Excellent but underrated film

Better Late Then Never

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

German underground director Olaf Ittenbach's first full-length feature is an almost plot less shot-on-video movie with bad production values and great special effects. Splatter fans will get their money's worth here with a never-ending stream of gore effects which first show up around the half-hour mark and never let up from there. Despite the low budget and amateurish nature of the movie the special effects are actually very good and to a professional standard. The film features tons of mayhem with lots of arms and legs being chopped off, impalings, guts falling out, chainsaw dismemberments and the like. Blood and gristle flows everywhere and the last half an hour of the film goes way over the top with non-stop carnage and murder as Ittenbach turns into a demon and goes around slaughtering all of his family members and friends in various splattery ways.Unfortunately as a viewer I need something to go with my special effects, like a story perhaps or some action a la BLADE II, another showcase for gore which worked due to a tense plot and great fights. BLACK PAST doesn't have a story, at least after the first half an hour. The excuse for all the mayhem is a cursed mirror which causes a man to murder his own child in the prologue and which Ittenbach discovers in his attic. Immediately his girlfriend dies and returns as a zombie to haunt Ittenbach in scenes which are directly lifted from THE EVIL DEAD, right down to the disturbing laughing noises the girl makes as she attacks him. Whole sequences are copied from the Raimi classic as well as other effects and shots being lifted from EVIL DEAD 2 and DEMONS. After cutting his girlfriend's head off for the third time, Ittenbach is temporarily relieved of the horror, but begins to suffer nasty nightmares including a horrible bit where he slashes his body all over with a straight razor.At this point he turns into a gooey monster and the blood flows until the credits roll. Outside of the gore effects, BLACK PAST shows little imagination. Here, Ittenbach is obviously acting more as an effects technician than a director, concentrating on the elaborate mayhem at the expense of pace, story or dialogue. The acting is appalling but this is to be expected; what I didn't expect was to be bored by the latter half of the film. Disturbed, disgusted perhaps, yes, but not bored. Sadly the gore is all samey and once you've seen ten minutes of it it doesn't hold much interest. Occasionally some imagination pops up (the bleeding doll/burning pram scene) only to disappear again in another exhausting welter of blood and guts carnage. BLACK PAST deserves ten out of ten for the brilliant SFX but one out of ten for everything else.

Ittenbach's Black Past is can easily be categorized as one of the goriest films that has ever filmed. It contains so much gore that you cannot help being delighted! There are zombies, serial killers and some other kind of creepy monsters.The story is quite shitty, but who really cares while there is much GORE! Basically, it's indeed an Evil Dead rip-off, but it's ten time gorier than the Evil Dead. Not only isn't the acting bad, the dialogues are bad too, but then again, who cares? GORE is the name of the game and if you are in favour of it, don't think twice!!! Black Past has been made just for you! 10/10 (it could be 0/10 if it weren't so gory heh)

Among the other German homemade-splatter videos, Ittenbach's BLACK PAST is one of the best: very well done, especially if you consider all the limits of the video technology at that time. The same can be said about the special effects, entirely done by Ittenbach himself: they're quiet impressive and realistic, not like the red paint and cardboard used by Schnaas in his debut video (of the same year) VIOLENT SH*T. The cinematography and the acting are on a amateur level, but this is obvious and we can't blame it. The story is maybe a little bit slow at the beginning, but its short running time (something like 45 minutes) gives it a good rhythm and keeps it away from becoming boring.

As far as the story goes: Who cares! Some dark force captures someone who turns into some bad ass with a chain saw or something like that - exactly the kind of plot you need to show unnecessary violence and gore! Or better: GORE!!!!! Some sick stuff you can't put in a commercial movie because you wont be able to sell it anymore.If you like splatter flics, watch this one uncut!