Legion of the Dead (2001) User Reviews

Was this Flick Supposed To Be Funny?

[claudio_carvalho · 2/10 · 30 September 2004]

Yesterday I bought this used VHS in a rental without any previous reference first because I am a great fan of horror movies. The very beautiful art of the cover also attracted me. Last but not the least, the reasonable price convinced me to buy it. When I arrived home and saw that Matthias Hues was the lead 'actor', I recognized that I had not made a good deal and I surely believed that this flick would not be good. Indeed it is worse than that, it is a junk! The storyline is horribly plagiarized from 'From Dusk Till Dawn' and is also divided in two parts: the first one tells the 'saga' of two morons hitchhiking and being kidnapped by a psychotic killer. The second one is about a group of persons, including the two morons, trapped in a bar, surrounded by the legion of the dead leaded by Togaio. I believe this flick was supposed to be funny, but it is not. The viewer can only laugh how imbecile a producer can be sponsoring such a crap. My vote is two.

Title (Brazil): 'Legião dos Mortos' ('Legion of the Dead')

All the actors played idiots, and they were brilliant

[siderite · 3/10 · 13 August 2006]

This could almost become a cult movie. It involves idiots working with and against the powerful demon Tagaio, played by my favorite actor of all time: Mathias Hues. He played in so many bad US movies that his Germanic accent is almost gone.

In this one, he doesn't even fight. He is just the comic relief. The other actors play their parts (of idiots) really well, completely immersing the viewer in the atmosphere of the movie. The end part is an almost exact replica of the From Dusk Till Dawn bar fights, and by exact I mean really funny and completely different.

In the end (spoiler!!) Mathias Hues reveals his real identity: he is also an idiot, and the Legion of Idiots is finally defeated.

Now really, a bad movie, with decent low budget effects and good film editing. But other than that, the script, acting and directing sucked. If you get really intoxicated with something, you might find it hilarious.

From Dumb Till Dawn

[DocEmmettBrown · 2/10 · 9 June 2005]

This sorry rip-off of From Dusk Till Dawn uses gore in place of wit, a sharp script, good acting, keen editing, decent ADR, or any kind of suspense whatsoever.

The film concerns itself with several limp story lines involving road trips and murders that all culminates in a bar full of vampires (and Germans!!). Sound familiar?

Where Dusk Till Dawn deftly blended horror, action and an underlying dark humour. Legion veers wildly between over the top gore and slapstick humour. The films main pairings (the vampire brothers and the two friends) adopt the same straight guy and stooge blueprint and rinse it to the point of irritation. By the 10th time the bespectacled brother got in an accident I wanted to throw my DVD out the window.

Then there's the editing. It appears that to cut running time the director has merely hacked parts out of scenes with an axe. The first time the hitchhiker killer has a fit, one of the brothers remarks "He's freaking out again". Again?! When was the first time? The film is riddled with moments like this, giving the feeling that we are watching an abridged version.

The only saving grace is the beautiful Kimberly Liebe who is also one of the better actors in the film (not that this is saying an awful lot).

...and don't even get me started on the ending.

A tale of two halves.

[fibreoptic · 5/10 · 15 February 2004]

Legion of The Dead is split into two parts like 'From Dusk Till Dawn'. The first half focuses mainly on William and Luke getting kidnapped by psycho Mike and two legion members recruiting people in to the legion of the dead. The Second half focuses on a group of people trying to escape a diner surrounded by Togaio and the legion of the dead. The first half is pretty good and enthralling making you think that this is going to be surprisingly a good film but uh oh wait a second there...the second half spoils it completely! And because the second half makes little to no sense the first half is there in turn wasted. Togaio waves his arms about far too much (the actor must of thought "WOH i'm playing Satan, better act the part" and over acts the part). The humour is pretty much non-existent in the second half too which is one of the main bits that made the first half good. The film makers obviously tried to do a "From Dusk Till Dawn" movie and failed miserably. Worth renting but do not buy this movie as it's hard enough watching it all the way through the first time! It's a shame because done right this movie could have been a winner. 5/10

From the store to the video player to the garbage .

[hereatgraceland · 1/10 · 30 July 2006]

I have purchased hundreds of movies of the last 10 years and currently have over a thousand in my library. I can honestly say Legions of the Dead is the only movie I yanked out of my VCR and slammed it directly into the garbage. Yes...it is that bad. Most horror movies have at least something that captures your attention. Not this one!!! The movie had no opening, so nobody understood what it was about, no story to follow, no scary parts, nothing. I tried to watch it for almost an hour and I couldn't understand what the hell was going on so I literally yanked it and tossed it ! There were 2 weirdo's walking around in gray suits killing everybody and there was another guy who kidnapped 2 other dudes and the guy kept barfing up yellow chunks every couple of minutes. I think this movie is even worse then Dead and Breakfast. If you see it for sale in a dollar store, don't be fooled into buying it. It's not even worth a penny ! 100 % JUNK

maybe the worst thing ever on earth

[fortey · 1/10 · 27 November 2002]

I feel soiled.

This is possibly the worst movie I have ever seen. I don't say that lightly, either, as just a passing critique of something I did not like. This was, in fact, one of the most poorly constructed films in every aspect I can think of ranging from acting to plot to effects to editing.

No one can act well in this movie. No one. The closest we get is the cute waitress/demon girl. She ain't bad. She has a lot of poor material to work with, but she has a natural feel. Every other performance is so awkward and wooden I'm surprised the actors weren't just holding copies of the script and reading from them right on camera.

Characterization was so terrible I'm not sure where to begin. Is Luke a tough guy or a moron or a stoner or a sexist or a coward or does he simply hold no actual character of his own and jump randomly from one personality to the next as the haphazard script dictates? Hmm, tough call. Was that girl a demon? Was she evil? Why was everyone else evil? What the heck was going on?

The storyline... storylines... random thoughts the writer had, are strung together pointlessly. Does the first 40 minutes have any bearing on the next 40 minutes? No, not at all. There's a kidnapping that makes no sense, and some of the worst banter between "funny" characters I have ever heard. Those two dead hitmen? My lord, it was like watching amateur night at a comedy club while a slow witted comedian with bad timing was on stage. Funny jokes are funny, unfunny jokes hurt. And this clearly "I wanna be just like Tarantino but am not remotely talented enough to even put a single line of worth while dialogue in my film" riff got old so fast.

Why do things blow up so easily? Ever notice how that happens on the Simpsons... as a joke? Yeah, too bad no one here got that.

What was with that fat guy tied to the chair? He paid 2 biker guys $100 to kill someone when he was 13? Is that the story? Right.

And did the "devil" create a...what was it? an anti-vaccine in a giant metal umbrella that kills really old demon people? Huh?

How can the editing be so abonimable? What happened to Luke at the end there? They have guns, they open the door to face that big "I come in Peace" guy and then... William screams and falls down for no reason or some such and...where did Luke go? What? Jump cut anyone?

Don't even get me started on the actual ending of this film.

If you like this movie, then let's never watch a film together. I've barely even stated my opinions in here. My real opinions would be vulgar. These are just clear and horrible observations I made of the film. Avoid this at all costs. If it were funny bad, lilke Carnosaur, that'd be great. But it's not. Oh, how it's not. It's just plain awful/

Worthless junk.

[Coventry · 1/10 · 2 June 2004]

`Legion of the Dead' was my first movie directed by Olaf Ittenbach and I can't say I'll immediately purchase his other achievements now. Ittenbach is supposed to be a funky, amateur gorehound who stuffs his films with grotesque violence and cheerfully absurd characters. Well, it is gory all right, but even more stupid and pointless. Legion of the Dead seems to handle about all sort of things, but nothing in particular. And in the end, it'll just feel like you've wasted yet another 90 minutes of your precious life. Two main storylines are presented during the first hour of the film. A couple of retarded siblings recruit soldiers for the `Legion' by killing, and literally blow them back to life. In the other storyline, a madman suffering from rabies hijacks two lowlife-friends. Both stories are cut off abruptly and the characters come together in a setting that looks an awful lot like the bar in `From Dusk Till Dawn'… Ittenbach even hired an exact Salma Hayek look-alike for this! The totally ridiculous last half hour is painfully bad and you can consider it an achievement if you sit it through. Every now and then, Ittenbach shows slight signs of ingeniousness through black humor, but the wholesome really stinks. Avoid at all costs!

Incoherent horror/comedy made by a bunch of humorless Germans.

[TheVid · 4 November 2002]

The most annoying thing about LEGION is it's drab attempts at humor, but even if you're a fan of low-budget horror, it's still pretty hard to take. There wasn't enough clever violence, or pleasingly gratuitous sex scenes, to earn this one a recommendation.

this cannot be happening

[geoffrey3001 · 1/10 · 24 March 2003]

This is the worst movie I ever saw. I like horror fliks once in while, but this is very bad. I cannot understand how it is possible to act this bad. Sometimes bad acting can be funny, but this is not funny at all, this is really bad. Probably because of the story, but ok. And then the editing. They either cut too many scenes, or the editor had to be really drunk, because the whole movie does not make sense. Well MST3K, you can add this one to your list if you still haven't done it already :-). No, I have not seen Manos yet, but I cannot imagine that movie even worse then this one? Well, if you want to see this movie, please make sure you have your beer (or whatever you drink) next to you, because you are going to need it.

1 of the worst films I have ever seen

[peterwalsh · 1/10 · 28 April 2005]

Ohh my God, I actually went out and bought this film, the whole saying 'don't judge a book by it's cover comes to mind'. The acting alone is terrible, the storyline has more holes in it than Swiss cheese, These two friends set out on a journey and start hitch-hiking being picked up by some SPACE-CAKE who ends up trying to kill them, they manage to escape and end up in a quite sleepy town meeting a beautiful lounge girl in a bar, she turns out to some sort of demon-like thing that wants to live a normal life, the whole town seem to have demonic sense to them, there's some other guy who I think is mean't to be the Devil, he wears a 3/4 length leather jacket and big massive leather biker boots, he's looks like a bad guy in Blade or something, then there's these two brothers who are sent down to earth to kill and then recruit people for 'legion of the dead', they constantly get into awkward situations, one of the brothers manages to get injured by falling objects, moving cars, and finally getting blown up, that was slightly funny, the guy who plays the devil comes down to earth to find his bride(demon like girl)and then there's a big fight in the film between good and evil, apart from that DON'T get this film out, because it is so bad, everything in it is so far fetched that I think the guy who made it must have been taking some sort of drugs, acid or speed maybe, but anyway the bottom line is BAD FILM, BAD ACTING, BAD PLOT, funny in certain bits because your actually laughing at how bad the film is...

Really Bad

[freejack21usa · 2/10 · 7 October 2003]

Quite possibly the worst direct to video horror film ever made. The first half is stupid, and the second half doesn't make any sense. Also I have never seen a film with so many unattractive people. Even Leprachaun had Jennifer Aniston. I would unwatch this film if I could.

Horribly Hilarious

[ajrayman · 10/10 · 10 January 2004]

I saw this film against my will - a friend had been bugging me for the past two years every time we went to Blockbuster to rent it. It is absolutely hilarious! The pee-pee/moo-moo dialectic presented by the stoner is very philosophical. Tagayo, the Fabio-esque Lucifer character raises his hands almost every time he talks. The metallic blue, X-men like image of the "legion" outside the bar makes for a good desktop wallpaper.

If you want a good laugh, watch it. But, be cautioned, there is NO plot. Also, watch the "making of" portion of the DVD. A couple stoner Germans talk about how they just said "okay, lets make ze movie."

Legion of the Dead: Hugely mixed bag

[Platypuschow · 6/10 · 25 January 2018]

Legion of the Dead is a truly bizzare film that defies classification and manages to both entertain and frustrate.

The film is a comedy horror and tells tales of several groups of characters, their stories and culminating at the end with them all coming together.

It's very hard to describe, the plot is a bit of a mess and provides you with more questions than answers. Despite this however I found myself very entertained and wishing that it had been written a tad better.

The sfx are a combination of great and terrible, the writing is great albeit a moment here and there and the dumb finale and the cast is again hit and miss.

Never have I come across a movie that is such a mixed bag, I wanted to like this so much but the misses just prevented it from being anything special.

What I will say is that it's worth a watch, this crazy hilarious weird little film despite it's flaws has a lot going for it.

The Good:

Some great ideas

Mostly strong cast

Very funny in places

The Bad:

Lot of misses on every front

Movie breaking finale

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Grey suits are boring

There is a bizzare connection between long blonde haired male actors and poor acting. Seriously!

Stay AWAY!!!!!!!!

[javierw · 1/10 · 20 December 2001]

This is not a movie!! Movies need plots and good acting, at least decent acting, there's nothing from that here, just two stupid caracters killing around and another two stupid characters running from evil, they wanted to do some kind of From Dusk Till Dawn but they didn't!!! Low Budget is not an excuse for a lame script!!!

Horror?NO....just horrible.

[Ally_Cat29 · 29 October 2005]

This movie was possibly the worst movie I have seen so far. Even in the last 10 minutes of the movie, I found myself wondering who certain random characters were, and what the hell was going on. The acting was less than mediocre, and what about the plot you may ask? What plot?? The humor was certainly not funny. I found myself getting irritated as the movie constantly insulted my intelligence in the form of crap comedy and poor dialogue.I wish I could say there was some sort of redeeming feature in this film...but there isn't. That's 90 minutes of my life that I will never be able to get back again, and $5 from the video store that I could have spent on a film that was entertaining. If I could give it 0/10 I would. Don't even think about seeing this movie.

Pile of garbage.

[technocore · 2/10 · 24 September 2002]

This movie is a pile of garbage. Dont get me wrong i like splatter, but hey, I would be nice with some kind of plot. And dialog. The guy who wrote the script should start doing something else. Why the hell does talentless people waste their and my time by producing something as s***ty as this ? The dialog is boring, and free from logic. And the characters ? The last half-hour in the building you get introduced to a lot of characters who just isn't needed. The effects and the camera were ok, all actors sucked bad. I'll give this 3/10

Life like gore/blood is all this movie can offer.

[honsajons · 3/10 · 8 April 2002]

Where to begin. Let's start with the story. The story was really cheesy and pretty much badly presented. The movie takes `courses' and `turns' that are totally unexplained. Like for instance how Geena can claim that she loves William after spending, oh what? 2 hours with him. No not even that. She met him 2 hours ago, took an order of burgers and beer from him, helped him clean up a mess on the floor and now she loves him. Very convincing. This is just one of the examples of totally unexplained things in this movie. The effort has been spent on making `cool scenes' with a bit of shoot out and `die hard conversation'. By which I mean `cool' things to say to the cool scenes. The work on combining these scenes have been totally overlooked.

Sure, there are some glimpses and funny moments. But not enough to make up for the one and a half hours the movie tortured my eyes.

The acting is just horrible as well, at least from most of the actors. But then again a director who can make a movie out of a story this bad probably wouldn't give the actors any hints on what to do either. Most of the things are `over done' so bad that it's nothing but cheesy. The bad guy is so very very bad that it becomes silly.

Some of the special effects are pretty good though, which is why I gave this movie 3 instead of 1 (or maybe 2). Nicely done monster masks and life like gore/blood. But that pretty much this movie can offer.

To be quite honest with you, I wouldn't recommend you renting this movie even if it's the last one on the rack. I wouldn't recommend anyone buying it since I think it's a waste of resources clogging up a DVD or VHS-cassette with it. I wouldn't recommend watching it on TV if it's on. What I do recommend is that you stay away from this movie if it's possible.

Painfully bad in every way possible

[cpebbles · 1/10 · 9 November 2002]

The few people below who recommended this tripe need to be dead. This travesty of a movie is the kind of thing that happens when talentless people fail to recognize their shortcomings and start trying to be the next Tarantino or Lynch. The lady who plays Geena is pretty attractive. An hour and a half of film and that is absolutely the only positive thing I can think to say.

The single worst thing that has ever happened

[maxp0werx · 1/10 · 6 October 2002]

This movie is so incomprehensibly bad, it hurts to think about... Coming from a fan of crappy action/horror movies this is the stupidest film ever released. The fact that the version I saw was a screener with the name of the company responsible for this atrocity running across the bottom burned the words "Artisan is satan" into my brain, FOREVER. also there was no plot and nothing that seemed to want to further the plot in any portion of the damn thing...weak, just utterly weak.

Spread your arms and embrace the crap (contains spoilers)

[jerronspencer · 4/10 · 28 September 2004]

'Arms spread wide, I laugh at you thusly...hah, hah, hah!' This film was decently shot, likely on Super 16mm or 35mm. That is its one strong point. Things really go down hill from there.

****SPOILER****

Two friends are held hostage by a drooling, crazy dude who wants to kill them. They are saved by the sudden arrival of a cousin, who crashes a truck into the maniac. This event somehow ties into the friends being caught up in the middle of a demon recruiting action. And let's not forget the demon girl, who just wants to wait tables and be left alone.

Wanted to be PULP FICTION meets BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER...but it was not. A bad script and awful dialogue could not be saved by fair acting. This movie was horrible in a way that only pseudo-art house German crap can be. Really.

Avoid this dreck if you can!!!

[Thomail · 1/10 · 22 March 2001]

This is actually one of those productions (I wouldn't be willing to call this a movie) I regret I can't vote a '0' for... The plot (story? What story???) is pathetic nonsense throughout, a script obviously non-existent, acting is ridiculous, f/x are more than poor (even for low-budget standards) - all in all this is a complete waste of time (not a waste of talent though, as there simply is none at all...), nothing more or less than disgusting dreck! Better avoid it if you can. 1/10

Total, utter crap

[ektalon · 1/10 · 16 February 2003]

To save people just scanning the first few lines of a review, THIS IS A TERRIBLE MOVIE!! That said, my reasons for it are numerous: the actors either can't act, or have a small grain of talent, which they use to over-act to embarrassing proportions. The plot, such as it is, seems to be the combination of a dozen or so ideas the writer/director mashed together into a senseless heap. Characters appear and disappear at random, and the film is loaded with pointless, confusing cutaways. Dialogue is at best painful, and a number of times comes off as a blatant ripoff of Tarantino's already irritating discussions about nothing (what was with Luke's fascination with mumu's and peepee's? The pair of door-to-door killer's endless discussion of their suits? Who knows?) The makeup effects are average, and the CGI effects (what there are) fall well below average. Being an editor myself, I can confidently say the editing was dismal. And what can I say about the ending? It was all a dream/hallucination/alternate dimension? The best that can be said is that the shots were in focus, and lit well. For the sake of the brain cells you will lose watching this, not to mention the precious hour and a half of your life you will lose, leave this stinkbomb on the shelf of your local video store until they decide to send it off to the video limbo it so richly deserves.

Beautiful visually. Tremendously enjoyable scenes.

[racheljensen44 · 10/10 · 19 January 2001]

I'd heard nothing about this film, then caught a screening. the cinematography is beautiful and the scenes from this film are very funny individually but don't really tie the story together properly.

The two actors who are recruiting soldiers for the Legion are quite possibly the funniest duo ever, but the two travellers William and Luke are to over used with unimportant dialogue. I don't understand why film makers hire unknowns like this for the stars and then someone like Darren Shahlavi (Blood moon is lots of fun) and give him nothing to do, just to put his name on the poster. The film ended up not making much sense, I guess thats the problem with a limited budget, the film looks great but the story which is very interesting needed more explanation, but it is better than Dracula 2000. Overall the film is very enjoyable, it's gory but tasteful and not just a guys film. I give it 8 out of 10

You get what you expect

[erbgorK · 6/10 · 9 April 2002]

I saw a special about this movie on a german channel. It looked kind of interesting, a splatter movie not taking itself too seriously, just like From Dusk Till Dawn, which is one of my favorites.

All in all I enjoyed this movie, though at the end it borrows HEAVILY from another movie - you'll figure out which one, trust me, it's to obvious. The movie has really nice gore effects, nice gunplay (this is where most of the money went I'm guessing...), and some funny dialogue. On the other end you get one dimensional characters you won't give a crap about (actors aren't good I agree but they aren't given much to work with either), grotesque make up effects (might just be me) and a story without any kind of twist or turn.

If you liked From Dusk Till Dawn and similar movies, you might want to give this a try. It doesn't even come close though.

6/10

Terrible, Terrible, TERRIBLE Movie

[miramaxbt · 1/10 · 15 November 2009]

I bought this film in a small shop not knowing anything about previously about it. However it's reasonable price, cover and back cover overview on the story seemed decent to say the least, How i was wrong. The films starts of with a real stereotypical low rate vampire flick, with a bar, one guy to seems to have a idea of whats going on, and a damsel in distress, what more do you need? However this movie went from poor too terrible, bad to worse, was just awful, everything about the movie made me think to myself is this for real, several times i paused the movie to check on IMDb that this movie was in fact a horror. The movie is just summed up when the i become aware that Satan was in fact just a man, with pure white long hair, which is a key stereotype for a angel, so just from that aspect any one can tell this film was so bad that i demanded a refund, i stronger recommend no one buys this movie and watches it for that matter.