Rent Killer's Moon (1978)

“Was my performance lacking? It usually is.” - Killer's Moon review by NP

Drugs, psychopathic criminals, underage sex – it’s all going on in this low-budget British shocker. One of the schoolgirls is played by Jane Haydon, sister of horror legend Linda (most famous perhaps for her role as Angel Blake in ‘Blood on Satan’s Claw’).

A busload of stranded girls spend the night in an unfinished hotel ‘in the wilds of nowhere’, where nearby asylum inmates, tanked up with LSD as part of their experimental therapy, escape and cause horrific carnage.

The escaped inmates’ atrocities are very much in the style of the ultra-violence on display in ‘The Clockwork Orange’, where this film takes a lot of its cues – especially main escapee Mr. Trubshawe (David Jackson – possibly most famous for playing Gan early on in BBC TV space opera Blake’s 7). Apart from the subject matter being distinctly unsavoury, there is a lack of pace to the proceedings.

Some of dialogue is alarming. “See - you’re better,” one girl assures her friend who has just been raped, when she accepts a cup of coffee.

With all this going on, events are surprisingly slow and turgid. Never quite aspiring to the disturbing levels of ‘A Clockwork Orange’, this is ultimately an average rip-off. My score is 5 out of 10.