Dard Divorce

Well, what the hell... Why don't I be the first guy to comment on Olaf Ittenbach's latest outburst of cinematographic violence? First off, in order to make this comment a bit more useful to anyone who might read it (or just to give you an idea where I'm coming from), let me say that I've only seen one Andreas Schnaas movie (VIOLENT SH!T 2), and I simply loathed it. Couldn't even laugh with it, and I'm not interested in seeing anything more by this guy. I've only seen one Jörg Buttgereit movie so far (NEKROMANTIK), and I basically fast-forwarded my way through that one (sorry guys). Just couldn't get into it, I guess. And when it comes to director Uwe Boll, I'll just let other people comment on his work. Now, regarding Olaf Ittenbach: I have a lot more appreciation for the man's work (as a director and especially as a special effects artist), because he managed to entertain me quite a bit with the two movies I've seen from him so far, LEGION OF THE DEAD and HOUSE OF BLOOD (aka CHAIN REACTION). So, I guess I can safely say that if anybody throws a random Ittenbach movie at me, I'll catch and watch it.

Now that we have that out of the way, we can get to... DARD DIVORCE. Basically, it's Ittenbach's take on the vastly growing and ever so popular "Torture Horror" genre. And let me tell you right away that there's good and bad news (I'll let you figure out yourself what falls in which category exactly). It really feels like an Ittenbach movie. The thin, muddled mystery plot, with all its lies and false truths, was kind of fun to behold, but - let's face it - was merely an excuse to present us three long and exquisitely gruesome torture sequences. And besides that, there's even quite a bit of random acts of violence and bloodshed in a couple of other scenes (handgun-splatters, head blown off by shotgun, knife-stabbings, head-bashings,...). The plot itself, is both extremely simplistic but yet still rather unpredictable (or maybe I was just being distracted too much by the excessive amount of torture and gore). Nevermind the weird word "dard" in the title, as its meaning isn't really as profound or mysterious as it might sound, and it even gets explained in an utmost banal, quite stupid and somewhat laughable manner pretty early in the movie.

Now, I'm not the biggest fan of this "torture" genre (not by far), and actually, by now, there's torture movies and there's... torture movies and then some (if you know what I mean). As much as the next guy, I loved the first SAW (I still have to see the other installments though). I can even dig a lot - and I do mean a *lot* - worse movies like Lamberto Bava's THE TORTURER. I also appreciate raw and gritty efforts like Boyes & Mason's BROKEN. But then there's abominable flicks like Ulli Lommel's THE TOMB and I pretty much hated the pretentious and irresponsible MURDER-SET-PIECES. So where exactly do I place Ittenbach's DARD DIVORCE between all this? Hard to say, really, but it's definitely amongst the stuff I can enjoy (granted, not always for the right reasons, like, try: unintentionally funny sometimes).

We've gotten used to the fact that Ittenbach's cinematography & photography at least is above the level of what we regularly get to see in some of these low-budget companion efforts. The man simply has a bit more style than some of his fellow contemporary directors working in the same genre. But right from the moment the first member of the cast starts to speak - no offense Martina Ittenbach - you just can't ignore the fact that you're watching extremely poor acting and hearing lousy dialogues (and yes, this continues until the very end of the movie). During the first 20 minutes or so, Ittenbach even ventures into sheer cringing soap-opera territory, by introducing us a married couple in the middle of a divorce, with all the necessary quibbling over who's gonna get the two kids and all the money and stuff (accompanied by a soft melo-dramatic score even). Plain bad, really, and the two kids (little boy & and a 14-year-old girl) naturally have none acting abilities whatsoever - (luckily they have limited screen time). So yeah, after 20 minutes I already was thinking "Man, I'm gonna flunk this flick severely". But then, the first torture-scene came on. And some more random craziness. And another torture-scene. More shoot-bam-splat-boom mayhem. And another torture-scene. And before I realized it, this movie got me going. Boy, really, those torture-scenes are *nasty*! And Ittenbach's make-up effects are pretty damn excellent at times. One of my favorite gore-bits in the movie was where one guy's lower-jaw gets completely rammed away by a hammer with a couple of firm strokes. Awesome, and I literally uttered "Aw!" in the theater. And the good old needle-in-the-eye trick always gets to me too.

And then we get a couple more of Ittenbach trademarks, like the (inexcusable?) portrayal of full frontal male nudity (sorry, but to me it always looks goofy when a man just undresses - for no apparent reason at first - and then walks naked and ding-donging towards the camera), as well as the mutilation of male genitals ("Ouch!", I went again). In the end, after all the madness, the mystery also neatly gets explained in the most easy (and silly) way possible in a movie, by having a character just explain it. And then there's the little epilogue-scene, et voilà, another Ittenbach effort for the records that somewhat satisfies, but barely passes the test. I'm pretty sure that there's folks that will rate this a lot higher than me, but it's just that I love my Ittenbach flicks more when they're spiced up with a bit of demonic/supernatural stuff. Oh well, one can't always have it his way, right?

After skimming through several bad reviews for this movie, I had low expectations, maybe that's why I enjoyed it as much as I did, that and the incredible gore.

While suffering from a rather slow start, it gets good once the gore gets going. There is some incredible action and gore in this movie. Some of it is pretty unnecessary and is done simply for the sake of showing more bodily mutilation on screen, this is one of those things where whether that's a good thing or a bad thing all depends on the viewer, personally I loved it myself!

That's not to say the movie doesn't have it's flaws, because it does (hence my lower rating). Some of the gore effects aren't all that convincing (which is forgivable considering this movie had a limited budget), the acting is not so good, the shaky cam during the gore scenes is annoying, there are at least two scenes where the music drowns out the characters voices, and another where two songs actually play over each other! It's really annoying.

Also the scene where the main woman (played by director Olaf Ittenbach's wife Martina) is getting beaten while tied to a chair, could have been really effective if it didn't look so fake. If they could do a decent job of making all of the other scenes of violence look reasonably good, why not this one? There is also a part during that scene where the guy torturing the woman decides for whatever reason to untie her, then she stabs him in the neck with a broken glass bottle, brilliant dude!

Given the amount of gore in this movie most of the flaws can be forgiven so a certain extent, but they did taint my enjoyment for this movie a little. I would still recommend it to gore film fans. Remember, watch it for the gore and nothing else.

Dear Mr. Ittenbach... you are an important part of the German horror movie scene and I give you credit for that. Although I am not a big fan of the later movies like "Beyond the limits" you sure progressed as a director.

With this movie I wonder why anyone would waste their time to produce something like this.

1. The main actress is ridiculous. Either make a German movie or an English one but don't put someone who can't either act nor speak proper English in the lead role of a movie in English language. The whole "my parents came from Germany to the USA"-thing was a real cheap try to cover this and its absolutely unimportant to the plot.

2. If you go for a tough mafia/drug gangster environment like in "Beyond the limits" at least make sure that the shoot outs don't have everyone laughing while getting shot and the shooters acting like in a cartoon.

3. If you want to go for the pathetic torture-porn style please stick to it and don't mush it into a story like this that falls apart on all sides.

4. Someone should really slap your editor ... the editing was some of the worst I have seen in a while. The telephone scenes with the endless dissolves were hurting my eyes.

5. While you are at slapping people please slip your sound mixer even harder (altough I guess thats also the editors mistake). If you have people with uninteresting monologues and put ridiculously loud and bad music on top so you barely hear anything i wonder if the movie was edited on crack.

6. The Effects were great as always and the cinematography was way too good for the many other flaws that could be forgiven in a school project but not in such a movie.

So please... either make trashy and gory movies or try on the more serious stuff but this looks like you don't know where the hell you want to go. At least I learned that "dard" is Persian for "pain" and believe me... this movie was pure dard for my eyes,ears and brain.

My this is bad. So bad. Really I think some of these directors who make this kind of garbage need to go and watch a few movies to get a sense of how a film should be. It honestly looks as if this guy Olaf has never seen a decent movie in his life Maybe he thought it cool to have ten gallons of fake blood a bit of a latex, and to then throw out any old crap and call it horror, but he's sadly mistaken. Dard Divorce is one of the most amateurish pieces of wasted celluloid I've ever seen, with the word dard apparently meaning pain. Well it truly was a pain to watch this nonsense and I laughed out loud when the word first appears with a policeman saying they'll have to send it to the lab to find out what it means. Yes, it's really that good.

The leading "actress" here should go back to working at a fast food joint or something because I hope I never have to suffer her on my screen again. A low budget movie does not have to mean low quality acting. That's been proved many times in this genre. Horror fans are much more forgiving however when it comes to acting if there's some decent pay off in the end, Dard Divorce unfortunately didn't have any though.

I can at least say I got to the end of this tripe which I surely want a medal for. There's far too many idiots out there with a camera now thinking buckets of blood makes a good horror film. But what makes a good film is great acting and a bit of intelligence. At the end of the movie they couldn't even spell the name of the dead dog correctly on it's cross at the grave. Spelling Bonny (maybe Bonnie) as Bony lol. What a bloody mess indeed. Goodbye Dard Divorce forever.

A German woman who's lived in the States for at least 15 years marries an American and has two children with thick German accents.

This is how the movie starts. Could it really get any better? The answer is no. No it cannot.

There's very little recommend this "movie". I believe it might be the only film that contains only male nudity. The movie got made and somebody saw it. That's about the only win here. It's also made the list of Most Violent Films Ever Made. And it probably deserves that.

With the caveats dispensed, the movie is Scheiße. There is not one believable performance. The script makes porn movies look intelligent. Every now and again, a glimmer of hope shines only to find the shadow of a miserable line, bad special effect or a ridiculous plot point snuff out its spark. People die from a shot to the shoulder. I don't mean bleeding to death. Apparently in this world your brain lives in your shoulder. Worse, the people who live in this world think getting shot in the shoulder means death. Which is odd, because after you've had your face smashed with a hammer a dozen times, the arteries in your arm severed and your limbs pumped with a local anesthetic and you can STILL manage to drag yourself up a flight of stairs and then walk across the floor, you'd THINK you'd have a better understanding of what the human body can take.

The biggest crime is the end. Don't worry, I'm not giving anything away because the score almost drowned out the actors so I'm not 100% sure what happened. This happened in a few places killing any chance of understand the "action". Did the filmmaker not watch his own movie? Was he so bored that he said "f*** it. I got paid and it's not like I'm making anything of value"?

2 stars because otherwise someone might stumble across it on the "worst" list and watch it by accidents.