Those Germans, they are known for their splatter scene. Timo Rose, Buttgereit and so on, but what they didn't dare was putting some explicit scene's in their movies. Mostly those movies aren't that good but do have some fame due the theme's used. Bethmann is someone different. He's known for his X Rated Kult label and his adoration for Joe D'Amato. Knowing Joe you know that he uses a lot of nudity. And that's what Bethmann uses too. This is one of his first attempts. And of course with German splatter you have a problem, first of all, it's in German without subs, second most of those flicks clock in above 2 hours. This one you could choose from 90 minutes (without the nudity) up to 161 minutes, guess what, I suffered the 161 minutes. The storyline is written in two seconds. Girl cars broke down, two guys helping her, they rape her, she takes revenge. What happens in between are scene's that have nothing to do with the storyline, a breaking up of a relation for example. Further on the gore isn't available for a whole time. In fact, the blood flows but in laughable ways. But we can forgive him, it's his first world wide known film (after Insel der Damonen). You can see when a guys head smashed in by a baseball bat he's waiting until the blow to spit the red stuff out. Again a funny scene when a guys girlfriend is pinned to a tree, he's calling the police to come to the forest to rescue him, huh, do coppers know where to go. You get it, it's full of those stupid sentences. There's one scene that may be offending, the necro scene. When the raped girl goes banana she turns out to become a lesbian slayer, but first she has to kill some men. By taking them at her home she copulate with them, killing the unlucky guy and decapitate him, The head is then used to to bring it between her legs, full explicit. An ode to 'Nekromantik'. And the word has fallen, most of the girls go full nude, frontal and not in 70's fashion if you know what I mean, that's the reason why this flick is banned and cut for most than 70 minutes! It shows some girls explicit but it isn't porn because there are no cum shots or penetration shots. It's watchable but acting is extremely low. Bethmann had success with it and made Angel of Death 2, in fact nothing to do with number one and he made more explicit XXX horrors like Rozza Venezia and Excitus with porn stars. It isn't that easy to find his movies you really have to dig the net. Anyway, it's German.
Review of Der Todesengel
