Black Past

I am a huge Ittenbach fan, I love Premutos and Burning Moon was pretty cool as well. Ittenbach himself stars in this movie. The version i have is not subtitled and is in german, so i have no idea what is going on. Its starts in the past with some guy killing a little girl, later on Olaf finds this mirror and it somehow starts crazy stuff. First his girlfriend is hit by a car and she later comes back to life. This is the part of the movie where you know Olaf is inspired by Sam Raimi's Evil Dead. He tries and tries to kill her again, but she keeps coming back. Olaf finally turns into a sort of demon and kills everybody off. There is even a cool scene in hell, while not as graphic as Burning Moons Hell Sequence, it still has some cool gore scenes. If you like Gore, then check this movie out, as well as other Olaf Ittenbach movies . Don't expect to come away from this movie knowing the whole story unless you know german. Great movie!

This is Olaf's debut flick and just like his others, it's chock full of of the grue. Well, not chock full, but when it gets violent, it gets seriously gruesome. Yeeeaaaahhh, baay-buh!!

Story revolves around young Thommy ((with an H)played by Olaf) who's falling in love with his dream girl. All is well until Olaf discovers a chained up chest in his attic that holds a mirror and a diary of sorts telling some very grim stories of the houses' past. Not thinking any of the mirror besides it looking cool, he hangs it up. But this mirror isn't like any other mirror. It's wicked evil. Hell, it's even evilly wicked. Things start going awry fast and the mirror is starting to set up poor Thommy into going down the same the paths the old inhabitants of the mirror went through. Uh-oh spaghettios!

Black Past was a pretty solid debut for Olaf. The only real gripe for myself was the pacing of the film. There were some scenes that were complete wastes of time. Just shots of Thommy walking here and there. Or him just sitting there. That may work with fantastic acting, but since there wasn't any here, it was very tedious. There were a few nice scenes of splatter before the hour mark, but once it hits the 1:00, it's pretty much clear sailing in a sea of red.

With nods to Evil Dead and probably a couple other flicks, Olaf seemed to know what he was doing right from the get go. If you're a fan of his other flicks, there's no reason not to check out this one as well. One of the more memorable splatter debuts, and a must see for fans of the messy-kind.

This is low budget shot on video German splatter, starring the writer/director/special effect guy, Olaf Ittenbach.

No small amount of this movie originated in The Evil Dead, but rather than look at The Black Past like a typical narrative movie, I'd suggest approaching it like a Halloween haunted house with gory set pieces and an intensely nasty depiction of hell.

Unlike most of his later movies, which push toward bigger ideas (and don't work as well), this is a simple piece that builds to intensely gory happenings. It is a bit too slow and the performances aren't there at all, but when things get surreal and vicious, the experience is a vibrant and charged gore cornucopia that will leave a lasting impression. You'll need to forgive a lot in this film, but like the very different movies of Werner Herzog and John Waters and H.G. Lewis and Harmony Korine, Black Past is an experience and a spectacle more than it is a traditional narrative film and those looking for a dungeon of gore, where "Hell = Creative Torture" may forgive Ittenbach's shortcomings as a traditional filmmaker...something that is less forgivable when he attempts to make traditional films (albeit ones crammed with gore).

((I found Premutos a bit dull after a while, and House of Blood and the Haunting of Rebecca Verlaine, sporadically engaging.))

Ittenbach's other recommendable movie, The Burning Moon, is similarly strong-- and expands upon the man's visual conception of "Hell = Creative Torture," though it is also a bit more bloated. And Brian Paulin's Fetus and Bone Sickness explore this dungeon and are better in most regards.

For all ultra-gore fans, "Black Past" its a "Z" home-made flick, the screenplay is ridiculous, but who cares, what we care, is the ultra gore and sadistic scenes.

Its Olaf Ittenbach first flick, and i think thats is pretty good, for an ultra amateur movie. The special effects are superb, the acting is terrible, the footage too, but the all point of this flick is too shock with brutal graphic violence.

If you like "Black Past", i recommend: "Burning Moon" and "Premutos" (two flicks from Olaf Ittenbach), "Evil Dead"(Sam Raimi), "VS3:Infantry of Doom"(Andrea Schnnas)

After moving into a new home, Thommy (played by German splatter-meister Olaf Ittenbach) finds an old mirror in the attic which causes him to suffer from violent visions before eventually transforming him into a bloodthirsty demon.

This was Olaf Ittenbach's first horror movie, and he starts as he means to go on, delivering rudimentary direction, lousy writing and awful acting, but making up for the film's many technical shortcomings with loads and loads of enthusiastic and well-executed splatter.

For a long while, the most horrific things about Black Past are Ittenbach's monobrow, mullet and moobs -- but hang on in there, because Olaf eventually gives gorehounds what they want, namely bucket-loads of stomach-churning special effects.

The first splattery set piece sees Thommy dismembering the reanimated body of his dead girlfriend Petra (Andrea Arbter), a scene clearly 'inspired' by Sam Raimi's classic The Evil Dead. It may be very derivative, but it's done extremely well -- although it pales in comparison with what follows, a gory vision that involves some brutal genital mutilation and other assorted nastiness.

Having ripped off Raimi, Ittenbach proceeds to imitate Lamberto Bava's Demons with Thommy's transformation into a hideous toothy monster. And this is where things get really messy... Demon Thommy uses scissors, knife, machete and chainsaw to chop up his family and friends, Ittenbach's camera lovingly capturing every nauseating detail.

Eventually, Demon Thommy is defeated by his friend Frankie (André Stryi), who plants an axe in his possessed pal's abdomen (causing his entrails to slide out) and then sends him crashing into the cursed mirror. With the mirror broken, Thommy disintegrates in another scene inspired by The Evil Dead.

6/10. Black Past is by no means a good film, but the impressive effects kept this particular gorehound happy.

N. B. This film must have the slowest scrolling end credits that I have ever seen.