May 6, 2008

Das Komabrutale Duell (1999)


Buy it now at Amazon.com, even though I strongly suggest you don’t!!

It’s apparent in the first few minutes of Das Komabrutale Duell that blood will fly and not let up until the end. A guy is left for dead after having a run-in with the Eightlets Mafia, a gang of punks who take no mercy. After getting patched up by the doctors, he emerges 10 years later, hell bent on revenge. After that, the story gets pretty mudded, and what follows is a myriad of ridiculous blood splatter and fake body parts a plenty.

Dudes get shot, beat down, chainsawed, dismembered, and their heads blown in, yet they get right back up ready for more punishment. Is this the new breed of Superhuman? Maybe the long, lost secret weapon of the Gestapo? Nope, just some guys making a horrible student film with cheap FX, lots of watery blood, and very unrealistic and not so entertaining gore.

I can hear it now, “Hey Mom, look what me and Johnny did, we made a movie!” This film is right up there with Andreas Schnaas’ Goblet of Gore, which rates high on the turd-o-meter. Crazy, simple-minded Germans, you’d think the wall had never fallen. Now don’t get me wrong, I love the German culture, the language (and can speak a little), and their food (yum, a Brat and some Schwarzwald Kuechen), but this is a disgrace to filmmakers worldwide. And, I have to wonder how many poor mannequins were sacrificed during this film? I can only hope they got paid for the extra scenes they were recycled for later.

So, I drudged through about 45 minutes of this, and then had to fast-forward through the rest. Had they spent some time perfecting the gore and FX, or at least made it more tolerable, used realistic blood, and compacted it into a 30 minute short (no more than), it may have been more bearable. But, this has to be in my top 10 worst movies of all time, and I’ve sat through some real garbage.

So, I continue to ask, what happened to the glory days of Jorg Buttgereit, and will we ever get those back? We can only hope that up and comers Christian Alvart and Andreas Bethmann will carry the torch and continue to perfect their style. Now, go watch Nekromantik 1&2, Schramm, Exitus Interruptus, and Antibodies. Even JFK was reppin the old school, “Ich bin ein Berliner!” Remember?

ACTING DONE BY HUMANS --1-- ACTING DONE BY MANNEQUINS --3--
BLOOD/GORE --2-- NUDITY --0--
RIDICULOUSNESS --5-- LIKELIHOOD OF EVER REVISITING --0--
OVERALL RATING

--1--

1 comment:

Smokeskrene said...

You know of these "I'm on TV mom" kind of films. I still dig Wichita's own darkness. That shit where they're standing in the light and their hands start expanding and blood pops out like a zit explosion you get on picture day in middle school.