning Moon doesn’t look that bad but it still retains that feeling of
watching something taboo and forbidden.
The story and acting are barely passable but the gore (what
everyone came for) is outstanding. There are eyeballs being scooped out, disembowelments,
stabbings, fingers being chopped off and even more terrible scenes. The second
half of the film has an extended scene in Hell that is just amazing to
behold. It’s very exaggerated and messy;
it didn’t gross me out as much as amuse me, but your gore tolerance will have
to be high to get the full enjoyment out of it. It does have a nasty overall
tone but it’s to be expected in an exploitation film. Because it was shot on
video, the dialogue is dubbed over, and not very well. The words don’t match up
to the lips quite right but it’s in
German so I was able to ignore it after a while. The musical score is actually
quite catchy with some really cool synth cues and a great ending theme.
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| "All I wanted was a toothpick." |
If you can make it through the first slow twenty minutes of
this film you will be rewarded with some quality horror and piles of blood and
guts. They just don’t make horror films like this anymore and I had a bit of
trouble tracking down an uncut DVD release of this film as it is quite rare. If
you see it out and about definitely snag it as it is an interesting addition to
any exploitation film collection.
-Michelle Kisner