Garden of Love (2003) (V)

Director:

Olaf Ittenbach

Writers:

Olaf Ittenbach (writer)
Thomas Reitmair (writer)

Release Date:

March 2003 (Germany)

Genre:

Horror | Thriller

Plot:

Plot Keywords:

Splatter | Extreme Violence | Blood Splatter

Cast

Natacza Boon	...	Rebecca Verlaine (as Natacza S. Boon)
James Matthews	...	Thomas Munster (as James Matthews-Pyecha)
Daryl Jackson	...	David Riven
Bela B. Felsenheimer	...	Gabriel Verlaine
Donald Stewart	...	Don Creedon
Alexandra Thom-Heinrich	...	Barbara Creedon
Jean-Luc Julien	...	Medic
Anika Julien	...	Young Rebecca
Jeff Motherhead	...	Roger
Kayla Motherhead	...	Melanie
Barrett Jones	...	Officer 1
Damien Coyle	...	Officer 2
Anthony Failla	...	Officer 3
Stefan Hummel	...	Officer 4
Karin Kain	...	Waitress

Also Known As:

The Haunting of Rebecca Verlaine (USA) (DVD title)

Runtime:

Germany:86 min

Country:

Germany

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Germany:18 (JK/SPIO) (cut) | Australia:R | Australia:R (2008) | USA:Unrated (DVD rating) | New Zealand:R18 | UK:18 | Austria:18 (uncut version) | Germany:BPjM Restricted

Good make up, little gore, lame story, don't waste your time on that

The cover shots on the DVD looked very good and the director Olaf Ittenbach has quite a good reputation, so we decided to check this one out. Plus, the main character, German punk rock drummer and singer Bela B., is a very charismatic person and has shown a lot of good taste in horror movies and comics before, so I was very curious about that one.

First point, Bela B. is only in it for a few scenes and has nothing to do except for staring around. OK, he's playing an undead, they stare around and usually do no real acting, but he had shown that he can actually do good acting before, it would have been more interesting to see him in a "real" leading role . So it looked to me that his name was placed on the cover merely to promote the movie.

The other actors are absolutely ridiculous. Why do they all pretend that the story is set in Britain? The landscape, the interiors, everything is so German. Why not simply set the movie in Germany? Everything would be just fine, the story would have worked as well, and we wouldn't have wet our pants every time they tried to act "british". What took away a lot of the atmosphere.

The gore scenes are only a few, most of the time the movie spins around the investigation on Verlaine's murder. That'd be OK, if it only would have been a little bit more suspenseful.

The gory scenes are all set in darkness, so you cannot really see what's going on, you hear a lot of "painful" sounds instead. The make up of the zombies despite of that is very good, haven't seen that good looking dead people so far.

Overall, this movie is boring as hell, the acting is bad, the story is lame and a chilling atmosphere does not come up. Better stay away from that one and check out Ittenbach's "Beyond The Limits". I've seen that one before "Garden Of Love" and was very impressed about the great way of storytelling, the very good professional actors and the really really good atmosphere and setting.