MOONSTALKER (1989)

MOONSTALKER (1989)

Tagline: There's a bad moon rising...and it just got worse

(Horror, Slasher, Nature Trail To Hell) [R]

Note: This movie appears to have gone straight to video, so I don’t think it got an MPAA rating. It definitely would have been an [R].

Just because I grew up in these hills doesn’t make me Grizzly Adams you know… 

In this one we get the iconic deranged killer in the woods “Bernie”, whose father lets him out of his straight jacket restraints just to kill any vacationing tourists and a group of 20 somethings, training to be camp counselors in the area. Will anyone survive this camper stamper…or MOONSTALKER as the movie came to be called?

One thing this movie does effectively is utilizing the score to keep the tension up. It’s oddly similar to John Carpenter’s iconic score for HALLOWEEN. The actual background to the story is below average when you compare it to a lot of other horror flicks from the 80s, but at the very least we get a campfire story to tell the tale. Just this little touch makes this movie better than a lot of other cheesy horror flicks in the same wheelhouse. 

Acting wise I would be lying if I said this thing wasn’t pretty brutal. Almost no one is going to blow you away, but they do all seem to be trying at least. One of the main stars Joe Balogh who plays Ron is better than most but has a few scenes where he just blows his top and really for no reason. Balogh was in several lower-tier 80s horror flicks like HOLLYWOOD’S NEW BLOOD and MONSTROSITY. Alex Wexler is also in this but only ended up doing 3 movies in his career. He is probably the most annoying character in the movie but certainly not the least likable. We also get quite a bit of Jill Foors in this as Debbie. She was only in 5 movies but they were extremely far apart so you could technically say she was an actress from 1988 to 2016. Regis and Marcie are by far the worst characters in this, but maybe the writer felts adding some whacky-crazed militants into the movie would help. It definitely worked for films like TREMORS. I have no freakin idea what is going on with Marcie (played by Ingrid Vold), she’s pretty whacky. 

Oddity – in one scene Bernie’s father has stolen something from an RV and he is carrying it just fine. In the very next scene, he falls over inexplicably and dies? This never gets explained in the film outside of a few guesses as to what happened. It’s also one of the rare slasher flicks where the killer randomly uses a gun now and then. Perhaps even more odd is the fact that no one seems to hear the gunshot. Does the forest make you deaf? Finally, the movie starts out with an interesting look for the killer, but this is almost immediately abandoned for just a regular dude with a cowboy hat on. The second look for the killer is significantly less interesting than what the film starts out with. 

Cinematically if you can shoot these things in the dark it adds to the spooky elements you might want, but if you get the lighting wrong, you are going to mess up your entire movie. This one walks a really interesting tightrope between being over dark and offering just enough light to see what the heck is going on. As such there are a lot of poorly shot scenes, but enough good ones to balance things out slightly. 

Loaded with glorious overacting, full-blown cheesy effects, and shaky dialog, this thing is actually a bit of a gem and would actually be a pretty good addition to a Halloween night Horror-o-thon. I guess it took a long time for the DVD to come out, but there is one available if you can’t find this on a streaming service. Apparently, the quality is pretty crap no matter what you do, so just keep that in mind. 

I give this one a 4 out of 7. There are a lot of elements taking a bit of extra time could have fixed. The ending is also very iffy, but that isn’t uncommon with slasher films in general. 

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