Blood Moon

Blood Moon (2001): Well, here is another hard to define movie. I was expecting a run of the mill no cast werewolf movie but instead found real actors like Tim Curry, Victoria Sanchez, Grace Jones, and Leslie Ann Warren. Trying to categorize this movie is a little like explaining quantum physics to four year olds, it ain’t easy. It’s sort of a horror, psychological, freak show, tragic love story musical. Curry plays the owner of a traveling freak show in what I believe is supposed be the US in a recent time period. However the show has eastern European looking trucks and horse drawn gypsy wagons which haven’t been seen in these parts for longer than Elvis has gone missing. The automobile(s) have a 60’s look to them but sure do look like late Soviet Empire models. And in the closing credits there are just too many people named Vlad for this to have been shot anywhere else but in jolly old Romania. The star of the freak show is a wolf girl who is very hairy and is somewhat unhappy with her hirsute life. She finds a sympathetic loner from town whose mom works in cosmetic research (can you figure out where we’re going with this?) and gives her a serum designed to improve hair loss. Well, things don’t go exactly as planned and disaster for all results. There are some surprisingly good musical numbers including Tim Curry’s “The Plucking Song” and an interesting set by Grace Jones embedded in the movie. This movie is loaded with lots of strange people from the freak show and even has a vertically challenged orchestra and dance troupe. The lead characters are quite sympathetic and the movie is somewhat character driven, rare for this type of film. Yes, it has its clichéd characters but on the whole is a surprising and enjoyable little flick. Rent it for a fun weekend afternoon. The movie is rated R for: excessive use of freaks, full male, female and other gender nudity, gender bending, snotty teens, nerdly teens, dead teens, hairy teens, horny toad teens, and particularly for that guy with the reversing knees (Yuck).