KILLER’S MOON
dir. Alan Birkinshaw, 1978
United Kingdom. 90 min.
In English.

SATURDAY, JUNE 1 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, JUNE 7 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, JUNE 21 – MIDNIGHT

When the bus breaks down on a group of prim and proper British schoolgirls on a trip to the Lake District, they take shelter in a country manor, where they are menaced by four escaped singing psychopath sex offenders undergoing experimental dream therapy in what has been described, in several places by several commentators, as the sleaziest and most tasteless British film ever made, Alan Birkinsaw’s KILLER’S MOON.

Birkinsaw’s cheaply made and clumsily directed film takes elements of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and brings them into the realm of the slasher film, albeit a mostly dour and downbeat slasher affair, occasionally punctuated by flashes of nightmarish day-for-night imagery. Its tone is gloomy and its humor and dialogue, supplied by feminist writer Fay Weldon, sister of the film’s director Alan Birkinsaw, is offbeat and shocking for political incorrectness and imaginings into man’s repressed desires.

“I have two theories about KILLER’S MOON - the first is that it really is the most tawdry piece of badly made, badly acted and badly misconceived cinema I've ever seen. The second is that it's actually a brilliant comedy, written with a subtle flair by intelligent women as an attempt to bring down exploitation cinema from within. Unfortunately, the first theory must be the correct one. The acting is just so bad, the tasteless scenes are just so shockingly unbelievable, that it can't be a satire. Can it?” - Chris Wood, British Horror Film