It's a late-1970s made-for-TV werewolf romp set in Hawaii...
When you think of movies filmed in Hawaii, you probably think of vacation flicks and dramas, but has the Aloha state ever given us a werewolf film? Yep, in this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, we discuss 1978’s Deathmoon starring Robert Foxworth.
It's, as far as we can tell, the rare monster movie set in Hawaii -- and actually filmed there as well, much of it at Kauaʻi's Coco Palms Resort, which was featured in a number of classic Hawaii movies from the likes of Elvis Presley.
It's a by-the-numbers wolfman picture at heart -- and it does little or nothing with actual Polynesian mythology -- but it's a very watchable made-for-TV experience made special by its setting and leisure suit style.
It debuted as a CBS Wednesday Night Movie and went on to make the rounds as a VHS release -- and as far as we can tell it has never been released on disc or digitial platforms. We watched it as a VHS-ripped YouTube copy with fabulous Dutch subtitles (werk beest!). You'll find the full movie embedded below beneath the Weirdhouse Cinema episode itself:
As far as related media goes, you'll find a YouTube rip of director Bruce Kessler's OTHER 1978 vacation horror film for TV, Cruise Into Terror, right here. That Travel+Leisure article about House Detectives is here. I'm also giving you the 1973 TV movie The Horror at 37,000 Feet.
As you can see above, this is the first episode of Weirdhouse Cinema to publish with its own logo -- and we're working on getting that put on some casual merch. And we're going to be running a previous episode of Weirdhouse Cinema next week, so I'm not sure what our next film selection will be. But I'll update it here when we know!
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