An all-girls language school is the unfortunate epicenter of a succession of murders following the release of Miguel (Alexander Waechter), an institutionalized, psychotic grunt. His sister Manuela (Nadja Gerganoff) finds a new home for herself and Miguel in the school, where she is involved in a nefarious plot to usurp their mother’s (Maria Rubio) fortune and plot of land, supposedly for the benefit of the school. Manuela’s partner in crime, her boyfriend Alvaro (Christopher Moosbrugger) occasionally pitches in to the cause by dispatching of various meddling students who get in between themselves and their swindled fortune. Angela (Olivia Pascal), a new student at the school, finds herself in the middle of the situation and is simply looking to save her own skin…

Released in West Germany in March of 1981 (under the original title DIE SAEGE DES TODES or "Saw of Death"; the film is now banned in Germany), this entry marks yet another crucial checkpoint in Jess Franco’s voluminous filmography. It dovetails the end of his soft-core, Spanish and German co-produced exploitation period (with such films as 1980’s SADOMANIA-EL INFIERNO DE LA PASION) and his deluge into paper-thin porno, no doubt a result of the more liberal climate of his home country following the demise of the Franco regime. Many familiar crewmembers from this particular period participate as well, such as cinematographer Juan Soler (who occasionally starred in various Franco films and met Franco in Portugal during Franco’s participation with Swiss producer Edwin Dietrich). The film was also co-produced by "Lisa Films", a relatively prolific production company housed in Berlin. Unfortunately, the film cannot be considered a success, although it is by far superior to the bulk of films that sandwich it.

BLOODY MOON’s ultimate failure is a result of a wide range of factors. For one, the largely German cast-almost exclusively Franco virgins- are underachievers. Olivia Pascal is no Soledad Miranda, Ewa Stromberg or Lina Romay, as she doesn’t possess the mysterious, defining features of Franco’s leading ladies nor their unique sexual inhibitions to properly fit Franco’s area of sleazy expertise. Thus she is relegated to the tired slasher victim, and has no opportunity to dazzle the viewer with a seductive jazz club dance or a psychotic frenzy. The remainder of the cast is equally underwhelming. Moosbrugger is weak as a two-faced educator, and Waechter, aside from the gruesome makeup that effectively disfigures him, simply absorbs most of the running time stalking the school grounds.

The various rip-offs of far better genre entries provide crippling collateral damage for BLOODY MOON. The most obvious genre piracy is the reworking of Mario Bava’s 1971 masterpiece of bloody revenge, BAY OF BLOOD. The elaborate, knotty embezzlement plot closely resembles Bava’s film, with the school property replacing the bay for the devious protagonists’ prospective goal. The film even begins with an identical opening sequence to that of BAY OF BLOOD, where a wheelchair-bound woman (Maria Rubio) is killed by an unidentified assailant. However, the impact of the murder is nowhere near as crushingly ironic as that of Bava’s film, as BLOODY MOON follows the slasher convention quite closely, whereas BAY OF BLOOD helped to shape the genre with its uncomfortably nihilistic and cynical tone. The film also steals liberally from another defining slasher: John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN, as Miguel kills a nubile victim from the point of view of a party mask, thus vividly recalling young Michael Myers’ infamous masked murder in Carpenter’s film. The HALLOWEEN influences continue until the frenzied climax, in which a terrified Angela finds her roomates’ cadavers meticulously strewn about her room, in an obvious reworking of HALLOWEEN’s final scene of a horrifying, dawning moment of comprehension. Finally, it’s overly obvious that the school campus is a flimsy substitute for the more familiar and well-worn summer camp setting utilized in countless post-FRIDAY THE 13TH slashers.

Although at first the sexual tension readily apparent in the schoolgirls would be evocative of yet another teen-slasher film, it is probably more the product of Wolf C. Hartwig, the film’s producer. Hartwig’s (who also produced the classic German horror THE HEAD aka DIE NACKTE UND DER SATAN) enduring claim to fame was his Schulmadchen genre, a cycle of filmmaking popular during the time of BLOODY MOON’s production. The genre, initiated by 1970’s SCHULMADCHEN-REPORT, almost exclusively chronicling the ups and downs (and, ahem, the ins and outs) of German schoolgirls, was immensely popular in Germany and much of Europe for its taboo breaking portrayal of the lusts of young schoolgirls. It’s no surprise that this motif is so pervasive in Franco’s film, as it fits his female-centric obsession perfectly well. Throughout the film, Angela is exposed to typical schoolgirl giggles concerning the campus’ only of-age male, Antonio (the school’s janitor). Unfortunately, however, the promise of sleaze is never fulfilled, and there is a noticeable lack of exploitable lesbian activity, especially curious considering the man behind the lens and the ripe opportunity the setting provides.

Although the convoluted infrastructure renders this Franco entry a less colorful tapestry of personal obsessions, the Spaniard’s unique touch does manage to timidly tear the heavy blanket of genre redundancy. The major benefit of Franco’s participation is his reworking of career-long fascinations and conventions under the harsh rule of the slasher motif. The violence is predictably sexualized, as evidenced early on in Miguel’s murder of a young girl via a pair of scissors. Repeatedly the phallic scissors thrust into the victim’s soft, moist and opened belly mimicking intercourse. The sexualized violence continues in a more outrageous instance when a schoolgirl is viciously stabbed, the gleaming knife protruding out of her breast. The most infamous (and preposterous) instance of sleazy violence is the much-heralded saw mill gore sequence, in which yet another schoolgirl meets her death, this time decapitated by a saw blade. The sequence itself, a well-orchestrated symphony of gore and loudness, is quite impressive, but the sequence’s reason for being is so inept that it borders on the surreal. Like most Franco sequences of violence, the sequence has a genesis in sex, although here it is far more innocent: Inga, a classmate of Angela’s, is invited by a mysterious stranger to an undisclosed location for her first sexual experience. Throbbing with excitement, Inga fails to realize that the man has tied her to a sawing table (she even remarks that she likes it kinky) and only panics when the spiked disc makes a beeline for her. The sequence concludes with a waterfall of blood and Inga’s severed head plopping to the floor (an impressive work of special effects, indicating the film’s higher-than-normal budget). However, it is Miguel and Manuela’s kinky, incestuous relationship that bears the most fruit. Although by no means graphic, Miguel’s seduction of his murderous sister is a prime cut of sleaze and outlines Manuela’s character (easily the strongest in the film). Manuela represents one half of Franco’s cinematic representation of women: the "fearful" female (the other being the playful, voyeuristic one). Manuela is indeed one tough customer, as she unleashes her poisonous snake on Angela and eventually betrays Avaro and Miguel in her ruthless journey for personal gain. Manuela’s strong character and the fact that most of the film’s screentime is occupied by women is again symptomatic of Franco’s obsession with the female form and psyche: not surprisingly, the men in the film are boring and largely inconsequential. In addition, Franco is able to fit in a relatively noticeable PSYCHO reference during the final confrontation between Angela, Manuela and Avarao when Angela turns Rubio’s wheelchair in desperation and finds a rotting corpse, distinctly recalling the final shock of Hitchcock’s film. Finally, Franco fans will smile at the director’s small role as a psychiatrist in the film’s opening minutes; an inconsequential role of a man of science similar to his in 1973’s FEMALE VAMPIRE.

In Pete Tombs’ biography of Franco in his Immoral Tales, he states that BLOODY MOON and similar Franco films, "more effort has to go into tangible items like special effects, leaving less room for on-the-spot invention." This is true to some degree, as the film is most definitely more stilted and wooden than earlier Franco productions, but the unusual amount of care doted on the special effects enlivens the film with an atypical sense of class and credibility. Instead, the film’s main dilemma is its patchwork nature of a variety of seminal slasher films that suffocates the main point of interest for Franco’s films: his unique and perverse obsessions.