Deathmoon recycles that hoary old horror cliché, the cursed descendant; in this case it's work-weary property developer Jason Palmer (Robert Foxworth) who pays for the sins of his great grandfather, a missionary who destroyed the sacred altar of a Polynesian tribe. When Jason takes a well-earned vacation to Hawaii, he finds himself cursed by Hawaiian witch Tapulua (France Nuyen) and changes into a werewolf whenever there is a full moon. Numerous guests at the resort are killed, and it is up to hotel detective Rick Bladen (Joe Penny) to try and solve the case.
A made-for-TV movie, Deathmoon is clearly restricted in what it can show in terms of gore and nudity (there's a very coy shower scene and the supposedly gruesome killings occur off-camera), while the meagre budget allows for just the one dreadful transformation scene, which uses clumsy dissolves between the different stages of werewolf make-up (and is no better than Lon Chaney's transformation in The Wolf Man decades earlier).
With limited sex and violence, director Bruce Kessler pads out his film with travelogue style scenery, pointless songs courtesy of a hotel singer, and a boring subplot about a room thief at large. Eye-candy is provided by Barbara Trentham as Jason's holiday romance partner Dianne, who naturally becomes the woman-in-peril in the film's predictable climax.
3.5/10, rounded up to 4 for IMDb.
A made-for-TV movie, Deathmoon is clearly restricted in what it can show in terms of gore and nudity (there's a very coy shower scene and the supposedly gruesome killings occur off-camera), while the meagre budget allows for just the one dreadful transformation scene, which uses clumsy dissolves between the different stages of werewolf make-up (and is no better than Lon Chaney's transformation in The Wolf Man decades earlier).
With limited sex and violence, director Bruce Kessler pads out his film with travelogue style scenery, pointless songs courtesy of a hotel singer, and a boring subplot about a room thief at large. Eye-candy is provided by Barbara Trentham as Jason's holiday romance partner Dianne, who naturally becomes the woman-in-peril in the film's predictable climax.
3.5/10, rounded up to 4 for IMDb.