The Burning Moon

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.

This movie is just an excuse to kill off a lot of people on screen and show plenty of blood and guts and torture. Some scenes in this movie are just downright brutal and it's all very much over the top. For the low budget this obviously had the effects are fantastic and makes you wonder if they were only effects. This movie is extremely hard to track down and when you do find a copy it will likely cost you a lot of cash but it is well worth it. When you see the torture scene at the end you'll know exactly what i meant.

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).

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.

Olaf Ittenbach's Burning Moon is the perfect example of nihilism. This anthology movie is split into two shorts: Julia's Love and The Purity. Julia's Love shows how no one can be trusted and The Purity shows that jumping to conclusions can have awful, awful consequences. The meanings behind these stories are, of course, up to interpretation but it is no question that the second short, The Purity, has a deeper, nihilistic message. A cynical take on religion, this segment quickly ramps to horrific deaths and an end scene that will leave the viewer shocked.

The gore in this movie is nothing short of stomach churning and over the top. Any gorehound would be pleased. So I encourage you, if you're a fan of SOV horror and gory movies, to give this movie a shot.