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OVERALL
BEASTS
BREASTS
Directed by:
Olaf Ittenbach
Starring:
Fidelis Atuma ... Christian
Anke Fabre ... Edith
Ingid Fischer ... Inge
Ronald Fuhrmann ... Rudolf
Country: Germany
Runtime: 106 min
Original title: Premutos - Der gefallene
Engel, aka: Premutos: The Fallen Angel
Olaf Ittenbach
Starring:
Fidelis Atuma ... Christian
Anke Fabre ... Edith
Ingid Fischer ... Inge
Ronald Fuhrmann ... Rudolf
Country: Germany
Runtime: 106 min
Original title: Premutos - Der gefallene
Engel, aka: Premutos: The Fallen Angel
PREMUTOS: LORD OF THE LIVING DEAD (1997)
Are you ready for another dose of German underground splatter? I certainly WAS. I bought this film on
eBay simply because I enjoyed the raw violence in The Burning Moon, also directed by Olaf Ittenbach
and to become acquainted with foreigners also in the splatter scene. I’ve had mixed reactions with
German splatter directors like Ittenbach, Bethmann, and Buttgereit. Their early works are anything but
flawless; the gore delivers for the most part but the style is pretty dry when compared to the Italian stuff.
This movie has been called “a gore-hound’s wet dream” and been compared with Braindead and The
Evil Dead. I can see the similarities but in terms of quality Premutos is simply poor filmmaking. The movie
feels like a rough cut with unnatural editing and a sloppy story. I purchased the DVD which had no
subtitles but had laughable English dubbing; overall a frazzled film. On the other hand the special
makeup effects work was excellent; painting the multitude of graphic gore scenes as brilliant and life-like
as possible. The real art and beauty in the film comes from the hard work put into the carnage. Ittenbach
is a true special makeup effects master who has gone on to work on American films such as BloodRayne.
The story is allover the place. You can tell Ittenbach (who wrote, directed and starred in the film)
wanted to make a horror epic. This is what I gathered to be the plot. It’s Walter’s birthday and a legion of
undead zombie demons crash the party. The last thirty minutes becomes an all-out battle with guns,
knives, swords, chainsaws and even a tank. The movie plays like a dark comedy but the culture
differences makes some of the jokes awkward, but not all. The awkward scenes are mostly extremely
boring and disgusting, yet at times (with the help of the dubbing) you’ll laugh out loud.
Walter is a military nut who collects weapons and wants his wimpy son Mathias (Ittenbach) to be a
tough soldier. In the beginning of the film Mathias gets into a soccer accident and has to get stitches on
his scrotum. Later he spills some yellow acid-like liquid on his dick. The liquid, plus the Premutos book of
the dead was found buried in their garden by Walter. I learned many things from this movie but two are
of the utmost importance. The first is that when you black-out you relive past lives. Mathias blacks out
like four times and is transported to medieval battlefields, Scotland and for some bizarre reason to the
scene of Christ’s crucifixion. They want to establish that the dark demon lord Premutos has existed in
the pain and suffering of humanity forever. Premutos is like the ultimate badass demon, even stronger
and older than Satan. There seems to be a link between Premutos and Mathias (for eventually after
reading the book Mathias becomes Premutos) but I think the scenes that explained this were cut out or
set on fire by Premutos himself.
So on the night of the party Mathias starts reading the book and then is attacked by ghost pipes and
barb wires. While this is happening Walter and the rest of the family are eating dinner and getting drunk.
Soon enough Mathias’ face melts and he gets lightning demon eyes like that evil dude from Big Trouble
in Little China. The zombies then attack everyone and start killing folks. People die in all sorts of ways
here. We have heads randomly exploding, limbs hacked off, decapitations, headshots, throat-cuts, and
disembowelments. Everything is soaked in blood and the gore is marvelous. A lot of hard work and time
went into the set-up and execution of these effects and I recommend the film only for that. The second
important thing I learned from this film was that you can acquire a tank upon a moment’s notice. In the
last fifteen minutes one of the characters disappears and returns in a tank! He mows down the undead
army. At about that point Premutos is born again as a bloody, naked skinny dude. Will earth survive the
dark angel’s fury? Honestly I don’t care. I had to wake up early the next morning to take my mom to the
doctor and I just wanted to get to bed. As soon as the movie was over I went to bed. Did I wonder about
the salvation of humanity or the brutal evil of Premutos? No, my friends I did not.
At the end credits they tell you there was a body count of 139. That’s pretty impressive. Since I really
didn’t care about any of the characters I couldn’t care less if my DVD was scratched and was unable to
finish the movie. But I did finish it, because that’s the Splatter code. So if you’re a gore hound it’s a must
watch, but please watch in a group, you will have a lot more fun with your friends. The film seems to be
just a life support system for an elaborate staging of gore scenes. Although the gore is excellent I still
managed to get bored. You know it’s true that when your emotionally invested in a good character or
story then the deaths are all the sweeter.
- Jorge Antonio Lopez
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