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!

Indyrod This is the first movie directed by Olaf Ittenbach, and it is definitely a gorehound treasure. The story revolves around a mirror in a chained up chest in an attic, that when placed on the wall, opens up a can of ghoulish gore about as graphic as any gore movie I have ever seen. I just loved it. Yes, it's a low-budget straight to video film, but this is done extremely well, with gore effects that are mind-blowing. Olaf may have gotten a little inspiration from EVIL DEAD on this one, but he maintains an interesting story, good characters, and effects that are amazing, and even a decent soundtrack. This is splatter film making at its low-budget best, and I can't wait to watch the other Olaf movies I have now, and a couple still to come. I'm very impressed with his gore effects, it reminds me of the good old days back in the eighties when these gore movies were all over the place, but this one kicks major ass compared to most of those. This is definitely a gorehound delight.

ElijahCSkuggs This is Olaf's debut flick and just like his others, it's chock full of of the grue. Well, not chock full, but when it gets violent, it gets seriously gruesome. Yeeeaaaahhh, baay-buh!!Story revolves around young Thommy ((with an H)played by Olaf) who's falling in love with his dream girl. All is well until Olaf discovers a chained up chest in his attic that holds a mirror and a diary of sorts telling some very grim stories of the houses' past. Not thinking any of the mirror besides it looking cool, he hangs it up. But this mirror isn't like any other mirror. It's wicked evil. Hell, it's even evilly wicked. Things start going awry fast and the mirror is starting to set up poor Thommy into going down the same the paths the old inhabitants of the mirror went through. Uh-oh spaghettios! Black Past was a pretty solid debut for Olaf. The only real gripe for myself was the pacing of the film. There were some scenes that were complete wastes of time. Just shots of Thommy walking here and there. Or him just sitting there. That may work with fantastic acting, but since there wasn't any here, it was very tedious. There were a few nice scenes of splatter before the hour mark, but once it hits the 1:00, it's pretty much clear sailing in a sea of red.With nods to Evil Dead and probably a couple other flicks, Olaf seemed to know what he was doing right from the get go. If you're a fan of his other flicks, there's no reason not to check out this one as well. One of the more memorable splatter debuts, and a must see for fans of the messy-kind.

mayflower Brilliant debut by german gore favorit Ittenbach. It's a VERY well produced no budget splatter movie with all the Ittenbach characteristics, such as dumb german humor and of course over-the-top gore sequenses! It's just as good as Premutos and better than The Burning Moon and even better than the low budget Legion of the Dead, which was a real letdown. Be sure to get the Olaf Ittenbach Collection on DVD, with a new and restored version of this fantastic flick, together with Burning Moon, Premutos, the old version of Black Past as well as a bonus disc with trailers of his new flick Beyond the Limits (Looks really cool), behind the camera and so on.