Having heard about this slasher movie from someone online (who shall remain nameless, and still someone with an opinion I value, but let's just say that they like this one a lot more than I did), I decided to blind buy Moon In Scorpio and add it to my list of scheduled horror viewings for this October. I'm easily pleased, a statement I know that I repeat far too often, and I was hoping for some standard horror movie thrills here.
The very basic plot summary concerns a bunch of friends heading off on a boat trip. Allen (John Phillip Law) will be introducing his new wife, Linda (Britt Ekland), to his friends. Burt (William Smith) and Mark (Lewis Van Bergen) are fellow veterans, and all three men are bonded by their wartime and war crimes. Their partners, Claire (Jillian Kesner) and Isabel (April Wayne), are also on board. As is a killer.
There is a germ of a good idea at the centre of this, a vengeful force attacking guilty parties who have spent a long time trying to repress memories of bad war times, both what they have gone through and what they did, while also being irrevocably changed by that experience. It could be argued that the most interesting parts of the script, written by Robert Aiken, don’t involve the supernatural/slasher element. There’s interesting fluctuating levels of tension as the group simply settle back into some kind of false friendship, perhaps having kept in touch with one another when some would have been better to just break away and move on.
Director Gary Graver tries, but fails, to make the most of his relatively small budget, some interference from an executive producer (apparently), and the problem of the setting and small core cast making it harder to line up a selection of likely suspects as the murders begin.
Ekland isn’t terrible in her role, but she is clearly picked to be the big name that could draw in viewers. Law and Van Bergen are both fine, even if they find themselves overpowered by the domineering presence of Smith, who is enjoyably unpleasant throughout. Kesner gets to act over the top as someone constantly drinking her way through the film, Wayne is a very pleasant addition to the visual aesthetics, and Robert Quarry is enjoyable enough in a couple of scenes that have him as a doctor interviewing Ekland about just what happened on the boat (no spoiler - the film begins with a hysterical Ekland being found).
While there’s enough here to help this stand out from the crowd of slashers that overwhelmed horror fans from the late 1970s through the 1980s, Moon In Scorpio is more interesting for what it hints at, rather than what it is. Nothing stands out, the visuals, score, effects, and production design are all competent (at best, some nice shots of the boat notwithstanding), and it’s only worth seeking out once you feel that you have exhausted the large selection of more enjoyable, or more interesting, films in this subgenre.
5/10
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