Garden of Love

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.

Olaf Ittenbach is absolutely, a master of brutal makeup FX and an artist who doesn't thrive on entertaining the whole family (children) to complete a film. Considering his budgets, Olaf performs wonders ("Beyond The Limits") not to mention write, direct and probably a thousand other tasks to get his films off the ground. Garden of Love is definitely not for the Hollywood film fan, looking for mega-stars with cute, comedic, predictable, punch-lines but rather an original and creepy ghost story with amazing and gory visual FX. If you want cute, comedy/horror or comedy/every other genre, buy/rent something else. If you need comedy/happy endings in your movies beware, you may be offended by their absence. I can only imagine what his collaboration with Buttgereit ("Nekromantik") will bring. Fantastic and refreshing work Olaf, I can't wait to see more.

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.

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.

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.