Black Past (1989)
** 1/2 (out of 4)
Thommy (Olaf Ittenbach) and his family move into a new home and it doesn't take long before he gets a crush on a local girl. While all of this is going on he stumbles into the attack where he finds a box chained up. He breaks into it and finds a mirror, which he hangs up and soon enough all sorts of gory and crazy murders are happening.
Ittenbach's BLACK PAST is typical of the splatter slashers that were coming out of Germany during this era. If you're looking for great performances and high art then you're not going to find it here but, then again, why on Earth would you come to a film like this an expect that? If you're looking for non-stop gore and over-the-top and vile nastiness then Ittenbach certainly won't let you down.
The one thing that has always amazed me about these German splatter films is that they were filmed on peanuts yet they always managed to have wonderful special effects. Just compare the effects in this film to countless direct-to-VHS movies that were coming out of America. Rarely did those films feature any gore and what it did show were rather amateur effects. More times than not they simply had someone off camera shooting blood around. These special effects here are all rather creative and there's no question that they go highly over-the-top in the amount of gore.
You've pretty much got various decapitations, non-stop skin slashing, several scenes where eyes are damaged ala Lucio Fulci and there's no telling how many gallons of blood were used. Obviously if you have a weak stomach you will want to stay away from this film. The "story" itself isn't the greatest but it's good enough to keep you entertained whenever there isn't any gore going on.
