Black Dahlia

I didn't even get past the credits when I began to have my doubts. Then it got worse. This is basically bottom of the barrel no-budget B-movie. The acting is terrible, and the script is enough to make you cry. Don't bother renting or watching it. This film makes Italian giallo films look professional and slick. The gore is obviously fake, and you begin to wonder about three minutes in whether the director cast his family in it to keep them happy. I suspect he also borrowed their cars for the film. The childish sing-song and the inclusion of "666" in the Black Dahlia mix was cheap too. Nothing about this film looks professional or particularly well thought out. It is cheapness immortalized on celluloid.

"Black Dahlia" is a cheap, horribly-constructed straight-to-video (and shot-on-video) film that was obviously released soon after De Palma's "The Black Dahlia" hit theaters in hopes of cashing in on the basic premise. This atrocious film follows a copycat killer in the Los Angeles area who is murdering innocent people after asking them in for acting auditions, their bodies found dismembered across the city. The murders are supposed to be modeled after the real-life murder of aspiring actress Elizabeth Short in the late 1940s, but have very little in common with her murder at all. Who is this mimicking killer? Who knows? Who cares? I know that I didn't, and anyone who rents this film won't either.

Just as the rest of Lommel's films are, this movie is bad. Like, really bad. For one, the plot is just ridiculous. A copycat killer of a real unsolved murder? Come on. Then, there's the acting. It's worse than a B-movie extravaganza - the performances were completely laughable. And the cinematography is horrible - like the rest of Lommel's movies, this was also shot on video, so the quality looks extremely cheap, and the special effects were really bad. Granted, some films can succeed with such problems, but this film fails on all levels, because the plot is boring to begin with and was so ridiculous.

There are even some laughable black & white flashback sequences to the 1940s Hollywood featuring an actress playing the Elizabeth Short character, which are beyond cheesy. Among the flashbacks is a scene featuring the discovery of Short's body, which shows two investigators kneeling over a body that is lying under a tree in front of a brick building. For those familiar with the real case, you will easily know that Elizabeth Short's body was found in a vacant, grassy lot - not under a small tree next to a downtown building. Looks like the filmmakers needed to study a little more into the real crime. This, among other things, just adds to the overall cheap quality that is this movie. I think that more time was spent creating the cover artwork for the DVD (which was actually not bad looking) than there was on the film itself, so don't let that fool you.

Like "Green River Killer" (and the rest of the 'true-crime' based films that this filmmaker chooses to direct), "Black Dahlia" is a horrible movie that lacks any qualities that could make it seem remotely appealing. I can't stress this enough, but do not rent films with the name "Ulli Lommel" branded on them. Rather than seeing this piece of garbage, see the De Palma film, which, while it is semi-fictional, at least focuses on the real case and the murder. If I could, I'd give it a zero out of ten. 1/10.

This is the worst "movie" ever made. Of course, calling it a movie is actually exaggerating its merits. No plot. No acting. No nothing. Two guys are silent for at least 45 minutes. One woman should have been. Sorry, but repeating "F___ you bitch!!!" fifty times does not constitute dialogue. Saying it with the same intonation fifty times makes you the anti-actress. Even the same gore was repeated over and over and over. (The "writer" couldn't come up with even a variation?)

Bottom line is there was nothing that you would define as a movie except that the videotape was transferred to DVD and sold in stores. Everyone involved should stay a long way from the business. You have not one iota of talent.

Ulli Lommel's latest is a blatant attempt to cash in on Brian DePalma's BLACK DAHLIA. (But why, since that bombed??) This shot-on-video-with-non-actors disgrace is the kind of amateurish junk that gives all horror films a bad name. And we all know there are many good ones. This is not even a good "gore" film, even though there are plenty of severed limbs and lots of squishing blood; H.G. Lewis's films of the 60's were better than this, and that's saying a lot because Lewis' films are horrendous. But at least Lewis can say he was an innovator of sorts. Lommel's (so-called) films get worse with each outing.

This DAHLIA is boring, repetitious, pretentious and laughable. Even the "artsy" video effects can't hide just how junky and moronic this rip-off is.

Buyers and renters beware!!

I've never been fooled before. This film has the distinguishing characteristic of being the only time I've mistakenly rented the wrong film. The entire budget for this film was put into the cover art and the rest was probably spent on catering donuts to the worst set of actors and the most ridiculous make-up effects I've seen in many many years.

It's a terrible terrible film for the first five minutes. I wouldn't know about the rest because it's simply inexcusable. I don't know how anyone could watch this entire movie unless cheap, stupid gore with broad satanic strokes appeals to them like pornography. And clearly the number of people who would rent the film on its own merits are few enough that cheap, rip-off packaging tactics are required to eke out a few more dollars from an unsuspecting public.