THE BURNING MOON

THE BURNING MOON

Peter (the film’s writer-director Olaf Ittenbach) is a troubled teen who’s out of favour with his folks because he’d rather drink, smoke drugs and take part in gang fights than get a job. He’s also a bad influence on his younger sister Anette, they argue.

Fed up with his rebellious manner, Peter’s father gives him a good hiding and tells him to babysit little sis while he takes mother out. That’s all good and well, but ... would you leave a violent junkie in charge of your little girl?!

Anyway, Peter shoots up as soon as his folks have gone out. He then visits Anette’s bedroom where he discovers she’s unable to sleep. In a seemingly unusual display of concern, he offers to tell her a couple of bedtime stories.

But, these are Peter’s bedtime stories ...

The first is entitled "Julia’s Love". It opens in St Petersen Mental Clinic, where doctors are concerned about their welfare around one particularly psychotic patient, Parker (Bernd Muggenthaler).

Minutes later, and a bloodbath has unfolded in the hospital as Parker goes on the rampage and eventually escapes.

All of which leads us to Julia (Beate Neumeyer), a pretty singleton who is encouraged by her sister to take up blind dating in the hope of finding love. Only, could sweet-sounding new beau Brian have anything to do with the nutter who’s said to be on the loose in the area? After all, we’ve not been privy to Parker’s face up until this point …

Uncharacteristically reserved in some respects, for an Ittenbach film, "Julia’s Love" opens slowly before delivering on scenes of wholesale family slaughter as it builds towards its enjoyably ludicrous twist finale.

Filmed with a fair degree of colourful flourishes and style, it’s a good start to the entertainment, even drawing comparisons in its later scenes to the likes of ABSURD and NIGHTMARES IN A DAMAGED BRAIN.

Anette is understandably perturbed by this first yarn and begs Peter to stop, but he’s totally wired by this point and so proceeds with his second story of the evening: "The Purity".

This one opens with demented priest Ralf (Rudolf Hoss) raping and killing a helpless female acquaintance, in the promise that his deeds will cleanse her of all sin. Following on from this period-set Bavarian opening, the action shifts to present tense and finds the mad Holy man offering to help with a fresh congregation’s problems – and then proceeding to murder most of them for their troubles.

Again, Ittenbach starts off quite slowly with his storytelling (especially considering he only has about 40 minutes in which to present his plot), but compensates with some righteous gore in the latter half.

Shades of THE FIEND are an entertaining inevitability, and the ambition of PREMUTOS is clearly evident in moments of not only elaborate bloodshed (bodies torn apart, graphic decapitations etc) but period settings and atmospheric scene-setting.

The wraparound builds to a satisfyingly ugly finale too. The whole thing, as explicit as it is, is thankfully tempered by rum performances and a subtle streak of humour throughout.

THE BURNING MOON comes uncut on this region 2 PAL encoded disc, in its original 4:3 aspect ratio. It looks good for its 1992 lineage and video origins. The colours are certainly bolder and images are brighter than ever before. But, in line with the source material, there is an undeniable softness to the images throughout.

German audio is provided in options of 2.0 and 5.1. The former is the more natural-sounding, but both are okay. Optional subtitles are proffered in English, Danish, Norwegian, Dutch and Swedish. The English ones are easy to read and very well written for the most part.

All menus are static aside from an animated scene-selection menu which allows access to THE BURNING MOON via 8 chapters.

Another World Entertainment’s DVD cover boasts a fine gory design by Silverferox but, as with the other releases in their new Ittenbach collection, fails to mention the inclusion of any bonus features. However, there are some on offer – and they’re almost identical to those found on the BLACK PAST and PREMUTOS discs:

Two "TV specials", both taking a brief but entertaining look at the works of Ittenbach, kick off the extras. They both come with German audio and optional English subtitles, along with some interviews and nice behind-the-scenes footage of his films. The first segment is 4 minutes in length; the second is more substantial at 12 minutes, taking a gander at the director’s novel approach to no-budget FX wizardry (he’s very talented in this respect).

From there, we get a few "early clips". These are priceless snippets of very primitive, shot-on-video horror scenes from the director’s early days. Most of them look like crap, but there’s lots of cheesy gore to be enjoyed regardless. Aside from a brief video introduction from Ittenbach, there’s precious dialogue in this thoroughly enjoyable 7-minute featurette, but English subtitles are once again on hand anyway.

Next up are the original trailers for PREMUTOS and GARDEN OF LOVE. With subtitles? Of course!

Finally, we get trailers for other titles in the Another World roster, which on this occasion include PENANCE, GROTESQUE, INTRUDER, DEADGIRL and PLAGUE TOWN. They’re all presented with English audio aside from GROTESQUE (Japanese with subtitles), and an on-screen disclaimer advises us before viewing that the presentations here are not indicative of the fully remastered versions of each film that Another World offer on DVD. Indeed, the quality of these trailers is a hodgepodge of the good, the bad and – in the case of GROTESQUE – the downright ugly.

THE BURNING MOON may not be prime Ittenbach but is an enjoyable, unexpectedly earnest stab at no-budget horror nonetheless. The gore in the second half should be worth the asking price alone for some, and the film has never fared as well as it does on this DVD.

Review by Stuart Willis


 
Released by Another World Entertainment
Region All - PAL
Not Rated
Extras :
see main review
Back