Moonchild (1974)

This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

A young artists spends the night at a mysterious inn, where he meets a group of strange, sullen people, among them the innkeeper's beautiful daughter.What he doesn't know is that he has wandered into a kind of spiritual void, and the inn's residents are engaging in a battle over his soul. Very odd 70's film saved in a way by a nice walk through by John Carradine and some very artsy and surreal direction. Supposedly filmed in Riverside, CA, the sets are very interesting as well.The print I saw held up very well. Color still popped.This is the only movie the director ever made. He started it as a student film. Apparently th film did not do well when released but in recent years it has become a cult item.Gadley also edited a student film of George Lucas. That's it. Sad there is not more information about him. He clearly was in school to get into the picture business and made an interesting first film, yet nothing exists about him. At the time I write this IMDb user are giving this an average of 2.2 stars! That's a disconnect. It's definitely way better than that.

Its easy to see why Moonchild has a 2.1 average rating on this site and very few reviews. Marketed as some kind of low budget horror, its actually more of a psychological mood piece conducted with creepy atmosphere than something easily digestible. It apparently began life as a student film and I can well see that, it feels the product of a student brain, brain like dope softened sponge, heavied to dripping with ideas and questions, gripped in slipping hands that know not what to do. The concept and underlying themes are distinct but the execution less so, it ends up a head film that isn't really thought out well enough. The story, such as it is, follows a young student who come to a mission turned hotel in his search for perfection of art. There he comes into contact with an array of strange persons whilst facing the resurgence of his past. Its all rather vague until a final act that brings things into a manner of focus, powered mostly by talk and some interesting visuals. Talk of the meaning of life and death, of art and love and god and man, multiple views entwining and arguing, on paper and indeed to the recollection it seems nothing more meaningful than a spewed up half digested morass of philosophical talking points, but due to some sterling performances and a consistently weird, anti commercial tone the film actually manages a rather engaging atmosphere, snaked through with unease and unpredictable currents of tension. Plaudits are deserved by more or less all the key performers. Victor Buono as the hotel maitre d', a pious bon vivant with certain sinister edge, Pat Renella as the straight and stern manager, William Challee a kindly old man and alchemist, and a good sized role for John Carradine as a wandering keeper of words, guide of sorts. Mark Travis is slightly stiff as the student at the centre but he does his best and is suitably bewildered by things. His unshowy turn actually works nicely, as those around him bring the portentous dialogue to strange life he gives a good impression of being trapped in some Kafka-esque prison of twisted language and impossible questions, a prison of abstract thought overlaying the actual confines of the hotel. The effect comes to somewhat resemble Last Year In Marienbad, albeit a less assured, more New Age and nebulous approach to similar themes, the hotel, its geography and inhabitants all uncertain, perhaps all mind born phantasms. The use of eerie organ drones at times seems a direct reference to the Resnais film, as well as some of the tracking shots. Moonchild goes in for many more jolt edits though, and its notions of mind, memory and destiny are less clear edited, they appear as if viewed through clouds. The audience for a film such as this is undoubtedly small, and in what it sets out to do it is not entirely successful. But it's watchable, and it's interesting and decidedly strange. Fans of the genuinely unusual in cinema could do worse than give it a look, those seeking standard issue genre kicks or easy viewing will doubtless find it a terrible chore.

I sat through this preponderant ayahuasca head-trip twice, and I'm still rather unresolved with my feelings about it. The story, while not at all uninteresting, is extremely vague(and probably deliberately so). As I see it, a deceased killer's soul is forever damned to seek lodging in an incommunicado mission-style villa, tenanted by an odd assemblage of necromantic characters. It's a bizarre Hell in which he's forever bound to perpetually relive one brief sequence from his mortal existence. I personally found the quizzical exposition of MOONCHILD intriguing, though these fustian art-house ambitions result in a drastically muddled narrative and exegesis. The film is further injured by lengthy torpid stretches, and a passively limned central character who's overshadowed effortlessly by the veteran support players. I appreciate the creative vitality which fuels experimental cinema, and I did find a unique polestar to this project. One chief debilitation, however, is the dizzyingly inchoate illustration of an umbilical concept that's already quite abstract. This eccentric stagecrafting gives rise to a vaporous psychedelic quality which might appeal to the cannabis clique...a rank-and-file viewership, on the other hand, will likely be left in a fog.5.5/10

Shot in 1971 as a student film under the title FULL MOON and given a brief theatrical release as THE MOON CHILD by Filmakers Limited in 1974, Alan Gadney's sole directorial effort tells the story of a student (Mark Travis) whose pursuit of artistic perfection leads him to a desert mission-cum-hotel where a wandering `keeper of words' (John Carradine) introduces him to a small society of odd personalities – the pious Maitre D' (Victor Buono), the granite-faced Manager (BULLET's Pat Renella), a kindly old man (William Challee, from BILLY THE KID MEETS DRACULA) and his beautiful daughter (THE SWIMMER's Janet Landgard). Before the youth has passed his first night under their roof, his wildly combative hosts set themselves in fervid competition for receipt of his immortal soul.As far as overeager allegories go, THE MOON CHILD isn't bad and predates Stanley Kubrick's somewhat similar THE SHINING by nearly a decade (it also can be said to anticipate other full circle thrillers as ANGEL HEART and THE SIXTH SENSE, albeit taking a less horrific tack in favor of New Age notions of circularity and karma filtered through the visions of Jean Genet, Samuel Beckett and Luis Bunuel). Long neglected, and too often written off as a bad horror movie (a classification it does not deserve), THE MOON CHILD is, if not entirely persuasive, at least a refreshing reminder of a time when film students sought to use the medium for a purpose higher than attention-getting.