Legend of Hell

Unfortunately, the version of Legend of Hell that I saw was severely cut, devoid of all of its juicy gore, which is a bit like playing Metallica's Master of Puppets with the sound turned down really low—practically pointless. Not that I think that the inclusion of buckets of OTT violence would have improved matters all that much: Ittenbach used to be content with being the king of underground German splatter, where shoddy direction and poor acting were excusable just so long as people were graphically torn apart in creative ways, but now it seems that he wants to be the next Uwe Boll, his films more ambitious in terms of scope, boasting a larger cast and barely passable CGI, yet completely lacking in narrative cohesion, competent performances, and directorial acumen—and most importantly, no longer possessing that low-budget charm of his early work. In short, Legend of Hell is a total stinker.

I won't go too much into the plot, because, quite frankly, I didn't have a clue as to what was going on from start to finish. Suffice to say that the film hops from time period to time period, and from place to place, with no semblance of logic, and introduces characters with little explanation as to who they are and what relevance they have to proceedings. There's a bad guy who wants to get his paws on an ancient scroll, an archaeologist who leans over so you can see down her top while she examines artefacts, a bald black dude who can't even roll down a sand dune convincingly, and a pair of random barbarians. The dialogue that these poor saps have to utter is trite fantasy waffle of the highest order. These guys randomly do battle with the evil denizens of the astral plane—dark breeds, head rippers, the greys, and the zombies that roam the City of the Dead—which is where the gore comes in. Unless you too are watching a heavily censored version.

In the name of fairness, I'm going to hold back on rating Legend of Hell until I can find a fully uncut version, but I really can't see it being that much more of an enjoyable (or understandable) experience.

After an annoying 4 1/2 minute opening credits I could only take about 4 minutes of the beginning. This film is not only boring it is STUPID!!!!! I felt as if I was killed over and over each minute I watched. Dump this one in the trash! Total crap!

Not a bad concept, but then the writer and director got involved and it went downhill from there.

But lets start with the cinematography. Some of the shot setups and effects are sophomoric at best. Yeah, I understand this is a low budget film, but that does not excuse poor decisions.

As to the writing, wow. Some of your plot devices and setup are absolutely pitiful and make no sense. I loved (sarcasm) 'dusting' off a parchment like its a dinosaur fossil. Really? ... that how you want the story to proceed? Have you never heard of the concept of 'suspension of disbelief' and what happens when you disrupt this with just plain stupid?

Sad too, I think the actors actually wanted to make something of this, although a few have acting skills no better than high school drama class. Harsh, you bet, because everyone involved suffered because of things that could easily be fixed, like spending more time creating a good script and taking time to setup quality scene.

Well, on the positive side the starting credits looked good. I mean, lovely font. Also, some nice cinematography. Unfortunately the narrator speaks over them using a voice not too dissimilar to South Park (keep in mind I watched the English language version, so perhaps the German one is better). I thought it was a joke but no, it was deadly serious. It really really went down from there. Incredibly bad, stilted acting reminiscent of a bad porn film. Audio (again, keeping in mind I watched the English version) that would go in and out - at times making it impossible to hear what the actors are saying. Not that that really mattered - the storyline (for want of a better word) was simply an excuse to jump from one scene of people having their heads cut off, to another with people having their heads exploded, to another of people having axes being embedded into their heads. Don't get me wrong - people also tend to lose limbs as well, but there are a lot of heads being exploded.

If you want to see a lot of blood being splattered around, and yes at one point there's some chainsaw action, then this might be worth considering. The painfully bad acting, bad story, and bad audio (at least with the English version) amongst other things makes this otherwise quite difficult to watch unless as part of a drinking game - you know: take a drink every time someone's head explodes - although you would be risking alcohol poisoning . Plan 9 had a certain amount of charm to it. This doesn't.