MOONCHILD has got to be one of the weirdest "horror" movies I've ever had the pleasure(?) of watching. Borderline incoherent for a majority of its run time, this movie is essentially what most people picture when you ask them to imagine a strange, pretentious student art film (which it actually is). I mean, it opens with a quote from Edgar Cayce! But there's a sort of raw, attractive weirdness to MOONCHILD, the kind of feeling you get watching a movie that the director obviously poured his heart and soul into. The maker of this movie was clearly reaching for great heights, and even if he didn't quite get there, it's pretty admirable what he did manage.The plot of MOONCHILD is from the same basic mold as "The Reincarnation of Peter Proud" and "The Search for Joseph Tully". In my opinion it's better than the former but worse than the latter. A young man (the "Moonchild", or "Gavallan" as we eventually learn) is under some curse where his soul continually reincarnates (conveniently looking identical in every life) and is drawn to a certain hotel where he is judged, harassed, prodded and put on trial for a trivial "crime" by an array of cryptic and weird people that populate the hotel, who are all based on people who he knew in his original life. Our protagonist is the seventh incarnation of this poor sap so far. I've always liked reincarnation as a subject in film and theme of being held hostage by the past, so I found the plot genuinely intriguing. The problem is, we don't learn the truth until near the end of the film, so most of it is just Gavallan wandering around the hotel encountering bizarre strangers who speak cryptic riddles at him. The fact that all the dialogue is basically in code and doesn't make sense at all until you know the truth of who the main character is a little tiresome. The film is beautifully shot, at least in the outdoor sequences. Indoor shots have a problem with murkiness. The color palette is muted and in the version I watched everything had a green tinge, which I'm not sure was intentional. The old mission/hotel that the movie is set in is lovely and I'm curious if any other movies were shot there or if it even still exists. In all, MOONCHILD is a movie I'd only really recommend to fans of the weird, cryptic and artsy, but I would definitely recommend it to those people. It's bizarre and rough around the edges, but that's part of what gives it its out-there charm.

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.

'Moonchild' is an odd little movie. Originally made as a student film, it would have been better if went for about an hour. As it is it gets a bit too dull and repetitive for my liking. Unknown Mark Travis plays a young art student who wanders in a strange and mysterious hotel where he meets a bunch of oddballs. He doesn't know it but he is stuck in a kind of spiritual limbo and the eccentric figures he interacts with may determine his ultimate fate. The only real reason to watch this silly and generally boring movie is because the cast includes horror legend John Carradine, star of countless movies, Victor Buono ('Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?') and William Challee ('Five Easy Pieces'). Apart from that, there's very little to recommend it. Writer/director Allen Gadney never made another movie after this and after you've watched it you won't wonder why.

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.