Leofwine_draca German underground director Olaf Ittenbach's first full-length feature is an almost plot less shot-on-video movie with bad production values and great special effects. Splatter fans will get their money's worth here with a never-ending stream of gore effects which first show up around the half-hour mark and never let up from there. Despite the low budget and amateurish nature of the movie the special effects are actually very good and to a professional standard. The film features tons of mayhem with lots of arms and legs being chopped off, impalings, guts falling out, chainsaw dismemberments and the like. Blood and gristle flows everywhere and the last half an hour of the film goes way over the top with non-stop carnage and murder as Ittenbach turns into a demon and goes around slaughtering all of his family members and friends in various splattery ways.Unfortunately as a viewer I need something to go with my special effects, like a story perhaps or some action a la BLADE II, another showcase for gore which worked due to a tense plot and great fights. BLACK PAST doesn't have a story, at least after the first half an hour. The excuse for all the mayhem is a cursed mirror which causes a man to murder his own child in the prologue and which Ittenbach discovers in his attic. Immediately his girlfriend dies and returns as a zombie to haunt Ittenbach in scenes which are directly lifted from THE EVIL DEAD, right down to the disturbing laughing noises the girl makes as she attacks him. Whole sequences are copied from the Raimi classic as well as other effects and shots being lifted from EVIL DEAD 2 and DEMONS. After cutting his girlfriend's head off for the third time, Ittenbach is temporarily relieved of the horror, but begins to suffer nasty nightmares including a horrible bit where he slashes his body all over with a straight razor.At this point he turns into a gooey monster and the blood flows until the credits roll. Outside of the gore effects, BLACK PAST shows little imagination. Here, Ittenbach is obviously acting more as an effects technician than a director, concentrating on the elaborate mayhem at the expense of pace, story or dialogue. The acting is appalling but this is to be expected; what I didn't expect was to be bored by the latter half of the film. Disturbed, disgusted perhaps, yes, but not bored. Sadly the gore is all samey and once you've seen ten minutes of it it doesn't hold much interest. Occasionally some imagination pops up (the bleeding doll/burning pram scene) only to disappear again in another exhausting welter of blood and guts carnage. BLACK PAST deserves ten out of ten for the brilliant SFX but one out of ten for everything else.

Coventry "Black Past" is the type of film that you will never watch in case you're a normal human being with regular and healthy cultural interests. This film, as well as Olaf Ittenbach's entire repertoire for that matter, will only be seen by horror insiders and fans of underground cult cinema. This was Ittenbach's very first film. His main inspiration clearly was "The Evil Dead", but unfortunately our German friend only shares Sam Raimi's enthusiasm and not his talent. And still, Ittenbach definitely deserves a certain sort of respect, because at young and fragile age of 20, he pulled it off almost entire by himself. Olaf writes, stars, directs, edits, produces and designs the special effects. And even though it took him nearly a decade before he delivered his second film "Burning Moon", Ittenbach is now a more or less reliable cult director with a selective yet very loyal fan base. Most of his movies are crap, especially stuff like "Legion of the Dead" or "House of Blood", but he's somewhat of a cult icon. Anyways! Ittenbach depicts the lead character Tommy, and for some peculiar reason he insists on introducing himself with an overly close- up shot of his naked butt-cheeks. He shows off his skinny booty at several moments throughout the film, by the way, and at a certain point I'm actually even sure that he wore ladies' underwear… Shortly after moving into a new home with his family, Tommy stumbles upon an antique mirror in the attic. Too bad the mirror homes a demon that, for more than a century already, torments the tenants of the house where once a little boy died from starvation. True, I've definitely seen horror movies of which the basic premise was a lot more stupid, but I haven't seen so many that were accomplished so cheap and cheesy as "Black Past"! During the first 30-40 minutes, practically nothing happens. Now I can tolerate a lot of gratuitous gore and clumsy make-up effects, but the two things I absolutely cannot stand are amateurish ugly teenage "actors" that stare straight into the camera and an overload of pointless padding footage, like compilations of classroom activities or a young couple visiting the zoo (complete with atrocious musical guidance, of course). There are even collages in which you can see the characters talk to each other, but we can't hear the conversation. I truly hate that! Remember also that it was still the 1980's, so a large share of the cast – including Olaf Ittenbach – has a mullet and wears the dumbest colorful outfits. And since the first half hour is so boring, I even paid attention and got hugely irritated by the awful sound effects and editing quality. Seriously, you can hear birds singing inside a hermetically sealed off kitchen and the sound of footsteps follow approximately five seconds after the character stands still already. "Black Past" only becomes (temporarily) worthwhile as soon as Tommy's possessed girlfriend throws herself in front of a car and he becomes plagued with horrifying visions of bloodied faces, rotting corpses and his own disemboweled dead girlfriend coming back from the dead over and over again. The film most certainly features some very depraved scenes, like a blade shoved up a girl's crotch or a nail hit right through a penis, but the slightly squeamish people among us don't have to worry too much. The gore might be sick and twisted, but it's never at one point shocking or disturbing. Ittanbach completely goes over-the-top during the last fifteen minutes of the film with extreme gore and a nicely deranged variety of "how to butcher my entire cast of befriended volunteers" ideas! The finale sure does evoke plenty of laughter! Fun little to end with: two totally different and not-so-resembling actors play the role of Tommy's father. Suddenly and without apparent reason, the father is 20 years young and lost his mustache!

trashgang The eighties was the time of the slashers and the goreflicks. Germany became know due to Buttgereit and Ittenbach. Buttgereit made some weird ones , Ittenbach the gory ones. This is his first one and appearing himself as the main character. The home made one starts of extreme slow and nothing happens, although the first minute was promising, a child killed by an axe. But when his girlfriend becomes possessed the movie really starts. Olaf had some weird dreams were his girlfriend reappears from the dead, again and again, just like Raimi's Evil Dead. That's where the movie becoming a real gore classic, amounts of blood is flowing, bodies are mutilated, a real mess. So that's why Olaf became a cultdirector, he made a lot of other classics like Burning Moon and House of Blood and of course the real gory one Premutos. A keeper

crimsonmaskvideo 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!