Killer's Moon
| Killer's Moon | |
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| Directed by | Alan Birkinshaw |
| Produced by | Alan Birkinshaw Gordon Keymer |
| Written by | Alan Birkinshaw |
| Starring | Anthony Forrest Tom Marshall Jane Hayden Alison Elliott David Jackson JoAnne Good Lisa Vanderpump |
| Music by | John Shakespeare |
| Distributed by | Redemption Films (DVD) |
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Release date
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Running time
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90 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
Killer's Moon is a 1978 British horror film written and directed by Alan Birkinshaw, with uncredited dialogue written by his novelist sister, Fay Weldon.
A coach full of schoolgirls breaks down in the Lake District, forcing the girls to take shelter for the night in a remote hotel. Meanwhile, strange and macabre things are happening to the locals (and their pets) and it is revealed that four escaped mental patients- Mr. Smith, Mr. Trubshaw, Mr. Muldoon and Mr. Jones - who have been dosed with LSD as part of their treatment, are roaming the area, convinced they are living a shared dream in which they are free to rape and murder - both of which they choose to do numerous times before the belated arrival of the police.
During the mid-to-late 1970s, maverick directors such as Pete Walker and Norman J. Warren were trying to spice up the much-derided genre of British horror films. These films would later be dubbed "New Wave" British horror, on account that they pushed the boundaries of taste as much as was possible within the British Board of Film Classification's strict regime and were set in modern-day 1970s Britain and centered on 20-30 aged protagonists, differing them from the predominantly period piece horrors of Hammer Films Productions that had gone before. Alan Birkinshaw had begun his career in commercials, moving on to directing and producing Confessions of a Sex Maniac in 1974, and viewed making horror films as a natural progression. "we decided that the horror film (genre) was more up market than a sex comedy" he told Creeping Flesh in 2003. Birkinshaw's film has been cited as combinings elements of Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, the notorious American sleaze epic Carnal Madness (which was released in Britain as The Sizzlers), and a low-rent, late-period Carry On film. However, by adding (faked) animal cruelty and the flippant treatment of rape, Birkinshaw created what was described in Matthew Sweet's book Shepperton Babylon as the most tasteless movie in British cinema history.
Killer's Moon was shot off season at Armathwaite Hall in the Lake District. The eclectic cast includes David Jackson, Jane Hayden (sister of cult actress Linda Hayden), JoAnne Good, future restaurateur Lisa Vanderpump, Hilda Braid, comedian Chubby Oates, and Hannah the three legged dog. Hannah the three legged dog in the film, was originally a pub dog who had lost a leg as the result of a shotgun wound sustained during an armed robbery. She was later awarded the doggy Victoria Cross award for bravery.
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