The Burning Moon

I have given this 9 out of 10 for purely the gore effects alone. The rest of the film is weak but for all the gore hounds out (myself included) it is a serious assault on the senses so don't watch this with your female partner as you will be single by the end of the film as most of the serious stuff is at the end.

Believe me the effects are very very good, so good in fact that a rumour existed that this was not special effects ! but if you can find it (almost impossible here in the UK) then make up your own mind but be warned its hard viewing.

I have only seen it in the original German language and I am not sure if it has even got a DVD release but I may be wrong (I am searching now).

Germany, it still will be a weird country. Most of the movies coming from there are the real gory splatter ones. Weird, because the German authorities doesn't allow those kind of movies. Bethmann and Ittenbach are the best know directors of the genre with Bethmann having his own label, X Rated Kult. Do I need to say more. This movie belongs to Ittenbach's first attempts in the genre. Still unavailable on DVD it conquered the earth on VHS, but still some versions were only 88 minutes long. My copy was uncut, so 99 minutes long. The flick is about a guy who has to babysit his little sister. Fed up with his parents and the situation, he's in his puberty, he tells his sister some horror stories. The stories itself those are the one we see in the movie. Two stories it is, the first one not that original, and not that gory too, some stupid effects, watch out for the collision with a car and a person! But the second story is the best, and there you will find the gore. like Premutos it's full of entrails and torture. This is for the geeks out there, one of Ittenbach better ones.

"The Burning Moon" is a shot on video type home movie,but a bit more professional than other similar stuff.It has some really good special effects and is gorier than Andreas Schnaas' stuff,if a little less sadistic.The film is about a druged up teen(Olaf Ittenbach)who gets involved with gang fights and has problems at home.He reads his little sister two stories-which form a basis of the movie.First story "Julia's Love" is about a serial killer,who escapes from asylum and terrorises a girl.Second story "The Purity" is about a priest who likes sacrificing and raping women.He kills himself,but a local who think another bloke is the killer kills him,and he returns as a zombie and it climaxes in Hell.Ittenbach's vision of Hell is almost too horrible to watch-the gore is truly extreme!A really good film,my favourite gore scene:a man strapped to a table is operated on by two demons,who pluck out his eye,crave open his body,rip out his insides and then tear him in half with chains from crotch to throat.

Olaf Ittenbach's Burning Moon earns high praise as he carries on the tradition of film in the underground genre of the splatter horror film. Combing a Romero/Fulci world, the movie tells a story of Peter (played by Ittenbach) who recites 2 horrific bedtime stories to his sister.

One entitled "Julia's Love" tells the story of a serial killer who takes his blind date and her family on a blood soaked killing rampage. The scenes of splatter are suspiciously amateurish compromised of blood splatter on walls, and good old exploding heads. Ittenbach relishes in gratuitous gore and a standard knife to the head is done with like almost flawless spectacular Stan Winston special effects.

The second bedtime story called "The Purity" is about a crazed satan-worshipping priest and the disturbed small German town that has been invaded by some mysterious killings. The townspeople try to find revenge on an innocent suspect. This story gets long and tedious but the payoff is almost worth it.

The end of the story sequence is interrupted by "Hell" the neverending, non stop gore footage. Body parts, intestines, decapitated arms, heads, legs. Ittenbach includes a unique ocular trauma scene in which a man eats his own eyeball.

Ittenbach shares his German glory with Jorg Buttgereit and his Nekromantik films. If you like the previously mentioned films, Burning Moon is up your alley.

They don't make movies like this anymore and it seems the more we get bombarded by Hollywood horror teen scream-a-thons, the more you appreciate an all out gore-fest.

If you are looking for gore, guts, murder, rape, brutality, satanism and lots of blood, this is the movie for you. It makes me wonder if Evil Dead is really the best of them all...(but I know it is). Don't miss it, if you want spend a nice bloody weekend this is the one.