User Reviews

This movie starts and ends with a rather elegant-looking large music box. A large metal wheel with notches cut out moves up into place, and the backlighting makes it look like a sky full of stars. In the beginning, there's an opera performance in a well-lit tent that is painted fancifully.

There's some beautiful and interesting images in this movie like that, and the cinematography might be very good but it is hard to judge from the pan & scan job I watched. However, the movie didn't work for me as drama or horror.

A romantically-inclined and perhaps naive young woman is proposed to by a shy, polite, awkward man she's known since childhood. Her mother is pleased with him, even though he's much poorer than their family. The young woman is more interested in a "saintly sinner" who hangs out at a saloon playing cards. What sort of relationship they have, if any, isn't clear. She sends him a poem, and he comes out to meet her, but doesn't talk at all except to repeatedly say "don't touch me!" when she tries to, and he even puts a gun to his head to drive the point home!

So, she marries the awkward guy, but doesn't want to have sex with him. She writes her mother claiming he doesn't want to touch her. One morning she finds him boarding up the windows from the inside, and she doesn't seem surprised by this. That evening she gets scared as he tells her he'll be spending the night outside, and she's not to let him in.

I've got to say, I didn't understand this movie. The ending made no sense to me. It's not surreal, it just doesn't explain itself well. Another user praised a scene in which several characters have a meal together without talking. I thought it was ridiculous. Perhaps there's something more interesting about it when it is in widescreen.

Definitely not recommended to anyone expecting a horror movie. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone looking for a drama either, though.

My goodness, great cinematography, costumes and pretty good acting. That's the end of all the good stuff. The fake beard on the monster is pretty bad. Why you folks insist on 600 characters is beyond me. You know dang well one could review this movie with only two words, very bad. A house in the middle of a forty acre field is not a very scary place. All the props were too clean and pretty. Looks like everything had just been painted and all the actors had just came back from the dentist having their teeth whitened. I guess I'm just too old and have watched too many John Ford westerns to appreciate this poor attempt to make a scary movie.

This has to be one of the worst movies I've ever seen. If you find 20 minutes of ceiling fan close ups exciting, then this is the movie for you. If not, find something else. It was so bad we made up our own dialogue and gave it the MST3K treatment. There was also a 20 minute dinner scene where everyone just stares at each with meaningful looks. It's artsy in all the bad ways. Not my kind of movie.

Many of you know what a revisionist western is. A few years ago, the good guys stopped wearing the white hats and became anti-heroes. The bad guys had reason behind their bad actions, and became more sympathetic. Everything out west was covered in dirt, and the women were not that beautiful, so they were forced to marry the rancher who would come to town once a year for supplies and a bath. "Mad at the Moon" is a revisionist revisionist western. The horror/western genre is small but this film reimagines the werewolf legend, transplants it to the 1892 Old West, and fails in both its western conventions and its horror.

Jenny (Mary Stuart Masterson) is a beautiful girl who likes to read and listen to opera courtesy of a traveling show. Her mother (Fionnula Flanagan) is more concerned with her daughter's impending spinsterhood unless she marries the first man who asks her. In this case, it is James (Stephen Blake), a shy and lonely bearded young man who Jenny has known since childhood. She gives him an absolute maybe, then seeks out her real love- James' half brother, rogue Miller (Hart Bochner). Miller rejects her- he's a bad boy, and James and Jenny wed. The first night of the honeymoon is a disaster, and Jenny hates James. One day, James up and boards the windows shut. He locks Jenny inside, and runs out into the field. What is this guy up to? Well, the full moon rises, and James goes nuts, attacking the house when Jenny dares to look at him. He makes snarling animal noises, and wakes up in the morning nude in the front yard. Jenny packs her stuff and runs home to mother. Jenny also talks around town about James' night time activity, and James blames it on "moon sickness." Jenny stays with a sympathetic prostitute, Sally (Cec Verrell), and passes her time doing nothing. Jenny's mom comes up with the bright idea of hiring a newly jailed Miller to stay with Jenny when James flips out. James picks up his bride, his angry half brother, and the duo lock themselves in as James roams the fields, and Jenny makes her choice between the two men.

As Jenny, Masterson is smart and strong willed. So why is she so desperately in love with such a loser like Miller? He brushes her off, takes out his violent frustrations on a prostitute, and even finds time to shoot a man. The director never gives us any background as to how these two came to fall in love, or why Jenny is attracted to him, unless it is the whole "bad boy" thing. Stephen Blake wears a beard, looks at the ground a lot, and is very shy as James. He is the most sympathetic of the love triangle, and I was sorry his character was saddled with this group of townsfolk. Jenny's mother is also a giant question mark, hating Miller yet putting him with Jenny when James begins going nuts. Ne'er-do-well will win out over raging werewolf every time? This film is slow. Slower than molasses flowing uphill. The entire plot of a girl marrying someone she does not love has been done. The horror aspect, in the form of James' werewolf transition, is nonexistent. There are some impressive shots of James silhouetted against a full moon, but he only grows hair on his hands. He never changes that we see, and the plot sounds like Donovan shuffled his werewolf script into his western script, and shot it. Donovan plays with shadow throughout, hiding his actors' faces, but this seems to have been done for no other reason than to show off. With so many weird character decisions, and lack of a good western plot and a good horror plot, "Mad at the Moon" cannot seem to make up its mind about what it wants to be. I made up mine- it should not be seen.

The look of the film alone is worth the 90 minutes. The score is a masterpiece (where can I buy it?) Mary Stuart Masterson is a dream to behold. How is it possible I've never heard of this movie before? It's not for everybody, I agree. Slow paced, long silences, but the atmosphere is hypnotic. I bought the tape and sometimes I put it on, just to have it in the background. I can't pinpoint what it is, but there is something magic about this film. Unique. Like a western made by a child of Ingman Bergman. I don't want to spoil it for whoever sees it for the first time but there is a scene, a dinner in silence between the four leads just before the climax when a sudden wind storm comes to hurry the proceedings. It is wonderful!

I had it transfer from VHS - very dark copy - to DVD - Wow! Somebody mentioned the word "hypnotic" in a review. Well, yes, hypnotic applies but also moving, strange, gorgeous. Where is Mary Stuart Masterson? My God! She's sublime here. Hart Bochner is mysterious and heartbreaking. And who is Stephen Blake? He's compelling here but looking at his credits on IMDb, he hasn't done much. Great face. The score by Gerald Gouriet is sensational. A lyrical western with dark undertones. The aria at the beginning "La Notte Scotta" an unexpected stroke that takes you somewhere immediately. The ending feels a bit rushed - maybe because I wanted to go on. But I recently found out the film was shot in Simi Valley, California in 18 days for less than a million bucks. I don't know many people who've seen this movie. I sometimes introduce it in after dinner parties, always a success. Thank you.

Firstly, this strange, moody and fascinating film reminded me what an amazing actress Mary Stuart Masterson really is. She grows in front of our eyes without betraying for a moment the romantically lyric aspects of the film. I've noticed a similarity with "Male Di Luna", an episode of "Kaos" a remarkable film from the Taviani brothers, but "Mad at the Moon" explores a universe all of its own and it does it with a score worthy of an Academy Award. The look of the film is also a standout. Hart Bochner, Stephan Blake and Fionnula Flanagan give subtle, moving performances but what I felt as soon as the movie ended was the need to shout: Long Live Mary Stuart.

Not worth watching. Not worth watching. Not worth watching. Complete waste of time. I need more characters to finish this review I have said enough. Still have to add characters to get this review published.