german horror movies – Horror Ghouls

Der Golem (1920)

Posted on October 10, 2024October 7, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

We’re in the Jewish ghetto of medieval Prague, where Rabbi Loew has taken a look at the stars which predicts a disaster for his people. He immediately informs the elders, and the next day the Holy Roman Emperor signs a decree declaring that all the Jews must leave the city before the new moon. An arrogant young man named Florian is sent to deliver it, and upon arriving in the ghetto he falls in love with Miriam, Loew’s daughter. Love-triangle-drama ensues: Loew’s assistant also has feelings for her. Loew, on the other hand, has begun creating a Golem, which is a huge man-creature made of clay. He wants to bring this creature to life in order to defend his people. During a magical ritual, Loew and his assistant summon the demon Astaroth, and makes him wake the Golem to life. Now, Loew finally has an awkward household servant, and something that will protect his people. Things appear to go smoothly at first…but soon, the Golem starts to behave erratically…

The Golem: How He Came into the World (original tite: Der Golem, wie er in de Welt kam, aka Der Golem) is a German silent horror film from 1920. It is one of the leading examples of early German expressionism, directed by Paul Wegener and co directed by Carl Boese. The script was co-written with Henrik Galeen, and it’s based on a novel from 1915 by Gustav Meyrink. The film was shot at the Tempelhof Studios in Berlin, and became a great success in Germany and played for full theaters for two months straight. A year later the film was released in the United States, also to packed houses and was the longest-running movie that year. It even started what was referred to as the “golem-cult“, which spun several golem-related media and adaptions. There were hardcore fanbases even in the 1920’s, it seems.

The charm of Der Golem is without a doubt the visual style. The set pieces are a blend of medieval gothic mixed with a surreal flair. The expressionist tone with all the artistic sets puts it in the same league as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), although not quite as stylized. But holy cow, the work they did on that village is absolutely stunning! The crooked and twisted little houses that makes up the “ghetto“ looks like something straight out of a gothic fairytale, not to mention the interior shots which are very inventive and full of style and atmosphere. The movie is definitely a visual treat, with a cinematic world-building that’s outright stunning. The Golem himself is also pretty well made, using a costume with platform-shoes to make him look a lot bigger than everyone else, and he does look quite intimidating at times. He is also played by Paul Wegener, the director himself, who really uses his stern facial expression to let everyone know that the Golem doesn’t take shit from anyone.

Der Golem is by many considered a precursor to Frankenstein (1931) and it’s easy to see why. The Golem is both a great movie monster, tragic in many ways just as the Frankenstein monster, having been brought to a world that he can not really fit into. Frankenstein was a result if science, while the Golem was a result of magic, but the tragic results remain the same. Despite the underlying tragic fate of the titular character, the movie is whimsical as much as it is dark.

Der Golem was actually the third film in a trilogy, the first being The Golem (1914) and the short The Golem and the Dancing Girl (1917) and is a prequel to the first film. Unfortunately, the other two films have been lost.

Directors: Paul Wegener, Carl Boese
Writers: Paul Wegener, Henrik Galeen
Also known as: The Golem: How He Came into the World
Country & year: Germany, 1920
Actors: Paul Wegener, Albert Steinrück, Lyda Salmonova, Ernst Deutsch, Hans Stürm, Max Kronert, Otto Gebühr, Dore Paetzold, Lothar Müthel, Greta Schröder, Loni Nest
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0011237/

Anthropophagous 2000 (1999)

Posted on July 23, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

For those familiar with Andreas Schnaas’ epic Violent Shit saga, and just add Nikos the Impaler to the list, know pretty much what to expect: Amateur-hour overkill extravaganza all the way through. And his remake of Joe D’Amato’s Antropophagus isn’t much different. It’s Violent, it’s Shit, and lots of tasteless, inept fun.

The film starts with a group of Interpol agents who have discovered a cave with human skeletons. One of the agents spots a diary which he takes a further look into to maybe get some answers. Then we flashback to a family of four on a boat-trip: dad Nikos (not related to Nikos the Impaler) with his younger daughter and pregnant wife (UH-OH). Shit happens when they get hit by a storm which leaves them stuck on a lifeboat where Nikos goes insane and eats his whole family. Since then, he’s paddled himself to the mainland to some remote village where he’s eaten up most of the people.

Our first body counts are a young couple who are about to have sex in a tent. We’re a few minutes in where the cinematography is non-existent and the overall quality reeks of amateur homemade porn. And don’t expect it to be any better. However, Nikos is soon about to pop up where he deletes them both with an ax and rips their faces off.

We jump to a train station where we meet our main characters (or just body-counts, if you will), a group that I’d guess were some middle-aged Anonymous Alcoholics, gathering for an intervention. It’s less serious than that though, as they’re here on vacation. The place is supposed to be in the countryside of Italy, yet the only post listed on the IMDb trivia section tells us that the film was shot in Austria. Whatever.

They continue the trip with an RV where they struggle to find the destination, a town called Lorenzo (if I remember correctly). They ask a local for help, a hobo, who strongly warns them to NOT go near Lorenzo. The pregnant woman pukes straight at the hobo’s hands, which he slurps and smears over his face. Uh.. OK.

It’s pretty straight-forward from here on with the same plot points as the original. The pregnant woman mysteriously disappears (and we all know what lies next for her), the body counts enter an empty village where they stumble upon (what is supposed to be) cadavers. Don’t let the cheap Halloween props fool you. This is the real thing. They get spooked and surprised by a blind screaming lady in a basement. The classic fetus scene is of course here, and instead of using a skinned rabbit, we actually have a real baby. Just kidding, they used an animatronic baby doll.

We also have some new fresh ideas with a quick side-plot of a gay couple hiking in the local woods, only to amp up the pace and kill count. And instead of the obligatory taking-a-piss break, we … are having a smoke. Because Andreas Schnaas tried to go for a far more serious tone with this one, if you can even imagine – and it falls completely on its face on all fronts. If the acting wasn’t bad and amateurish enough, with the same juvenile and frantic backyard-filmmaking approach as his previous films, the film is also shot on video. A fugly combination that never looks appealing. So don’t look for any visuals or atmosphere like the original.

That being said, Anthropophagous 2000 doesn’t fail to entertain. It’s a fun retarded so-bad-it’s-good trash fest that could exist in the Violent Shit universe. I said the same about Nikos the Impaler. Just replace the killer with Karl the Butcher, and there you have it. It makes zero difference. The gore is over-the-top, messy and comical, as Schnaas is known for. Some look decent while others look fake, like a plastic turd. Also watch out for a Cannibal Holocaust reference. Andreas Schnaas plays, of course, the cannibal, where he acts more like a cosplay version of George Eastman. It’s like watching a mouse trying to be an elephant. But as always, he seemed to have a jolly fun time playing yet another boogeyman.

Director: Andreas Schnaas
Writer: Karl-Heinz Geisendorf
Country & year: Austria/Germany, 1999
Actors: Oliver Sauer, Cornelia De Pablos, Andreas Stoek, Sybille Kohlhase, Achim Kohlhase, Andre Sobottka, Britt B., Andreas Schnaas
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0202233/

Original:
– Antropophagus (1980)

Faux sequel:
– Anthropophagus II (2022)

Anthropophagous 2000 (1999) – Trailer from Movies From The Crypt on Vimeo.

Making Contact (1985)

Posted on October 3, 2023June 12, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Take a bunch of obscure deleted scenes from E.T., Poltergeist, and some unreleased haunted house movie made by Disney TV, stitch them randomly together with little to no context – and then you have Making Contact, written and directed by Roland Emmerich. Yes, the “master of disaster“ himself who gave us Independence Day.

And no, Making Contact, which Emmerich made eight years before his global breakthrough with Stargate, has nothing to do with making contact with space or aliens. I don’t exactly know what the movie is trying to make contact with… A cohesive plot it is certainly not, and I don’t even think that a young, struggling Roland Emmerich knew. He just wanted to make an entertaining movie, according to the film’s wiki page. And entertaining it is, but mostly for the wrong reasons. And that’s always something I can appreciate.

The film centers around the young kid, Joey, who’s just had his dad buried. Why, what or how, we never get to know. The same night, while he’s in his room, the house gets haunted by… something. All the toys start to move and a red-glowing toy phone in his closet starts ringing. On the other end is his dad, or that is what we’re supposed to believe. We’re only some minutes in when I can already picture this as one of the many unofficial sequels that got spewed out of Italy during the 1980s. And if that was the case here, this would be released as Poltergeist 2, without any questions.

Joey and his mother also happen to live next door to the same house from the Psycho films. Here it’s condemned and ready to be demolished. One day, Joey goes for an exploration in its cobwebbed basement, where he finds a ventriloquist dummy. The dummy’s name is not Norman Bates but Fletcher, and we soon learn that he’s possessed by a demon or something which should rather be locked up in a blessed cage in the occult museum of Ed and Lorraine Warren.

Weird, supernatural shit also occurs at school where an egg rolls by itself over a ruler from one table to another. Some girls’ pigtails start to float just out of the blue… and when I thought I’d seen it all: instead of a bunch of chairs stacked up on each other in the kitchen, we have some sharp knives stuck in the kitchen cupboard.

Making Contact is a weird mesmerizing mess that can never decide what direction it wants to go with a tone that bounces all over the place. There’s a side-plot with the demon possessed-whatever doll that never gets explained. The other kids in Joey’s class set up a plan to kill him because…because. Joey suddenly has telekinetic powers. Scientists set up a lab at Joey’s house. Kids are running around in Norman Bate’s huge underground basement where a big hamburger-shaped monster pops up, and some other ghoulish creatures for a quick moment. The top of a big maze can be seen in the distance and I wonder if there’s a shrine in there as well. The visual effects look like scraps from Mr. Boogedy.

Almost the entire cast is of non-actors who’s only appeared in this film, most of which are Germans while the shooting took place in Germany, Virginia Beach and at the backlot of Universal Studios in California where the exterior of the Psycho house is located. The film got English dubbing for its DVD release with a new musical score which sounds very familiar to a certain John Williams. And now I’m almost tempted to claim that Steven Spielberg actually ghost directed the film in some bizarre alternative universe while he snorted lines with Tobe Hooper. Because the more I think of this film the more confused I get.

Making Contact is obscure for a reason, but the weird and goofy nature of it, and if not considering who’s directed it, makes it more of a morbid curiosity and something to at least have some fun with. Emmerich followed up with the horror comedy Ghost Chase, aka Hollywood Monster, in 1987 which is even more nuttier.

Director: Roland Emmerich
Writers: Roland Emmerich, Hans J. Haller, Thomas Lechner
Original title: Joey
Country & year: West Germany, US, 1985
Actors: Joshua Morrell, Eva Kryll, Tammy Shields, Jan Zierold, Barbara Klein, Matthias Kraus, Jerry L. Hall Jr., Sean Johnson, Christine Goebbels, Ray Kaselonis
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0089378/

Premutos – The Fallen Angel (1997)

Posted on December 9, 2022August 1, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Hail Premutos! Premutos who? The very first fallen angel, of course. Forget all about Lucifer, here it’s only Premutos that matters, ready to conquer the world of the living and the dead by spreading death, carnage and insanity (as if the world wasn’t insane enough already). But in order to reach into present time, the son of Premotus must clear his path throughout the human history. And in order to do so he has to be constantly reincarnated. Sounds rather stressful.

The plot here is all over the fucking place, scattered over various time periods, so I will do my best to cut it as minimal as possible so it doesn’t get as long as The Satanic Bible. Here we go: We start in year 1023 in the middle of a gory battle-field in India, where the son of Premutos gets reincarnated through a skeleton that transforms back to life. As the skeleton transforms into a human in the cheesiest low-budget style possible, Premutos Jr. rises from the ground, holding two severed heads. Some hand-drawn lightning sparks from his blood-soaked body, ready to raise Hell, but his stay gets reduced to not more than fifteen seconds before he gets stabbed to death. Oof! Better luck next time.

We take a huge leap to year 1942 and the place is on a graveyard somewhere in Germany where the old farmer Rudolf digs up a scroll, or whatever. Since the town folks are being suspicious after bodies are being missing from the graves, a mob breaks into his house to kill him. In the basement they are met by the sight of dead bodies, just in time to rise as zombies and cause mayhem. One of them gets his dick bitten off. Fun stuff. But to cut it short (non pun intended), Rudolf buries the manifest that reveals the black magic of Premutos. He then attempts to bring his wife (I guess,) back to life, only to his disappointment as her head suddenly explodes like a melon put in a microwave, just like that. No time to mourn as the mob bursts through the door to finally kill Rudolph. Rest in peace.

Then we’re in the present time, in mid 90s Germany where we meet the young man Matthias (Olaf Ittenbach). He’s a clumsy tard that always fails to impress his love-interest next door. Calling him mentally inept feels wrong since everyone seems that way, probably due to the bad and goofy acting. However, he’s the last and seemingly final reincarnation to open the gate for Premutos to enter the modern world. He’s of course unnaware until he has nightmares and flashbacks from his many earlier lives, from various scenarios as he goes more and more insane. We see him as a farmer in a plague-infested Bavarian Forest in 1293 where he meets the old hag from Resident Evil Village telling him that Premutos will come, as she’s holding a severed head and laughs hysterically. In another flashback he’s a soldier from WW 2. He transforms into a werewolf-like creature. Then we jump back to present time where we finally get introduced to the film’s hero or anti-hero: Matthias’ stepdad Walter (Christopher Stacey) – a jolly, bubbly guy who looks like a caricature of a hillbilly straight from the heartlands of ‘Merica in love with his rifle. He adds a lot of the fun factor. But anyway, today it’s his birthday and tonight, to quote 45 Grave: it’s partytime! But first, he digs a hole in the garden to plant a flower, because why not, only to find the book we saw earlier. And just to add gas on the fire, he gives it to Matthias.

Nothing goes wrong from here on, and Walter has the birthday party of his life, all wrapped up with a fifteen minutes finale with a non-stop splatter orgy with the almost impossible attempt to outdo the gore-meter of Peter Jackson’s Braindead.

Premutos – The Fallen Angel is regarded as Olaf Ittenbach’s best film, his magnum opus and the only film that someone would bring up with a good conscience if you were asked to recommend only one film from his still growing filmography. I haven’t seen a quarter of his resume yet as we speak, so I can’t really subjectively confirm. But still, Premutos is a fun package of a low-budget gorefest that blends inspirations from Peter Jackson, Sam Raimi and Andreas Schnaas.

Based on the remastered Blu-ray version there’s a lot of decent visuals here. The flashback scenes are quite competently shot with flexible camera work, and a sense of sober cinematography on set and fitting spots for locations, which is a rare element in a film like this. Although it’s overall completely B-Movie chaos, it shows that the director had more ambitions than to only focus on the gore and bodycounts. The present-day scenes however are dull and flat where we see Matthias on a local football match, getting his nutsack destroyed after being hit with the ball. Yeah, shit happens. And there’s some other boring filler-scenes here that doesn’t add much, but they’re minimal.

The birthday party scenes, before Hölle gets real, are fun, though, where it’s clear that the actors had a blast and were probably getting drunk for real while the camera was rolling. One of the guests is the doppelganger of Sam Hyde, by the way. Just take a look at the dude with the round glasses on the seventh screenshot down below and convince me otherwise. Anyway – they get so drunk that they start to puke and … grab their fresh spew and throw it at each other. Fun times!

But of course, we’re mainly here for the gore, and it sure delivers. Just like the Hell scene from The Burning Moon we get a non-stop batshit carnage that goes on for over fifteen minutes. Some effects are really great, some are straight-out cartoonish and cheap, but overall a perfect dessert for gorehounds, if you weren’t pleased already. Body parts get ripped off left and right, torsos cut in half with a chainsaw and much more. Whether the film did outdo Braindead or not, I would bet that Olaf Ittenbach at least outdid himself with Premutos.

The film was released on Blu-ray later this year by Unearthed Films. It contains a fully restored version, which looks great, with the original German dialogues. A new, animated opening is also added. We also get a bonus-disc with the soundtrack and a vintage VHS version with pure bonkers Zombie ’90: Extreme Pestilence-style dubbing for those who want more so-bad-it’s-good experience.

Writer and director: Olaf Ittenbach
Original title: Premutos – Der gefallene Engel
Also known as: Premutos – Lord of the Living Dead
Country & year: Germany, 1997
Actors: André Stryi, Christopher Stacey, Ella Wellmann, Anke Fabré, Fidelis Atuma, Olaf Ittenbach, Heike Münstermann, Ingrid Fischer, Frank Jerome, Susanne Grüter, Ronald Fuhrmann, Renate Sigllechner
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0144555/

Premutos Lord of the Living Dead from Unearthed Films on Vimeo.

Violent Shit 4: Karl the Butcher vs Axe (2010)

Posted on November 20, 2021September 18, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Less Violence – more Shit.

Karl the Butcher has been dead for 25 years, and now spends his time in Hell, chained to a chair in a dark room. He gets a message from Satan that he has to go back to Earth to kill a new potential Butcher (known as Axe). “Make a wish”, Satan says. Karl wants his mask back. A naked blond chick gives him his mask whom he then rips the head off, before he resurrects on the surface. Of course, what else did you expect?

It’s now the year 2023 and world has become an apocalyptic wasteland which has been split into gang communities. Among them, we get the pleasure to meet the female trinity gang led by the complete unfunny nutcase Queen Scara, who captures and ties up men, attaches their dick to a tube connected to a “sperminator” that drains them from sperm (of course) which Scara drinks while she gives the worst and obnoxious performances I have probably ever seen from a woman. It’s actually so bad in the most painfully cringy way possible that the witch from Troll 2 is Oscar worthy in comparison. The two other ladies, and rest of the cast for that matter are just as awful, but Scara really sticks out, and this trinity gang has a lot of unnecessary screen time with scenes that really drags on and on. I didn’t even chuckle once, and it’s obvious that they act bad on purpose. It looks like something you would see on a bad unintentionally unfunny YouTube film/skit.

Where was I… as soon as Karl the Butcher (played by Andreas Schnaas as usual) emerges to planet Earth, he wastes no time to hunt for Axe and other victims. He kills a random naked chick with some really big, solid boobies before he enters one of the gang communities. The word that Karl the Butcher is back from Hell spreads fast, and the female trinity and some other gangs comes to hunt him down. And yeah, who’s this Axe person, you may ask. He’s just some dude who lives with his lady in the woods (played by co-director Timo Rose). He also wears a mask and has a funny-looking axe which looks like a cheap Halloween prop from some Walmart discount bin, and there’s nothing interesting about him. When he finally stumbles upon Karl, the whole premise takes an unexpected turn when The Butcher and Axe rather decides to team up and become buddies, when they realize that the gangs is out to kill them both.

It took two long decades before Andreas Schnaas finally gave us the not-so long anticipated Violent Shit 4: Karl The Butcher vs Axe, co-written and co-directed with Timo Rose. And I have to say I was a bit curios to see what two directors would come up with in the so far final chapter in the Violent Shit series. And it still looks like shit, as it’s probably meant to be, with overall inept directing, and still amateur hour all way through. The biggest sin here is that it’s mostly boring. It’s also the least violent of them all where it’s too far between the killing scenes, or the Violent Shit, if you will. Instead we get less Violence and more Shit with yawn-inducing and terribly written dialogue scenes where the “actors” seem to be bored out of their minds.

The film isn’t completely hopeless, though. It has it’s Snchnaas trademark moments with limbs getting ripped apart, static close-ups of beheading, castrations, bad choreographed fighting scenes with goofy, cartoonish sound effects, and of course some fresh nudity. It’s nothing new to see, but better than nothing, I guess. The final act is the most entertaining part with gunfights, silly video game-style fights, and of course when Karl the Butcher drinks some green liquid and becomes the Super Butcher, just like Super Shredder from Turtles 2. And his jacket-up bicep-costume looks something like this. Yes, really.

And of you still haven’t gotten enough Violent Shit and the murderous adventures of Karl the Butcher, there actually exists an Italian remake from 2015 of the first film, called Violent Shit: The Movie.

Violent Shit 4: Karl the Butcher vs Axe is available on DVD from Synapse Films.

Directors: Timo Rose, Andreas Schnaas
Country & year: Germany, 2010
Actors: Andreas Schnaas, Timo Rose, Magdalèna Kalley, Eileen Daly, Eleanor James, Marysia Kay, Marc Rohnstock, Mario Zimmerschitt, Marc Trinkhaus, Timo Fuchs
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt1517076/

Prequels:
– Violent Shit III: Infantry of Doom (1999)
– Violent Shit II (1992)
– Violent Shit (1989)

Nekromantik (1987)

Posted on November 20, 2020September 19, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Rob and Betty are two deranged necrophiliacs who share a small flat in Berlin. Rob works for a street-cleaning agency where he cleans up dead bodies from road accidents, and takes some of those bodies home so he and his girlfriend can have a nasty threesome now and then. After one of their sex rituals, they have a fight, break up, and Betty leaves Rob alone with their cat – which he smashes in a rage and then takes a bath while he rubs the cat’s intestines over his body. He loses his mind completely, as if he already haven’t, and goes out at night chasing hookers to kill (and rape their dead bodies). And to fill out the running time, we get some bizarre and tedious artsy-fartsy avant-garde montages that doesn’t add much more than an urge to push the fast-forward button.

The trivia page on IMDb can tell us that the director, Jörg Buttgereit, never intended to be a director and Nekromantik was just a film to rebel against the German film rating system, trying to shock as many people as possible. And I’m not doubting that for one bit, since there isn’t much film-making to witness here, really. The technical aspects speaks for itself when the director has to start the commentary track by explaining that someone is pissing on a dead pigeon in the opening scene, which you can’t see due to the poor image quality. And when the director says it’s terrible, then that’s all you need to know. Most of the film takes place in a cramped, filthy apartment, shot with a Super 8 camera showing close-ups of the couple sitting and daydreaming, bathing and fucking a corpse when it gets too boring. We also get a complete random, pointless stock-footage scene where a rabbit gets skinned and slaughtered on a farm to add some cheap shock value. However, I can at least point out a certain, hysterical scene that includes a big, erected rubber dick that doesn’t look real for a second, which is the films most memorable moment, for all the wrong reasons. Even though Nekromantik is too sloppy and amateurish to be taken seriously, it quickly found its way to controversy and made its purpose by being banned in numerous countries, and has a dedicated cult-following.

To point out some qualities, the musical score by Hermann Kopp is pretty remarkable, the poster is pretty cool, and the cadaver dolls look decent enough, which took four weeks to make, and I assume that’s where the budget was spent. They also used slimy pig’s eyes to put in the corpse’s head, since they couldn’t afford to make fake eyes, which one of the actors got the honor to suck on during one of the nekro-love scenes. He could tell us that it tasted like turpentine. Yummy. John Waters is of course a big fan of Nekromantik in which he calls it “Ground-breakingly gruesome” and proclaimed it as “the first ever erotic film for necrophiliacs”. So, at the very first glance at the title and cover you should quickly know if this is your thing or not. And if you don’t get enough, there’s also a sequel, Nekromantik 2 (1991) to enjoy. And just to put the cherry on the top if you want to feel extra dirty and maybe a little nauseous, also check out the short film Aftermath (1994) by Nacho Cerdà.

Director: Jörg Buttgereit
Country & year: Germany, 1987
Actors: Bernd Daktari Lorenz, Beatrice Manowski, Harald Lundt, Collosseo, Henri Boeck, Clemens Schwender, Jörg Buttgereit
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0093608/

The Burning Moon (1992)

Posted on July 29, 2019September 17, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

West Germany, early 90’s. Peter (Olaf Ittenbach) is a disturbed, hateful young junkie who has dropped out of school, and is spending his days drinking beer, showing authority the finger and participating in gang fights. At home, he argues with mom and dad and clearly shows his disdain for house rules, by telling them to go to hell before entering his boy’s room to shoot up on some heroin. A typical German teenager, it seems. He also has a little sister that he likes to sneak in to after she has gone to bed, to tell her two “goodnight stories” while in full heroin intoxication. Well, this should be interesting..

The first “goodnight story” is called “Julia’s Love” which is about Cliff Parker, a schizophrenic mental patient with 21 murder victims behind him, who manages to escape. He goes straight on a blind date with the young Julia, who obviously has no idea what she’s gotten into. While they’re both in Cliff’s car, he goes out to buy smoke while leaving Julia inside. Then she hears on the radio that a certain lunatic who is on the run has stolen a car that is described similar to the one she’s inside. Julia is in deep shit and from here on there’s anything but love that’s awaiting her.

After this unconventional love story, Peter’s little sister is in shock and tears, and says Stop, I don’t want to hear your stupid stories. Well, we have an additional 47 minutes to fill while the heroin rush is still in full action, so grab your teddy and hang in there.

The second story is called “Purity”, and is about a middle aged priest who lives a double life. Preaching in the daytime while raping and killing ladies at night in a small town community. We also learn that this priest is a full-blown satanist who kidnaps people and sacrifices them under some juicy rituals, while he drinks their blood from a goblet. And just to top that, he looks like a mishmash of Edmund Kemper and Dennis Rader, which by itself is fucking hilarious. He’s the high point of this movie, for sure.

The film’s juicy climax ends straight into Hell, literally. With a tirade of torture-porn scenes where we see Olaf Ittenbach’s true ambition and talents come to light, and where the micro-budget probably went: effects. While most of the effects we’ve seen until this point has been pretty sloppy, he made sure to save some of the best till the end.

However, The Burning Moon is a stumbling underground amateur-reel starring Olaf Ittenbach’s friends, who never tried to act before or after this movie. And of course, with a budget that couldn’t even afford a microphone, some horrible dubbing was added in post production. It’s also obvious that the film tries to go for a more serious and gritty tone, with ultra-taboo subjects, but nosedives by its own incompetence already in the opening credit sequence. It reeks of cheapness and amateur hour all the way, which provides us with some funny scenes and gut-busting moments.

This is Ittenbach’s second film, with a filmography spanning of 18 titles as we speak, and the guy is still active today. This is my first viewing of his works, so I have no idea how (or if) the guy has evolved through the years. We’ll see..

Director: Olaf Ittenbach
Country & year: Germany, 1992
Actors: Olaf Ittenbach, Beate Neumeyer, Bernd Muggenthaler, Ellen Fischer, Alfons Sigllechner, Barbara Woderschek, Helmut Neumeyer, Andrea Arbter, Christian Fuhrmann, Herbert Holzapfel, Thomas Deby, Karl-Heinz Nebbe, Karin Dellinger
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0103898/