Garden of Love

I have had the pleasure of seeing this film at a horror festival in Edinburgh. Garden of Love does not have a serious bone in its sick low-budget body. There is lots and lots of blood and gore, starting with the opening credits. The plot is extremely silly like everything else in this film. In fact you might say this film is a pastiche of gory films. At first this film seemed really bad, but it was so entertaining that the director must have been doing something right. Garden of Love definitely needs to be enjoyed in company (with like-minded people!).

A lot of people were laughing at the quality of the acting, but to be so funny throughout the film it had to be deliberately bad - SURELY?. The character playing Munster was my definite favourite and I would see the film just for his extremely camp performance. I am not sure that many actors could have made the awful lines quite so funny.

You may have gathered that Garden of Love won't be everyone's cup of tea but if you have a soft spot for bad taste gory films then see it, because it's wonderfully awful.

Lots of gore in what I suppose is a fairly well done way? I don't mind that if it supports the story instead of just being there for the sake of it as here. Just kind of stupid when it's silly splatter for splatter's sake. The story itself is pretty silly really. The bones of it are ok, but it's not fleshed out. The acting is ok, but the dialogue is pretty insane at times. When a detective is relating the story of the bloody massacre at the back of everything his over the top dramatic dialogue - as opposed to the dry just the facts narration you would expect - is the best part of the movie actually because it's funny. On the whole the movie is pretty dumb and not worth the watch unless you just like watching people being ripped apart by ghosts. Like my title says If blood is all you love, then that's what you'll receive.

The cover shots on the DVD looked very good and the director Olaf Ittenbach has quite a good reputation, so we decided to check this one out. Plus, the main character, German punk rock drummer and singer Bela B., is a very charismatic person and has shown a lot of good taste in horror movies and comics before, so I was very curious about that one.

First point, Bela B. is only in it for a few scenes and has nothing to do except for staring around. OK, he's playing an undead, they stare around and usually do no real acting, but he had shown that he can actually do good acting before, it would have been more interesting to see him in a "real" leading role . So it looked to me that his name was placed on the cover merely to promote the movie.

The other actors are absolutely ridiculous. Why do they all pretend that the story is set in Britain? The landscape, the interiors, everything is so German. Why not simply set the movie in Germany? Everything would be just fine, the story would have worked as well, and we wouldn't have wet our pants every time they tried to act "british". What took away a lot of the atmosphere.

The gore scenes are only a few, most of the time the movie spins around the investigation on Verlaine's murder. That'd be OK, if it only would have been a little bit more suspenseful.

The gory scenes are all set in darkness, so you cannot really see what's going on, you hear a lot of "painful" sounds instead. The make up of the zombies despite of that is very good, haven't seen that good looking dead people so far.

Overall, this movie is boring as hell, the acting is bad, the story is lame and a chilling atmosphere does not come up. Better stay away from that one and check out Ittenbach's "Beyond The Limits". I've seen that one before "Garden Of Love" and was very impressed about the great way of storytelling, the very good professional actors and the really really good atmosphere and setting.

So, I ignored my better sense and watched this disaster of a film. It's not funny, and even the gore is ridiculous and shot so poorly you can't even enjoy that aspect.

The acting is funny, it's horrific and not in a good way. I used to think freddy got fingered was the worst movie ever made - then I watched this. If I had't been on a plane with nothing better to do I would have stopped watching after the first 5 minutes. But I watched it to the end, and no it doesn't get any better.

The story is stupid, the direction is pathetic, there are 6 year olds that act better than any of the "actors" in this movie, and the script is literally so dumb I was wondering if there is a country somewhere where people actually talk like the actors in this film.

It's bad - really bad - like so bad I would rather have been cleaning toilets than watching this movie. Ignore the good reviews, it's crap - I only gave it 2 stars for the "plot twist" at the end and even that was cliché.

If you are a gore fanatic this is a must see! If you are one of those who likes to see why films have been banned then also watch this as it borders those boundaries too! I normally enjoy spooky films but this was a crossover between spooky – which would hook me straight into it, and zombie ripping gore – which I have to look through closed fingers to vaguely see what is going on…still I had to watch it as the eyes of those deceased and the way they stood out within the scary surroundings still kept Basically a girl (Rebecca) returns to the place of a massacre which she survived as a child, but having lost her memory, is none the wiser as to what has happened…all will make sense…or will it….not really sure … I loved the look of the dead people, especially their eyes, and the setting in which they are filmed (not just the house – but the background behind them when they talk to Rebecca in what looks like the light half way between heaven and hell, with creative particles of dust passing each body), but music was a bit naff I didn't really 'feel' for any of the characters which is normally the whole point of a film…so that was disappointing..no budding actors/actresses for the future in this one I am afraid If you like excessive violence then this is the one for you – if you want something 'moving' or 'spooky' don't' bother