BLOODMOON

Australia, 1990, 95 minutes. Colour.
Leon Lissek, Christine Amor, Ian Williams, Helen Thomson, Craig Cronin, Hazel Howson.
Directed by Alec Mills.

Bloodmoon is a slasher movie – before the proliferation of slasher movies in the 1990s. Compared with them, it is rather mild, especially in its visual portrayal of the murders. There are some gruesome details, but nothing like what was to come.

The film is familiar enough. There is a madman at a girls’ high school (which neighbours a boys’ high school, leading to fairly permissive behaviour). He is a science teacher but becomes obsessed with students, their relationships – and kills them. He is dominated by his wife, Christine Amor, who had shielded him in the United States and is shielding him again but is dismayed when she discovers he has gone on a killing spree. She herself is in a relationship with one of the students from the high school.

The film is given something of a Catholic background – an elderly nun (Hazel Howson) who stays at the school even though the sisters have moved away. She hovers around, she observes, she finally confronts the murderer. There are also mass sequences and the choir is from the Catholic college in Brisbane, Stuartholme.

The local police are called in – and, unfortunately, because he is a decent man with a nice family, the main sergeant is actually killed by the mad murderer (when his superior officer, hesitant to believe anything, would have made a much better victim). The film also focuses on two young characters, Kevin Lynch and Mary Huston, who are lured into a trap by the marriage – but, fortunately, escape.

The film shows life at the school, indulges itself in the presentation of the single-minded and domineering headmistress, shows the kind of permissive behaviour among students at the end of the 1980s – and gives a portrait, by Leon Lissek (an Australian-born actor who spent most of his career in England) of a mad and a pathetic killer.

The film was directed by Alec Mills, a director of photography on many British films including some of the Star Wars series. The next year he was to make a similar kind of film, Dead Sleep, with Linda Blair.

1. A precursor of the slasher films of the 1990s? Australian style?

2. The mildness of the presentation in comparison with later films? The graphic moments? The deaths off-screen?

3. The Queensland setting, the high schools, the town, the schools themselves, the principal’s home, the classrooms, the church, the laboratories? The surrounding countryside? The musical score?

4. The title – evocative rather than adding to the theme?

5. The presentation of the young people? More permissive? The girls and their chatter, sexual behaviour? The boys, their talk? The dances in common? The religious background and going to mass? The boy from the college and his relationship with Virginia Sheffield? The absence of showing many teachers or parents? Mary Huston’s mother on the phone – celebrated actress, neglect of her daughter?

6. Myles Sheffield, in the laboratory, classes? Audience suspicions? The murders of the young people? The two girls looking for the exam papers, his pursuit of them, killing them? Going home and finding his wife, her dominating of him, her hold over him and protecting him? His vengeance? His setting up Mary and Kevin? The confrontation by Matt Desmond, his pretend phone call and holding down the phone? His killing the policeman? His going to his wife, her decision to run away, abandoning him? The confrontation by Sister Mary Ellen? His death?

7. Virginia Sheffield, her haughtiness, ambitions, control of the girls? In relationship with the boy? Her dominating her husband? Protecting him? The confrontation with the police?

8. Kevin and Mary, ordinary, friendship, at the dance, their reticence, going out, at the beach, Kevin’s special place? The return, the fabricated phone calls, Myles Sheffield and his forcing the girl to call Kevin? Their discovering the truth, attacked by Myles? Kevin and the strangling, his being saved? Mary – and a happy ending?

9. Michelle and Jennifer, the pressures for them to pass exams, going to the laboratory, asking Myles for the exam questions, their return, the pursuit and their deaths?

10. An example of Australian pulp fiction?