Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

Better Late Then Never

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Also known as THE HAUNTING OF REBECCA VERLAINE, this horror flick is a German project written and directed by Olaf Ittenbach. On Christmas Eve, the commune of pop star Gabriel Verlaine(Bela Felsenheimer)is slaughtered, leaving one survivor. That lone survivor is Gabriel's daughter Rebecca(Natacza Boon), who wakes from a long coma to be haunted by an evil murderous spirit. This very low budget chiller gets quite gory. Rebecca is instructed to find who was responsible for the brutal murders wiping out the commune to enable the tortured souls a peaceful rest.Flesh ripping, eye popping splatter and gore. Don't expect any decent acting; but hold on for some chilling and horrible images. If you like horror movies that pile gore on top of disgusting bloody gore...this mess will not disappoint. The cast includes: Daryl Jackson, Donald Stewart, James Matthews-Pyecka and Alexandra Thom-Heinrich.

The quality of the film is so poor. The story itself is fine, the plot is serviceable. However, the execution of the script is so awful-- stilted dialogue, long ridiculous stretches of exposition. Over- explaining things for the foreign markets? No, it's just amateurish.Poorly shot, even though the visual ideas are quite good; it's just not carried out well.And the gore ... most of the other reviewers seem to love it. I think it's effective, although not necessarily masterful.I don't think anyone set out to make a bad movie. I think it's a director and some actors (not good, but making the effort ... don't know how they can understand each other with five million accents going on) who tried really hard. Maybe they didn't have the budget/resources to do it well, or the entire crew didn't care about the product at all. Worst case/worst crime--the director did his best and thought this was good. Ugh.

The beginning of this movie pricked my ears up as a weary gorehound, However ends in a cacophony of plot! What I mean is.... This movie is what happens when untalented writers try to create a reason for the bloodshed. The foreigners attempting to pretend they're English are pathetic but the splatter effects are worth viewing if you enjoyed bad taste and the like. Not bad for a low budget gore movie but when you are a little older and possibly require more to keep your attention this loses points. To be specific this worked better when nameless, faceless killers were brutally murdering innocent people. as soon as I guessed the psychologist was after the inheritance (Booo) I was done. I will watch another Olaf movie but he better keep bringing the splatter and try to keep away from the clever stuff, like..... words

This film is further evidence that Olaf Ittenbach is the current king of splatter and gore. There are directors who make scarier and more accomplished films than Ittenbach but no one currently orchestrates squashed skulls, severed limbs and general acts of mutilation better than this German maestro. Garden Of Love is a horror treasure - a highly entertaining mix of black humour and flying body parts.Garden Of Love is probably Olaf Ittenbach's most structured film, the time leaps and flashbacks which feature so prominently in his other works have been toned down. This has the advantage of making Garden Of Love more appealing to mainstream horror fans but is initially somewhat disconcerting for fans of the manic storytelling on display in films like the classic "Premutos". After overcoming the initial shock of the film's traditional structure and the noticeably improved production values, Ittenbach fans will not take long to settle into the film - despite the somewhat slow start. In fact, in the film's first 30 or 40 minutes is oddly violence free with the exception of the initial massacre and an ingenious butcher knife infomercial.The film's plot is admittedly rather thin. However, it more than suffices as a backdrop to the film's real purpose - blood, and lots of it. In short, the Verlaine family is massacred in their sleep and the only survivor, Rebecca, wakes from her coma with amnesia. Years later, Rebecah starts receiving messages from her dead family on the TV (just go with it!) and she returns to the family farm for a reunion of sorts. This is the point where Ittenbach kicks free of the storytelling constraints that interfere with his virtuoso approach to blood and gore and lets rip. My favourite scenes include Rebecca's inventive use of a power drill and a spectacular set piece in which the zombified Verlaine family members literally rip a team of police men to shreds. Skulls are smashed, holes punched through faces and bodies, heads shot off and torsos ripped in half. Ittenbach handles this scene with the grace and precision of a maestro conductor standing before an orchestra.The real brilliance of the film lies in the director's "more is more" approach to gore and his phenomenal skill at employing special effects. Garden Of Love is another showcase of brilliant blood and gore effects. Their realism and impact belie the film's modest budget. It is only the presence of some dubiously talented Ittenbach regulars among the cast that occasionally reminds you that you are watching a micro budget, shot-on-video horror movie. The exception to the mediocre acting is the lead Natacza Boon, who makes a reasonably convincing scream queen. The make-up artists and cameramen deserve a lot credit for the eerie atmosphere inside the Verlaine farmhouse.Garden Of Love exceeds all the requirements of a good splatter film. You can't help but sense that it will only be a matter of time before the rest of the world catches on to the pleasures of Olaf Ittenbach and his beautifully sick and twisted mind.