Having made over 100 films by this point in his career, Jess Franco was no stranger to trying his hand within a myriad of genres. Having been tasked by his producers to exploit the burgeoning slasher craze (though still a few years ahead of its 1982 explosion), Franco birthed one of the most violent films in his entire career with BLOODY MOON. For this outing, Franco combines shocking grindhouse sleaze with sumptuous beauty, his signature narcotic-haze flourishing throughout. Ostensibly BLOODY MOON tells the tale of a pair of incestuous siblings and their relationship after the brother brutally murders a woman at a party, landing him in jail. It isn’t until he is released from prison, and the murders start all over again, that our story really begins. Plot points aside, what really matters here is how Franco presents this movie: his hypnotic use of blues, golds, and pinks captured through his soft lens choices and signature zooms, the entire cast feeling like extraterrestrial mannequins cosplaying as human beings, Josef Gottlieb's Euro-Pop onslaught soundtrack, plus the dizzying dubbing and editing all bring together BLOODY MOON into a transcendent Bacchanale of horror heaven, one that only Franco could pull off.