More lucid than Jess Franco’s usual directorial output (but not much), Bloody Moon sets its slasher sights on a language school in Spain. Sporting a sign with those peel-and-stick letters from your local Ace Hardware, the new institution has 40 female students and nearly as many red herrings.

One of its employees, Manuela (Nadja Gerganoff), gets a new roomie in her brother, Miguel (Alexander Waechter). Noticeable because the entire right side of his face is a giant scab, Miguel arrives fresh from serving time for stabbing a girl with scissors. Soon after he moves to campus and renews his incestuous relationship with Sis, the school’s elderly benefactor (María Rubio) is torched in bed, setting off a string of brutal murders.

The remaining victims, however, are the students. Since they’re all beautiful, it’s tough to tell them apart. I could do so only by how each is dispatched: a knife through the nipple, a head removed by a circular saw, and so on. Eventually, we learn we have a lead by default in the lovely Olivia Pascal (1977’s Vanessa).

Predictably, Franco loves to paint his canvas with the bright-red stuff, so it should not disappoint fans of ever-decreasing casts. Bloody Moon is equally colorful in depicting the landscape’s tranquil beauty as it is scenes of savagery. There’s a feeling of mishmash that exists in the shapeless script by Contamination’s Erich Tomek — one that willy-nilly throws in can’t-be-accidental nods to Psycho and Halloween — so laser-accurate focus is not to be expected. Pouring plasma, however? Positive. —Rod Lott

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Horror author Clive Barker’s last (to date) directorial effort Lord of Illusions manages to cram almost everything I love into one two-hour package. It has Clive Barker (natch). It has gore. It has magicians. It has seedy detectives. It has pseudo-profundity. It has religious fanaticism. It has practical makeup effects courtesy of KNB. It has Famke Janssen (X-Men). Only if you threw in an appearance by Fast Times at Ridgemont High‘s Vincent Schiavelli would I love it more. Wait, he’s in it, too!

Scott Bakula (TV’s Quantum Leap) gets an all-too-rare leading role as Harry D’Amour, a P.I. who finds himself constantly drawn to supernatural phenomena. A case involving the apparent death of a Las Vegas illusionist (the invaluable Kevin J. O’Connor, Deep Rising) leads D’Amour to Nix, a cult leader better known as The Puritan (The Faculty‘s Daniel von Bargen, just wonderfully crazy).

Barker isn’t nearly enough of a stylist to pull off the vibe he’s going for (Raymond Chandler meets The Exorcist), and there are times when I find myself wishing someone like John Carpenter had been allowed a crack at the material. Working with his largest budget, Lord of Illusions is an accomplished movie, but it could use a healthy dose of the low-budget dementedness Barker brought to 1987’s Hellraiser.

But somehow, for me, it doesn’t matter that the technique is lumpy, or that a few of the special effects are iffy. Because there’s a private dick who describes an exorcism as “the usual,” and who greets the resurrection of a demon-man with a perfectly timed “Fuck.” There’s a decayed demigod who intones, “I was born to murder the world,” before slaying all of his followers. There’s an acolyte who waves knives and prances about menacingly in spandex pants. There’s a magic trick involving falling swords that goes horribly wrong. There’s a corpse-reanimation sequence that gave me nightmares. There’s a hole that appears to literally reach the center of the Earth.

And again, there’s Famke Janssen. —Corey Redekop

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