Black Past

After moving into a new home, Thommy (played by German splatter-meister Olaf Ittenbach) finds an old mirror in the attic which causes him to suffer from violent visions before eventually transforming him into a bloodthirsty demon.

This was Olaf Ittenbach's first horror movie, and he starts as he means to go on, delivering rudimentary direction, lousy writing and awful acting, but making up for the film's many technical shortcomings with loads and loads of enthusiastic and well-executed splatter.

For a long while, the most horrific things about Black Past are Ittenbach's monobrow, mullet and moobs -- but hang on in there, because Olaf eventually gives gorehounds what they want, namely bucket-loads of stomach-churning special effects.

The first splattery set piece sees Thommy dismembering the reanimated body of his dead girlfriend Petra (Andrea Arbter), a scene clearly 'inspired' by Sam Raimi's classic The Evil Dead. It may be very derivative, but it's done extremely well -- although it pales in comparison with what follows, a gory vision that involves some brutal genital mutilation and other assorted nastiness.

Having ripped off Raimi, Ittenbach proceeds to imitate Lamberto Bava's Demons with Thommy's transformation into a hideous toothy monster. And this is where things get really messy... Demon Thommy uses scissors, knife, machete and chainsaw to chop up his family and friends, Ittenbach's camera lovingly capturing every nauseating detail.

Eventually, Demon Thommy is defeated by his friend Frankie (André Stryi), who plants an axe in his possessed pal's abdomen (causing his entrails to slide out) and then sends him crashing into the cursed mirror. With the mirror broken, Thommy disintegrates in another scene inspired by The Evil Dead.

6/10. Black Past is by no means a good film, but the impressive effects kept this particular gorehound happy.

N. B. This film must have the slowest scrolling end credits that I have ever seen.

I am a huge Ittenbach fan, I love Premutos and Burning Moon was pretty cool as well. Ittenbach himself stars in this movie. The version i have is not subtitled and is in german, so i have no idea what is going on. Its starts in the past with some guy killing a little girl, later on Olaf finds this mirror and it somehow starts crazy stuff. First his girlfriend is hit by a car and she later comes back to life. This is the part of the movie where you know Olaf is inspired by Sam Raimi's Evil Dead. He tries and tries to kill her again, but she keeps coming back. Olaf finally turns into a sort of demon and kills everybody off. There is even a cool scene in hell, while not as graphic as Burning Moons Hell Sequence, it still has some cool gore scenes. If you like Gore, then check this movie out, as well as other Olaf Ittenbach movies . Don't expect to come away from this movie knowing the whole story unless you know german. Great movie!

This is Olaf's debut flick and just like his others, it's chock full of of the grue. Well, not chock full, but when it gets violent, it gets seriously gruesome. Yeeeaaaahhh, baay-buh!!

Story revolves around young Thommy ((with an H)played by Olaf) who's falling in love with his dream girl. All is well until Olaf discovers a chained up chest in his attic that holds a mirror and a diary of sorts telling some very grim stories of the houses' past. Not thinking any of the mirror besides it looking cool, he hangs it up. But this mirror isn't like any other mirror. It's wicked evil. Hell, it's even evilly wicked. Things start going awry fast and the mirror is starting to set up poor Thommy into going down the same the paths the old inhabitants of the mirror went through. Uh-oh spaghettios!

Black Past was a pretty solid debut for Olaf. The only real gripe for myself was the pacing of the film. There were some scenes that were complete wastes of time. Just shots of Thommy walking here and there. Or him just sitting there. That may work with fantastic acting, but since there wasn't any here, it was very tedious. There were a few nice scenes of splatter before the hour mark, but once it hits the 1:00, it's pretty much clear sailing in a sea of red.

With nods to Evil Dead and probably a couple other flicks, Olaf seemed to know what he was doing right from the get go. If you're a fan of his other flicks, there's no reason not to check out this one as well. One of the more memorable splatter debuts, and a must see for fans of the messy-kind.

Brilliant debut by german gore favorit Ittenbach. It's a VERY well produced no budget splatter movie with all the Ittenbach characteristics, such as dumb german humor and of course over-the-top gore sequenses! It's just as good as Premutos and better than The Burning Moon and even better than the low budget Legion of the Dead, which was a real letdown. Be sure to get the Olaf Ittenbach Collection on DVD, with a new and restored version of this fantastic flick, together with Burning Moon, Premutos, the old version of Black Past as well as a bonus disc with trailers of his new flick Beyond the Limits (Looks really cool), behind the camera and so on.

Among the other German homemade-splatter videos, Ittenbach's BLACK PAST is one of the best: very well done, especially if you consider all the limits of the video technology at that time. The same can be said about the special effects, entirely done by Ittenbach himself: they're quiet impressive and realistic, not like the red paint and cardboard used by Schnaas in his debut video (of the same year) VIOLENT SH*T. The cinematography and the acting are on a amateur level, but this is obvious and we can't blame it. The story is maybe a little bit slow at the beginning, but its short running time (something like 45 minutes) gives it a good rhythm and keeps it away from becoming boring.