PREMUTOS: LORD OF THE LIVING DEAD

(A.k.a. PREMUTOS: DER GEFALLENE ENGEL; PREMUTOS: THE FALLEN ANGEL)

The film begins in India in 1023 AD. An earnest voiceover tells of how Premutos was the first angel to fall from Heaven’s grace, even before Lucifer. Premutos, we’re told, has since existed throughout history to wreak violence and evil throughout mankind. This is first illustrated by a bloody battle scene which culminates in the manifestation of Premutos – only for someone to run a sword through the demon, insisting that it must never be allowed to walk the Earth again.

Then we leap forward to 1942 and a small German village, where alienated farmer Rudolf (Ronald Fuhrmann) stumbles upon a sacred tome said to hold the key to both eternal life and the resurrecting of Premutos. His fellow villagers know he’s up to something dodgy and wonder if he can have anything to do with the empty graves in their local cemetery.

Sure enough, an inspection of his basement reveals that the recently deceased are now zombified ... and demented. Following a supremely gory war against the undead, the villagers corner Rudolf and lace him with bullets ... but not before he’s managed to breather fresh life into the titular beast.

Then we’re catapulted into the present day, where we meet goofy young Mathias (Olaf Ittenbach, also writing and directing). He’s a dweeb who fancies his sexy neighbour Sandra (Susanne Gruter) while trying to persuade his warfare-crazed dad Walter (Christopher Stacey) that he’d rather play soccer than follow his parents’ dream of joining the army.

Whenever Mathias takes a tumble – falling off his bike; enduring an excruciating-looking kick to the gonads during a game of footy – he experiences visions of 13th Century Bavaria. In them, natives are suffering from the plague as Mathias surveys the land, watching an old crone as she burns at the stake after being branded a witch. As she dies, she reveals to Mathias that he is the son of Premutos, destined to keep being reborn throughout the ages in order to provide a portal for his demonic father to someday return to Earth.

But this all simply a dream ... right?

It seems so, until Walter decides to plant a tree outside the family home on his birthday and finds an ancient tome where he’s digging. Hmm, could this be the same legendary book that Rudolf caused so much bedlam with all those years before?

And, if so, how are the guests at Walter’s impending birthday party going to react to the resurrection of a malevolent beastie intent on ruling the world?

Even if the narrative is a little confused at times – thank God for the narration – PREMUTOS is easily accessible thanks to its unrelenting pace, wanton gore and surprising amount of scope in its storytelling.

Flashback sequences also include a depiction of the Roman crucifixion of Christ that gives mad Mel a run for his money, a foray to Stalingrad circa World War 2 and even a jaunt to 16th Century Scotland. Not only are each of these sequences crammed with elaborate gore FX (of a satisfyingly old-school variant), but rich with period detail and even benefit from characters speaking each country’s appropriate language. It’s an unusual length for a low-budget gore filmmaker to go to, and demonstrates Ittenbach’s underrated commitment to his craft.

PREMUTOS is fun. It’s gory, and it’s often witty as well. Ittenbach has a clear handle on the gore/humour angle that distinguished other 1990’s genre favourites such as Peter Jackson’s BRAINDEAD. It’s obviously been produced on poverty row conditions, but that shouldn’t put prospective viewers off: this is an alarmingly well-shot, inventive and hugely ambitious project. In fact, it’s probably Ittenbach’s best film in terms of sheer style.

Lavish, righteously bloody and endlessly creative, PREMUTOS can’t fail to entertain. I’m surprised it’s not more well loved.

The great things about seeing PREMUTOS here are that (a) it looks better than ever, and is proffered in all its uncut glory; (b) we get the benefit of the film’s original language audio, as opposed to the horrendous English dubbed version that Shock-O-Rama inflicted upon the world several years back; (c) it’s one of those rare post-80s horror films that grows in cult status over the years, and can now be discovered by new fans in a truly worthy version.

PREMUTOS is presented uncut and uncensored in its original 4:3 full-frame aspect ratio. It looks good considering its zero budget origins. Colours are vivid and images retain a certain natural sharpness for the duration. Blacks waver a little on occasion but there is a pleasing low frequency of digital noise. Overall, this is a really welcome rendition of such a cheaply produced film.

The original German audio track comes equipped with decent 2.0 and 5.1 mixes. Optional subtitles are available in English, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Dutch.

Another World Entertainment’s region 2 DVD opens with a static menu offering a choice of different languages. Naturally, I went for the English option – and from there, was taken through a Copyright warning screen and then to the static main menu page.

An animated scene-selection menu allows access to PREMUTOS via 8 chapters.

Although not listed on the DVD’s back cover, we do get some extra features. These begin with two "KINO TV specials", both taking a brief but entertaining look at the works of Ittenbach. 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, including DEADGIRL, GROTESQUE, INTRUDER, PENANCE 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.

I’m assuming that if you select the appropriate language at the disc’s opening menu, then all extra features also come with that language’s subtitles. I didn’t check, sorry.

PREMUTOS has never looked better and proves itself ripe for rediscovery/re-evaluation on this excellent DVD from Another World Entertainment.

Recommended.

Review by Stuart Willis