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PREMUTOS: LORD OF THE LIVING DEAD
Produced by Andre Stryi, Michael Muller, and Olaf Ittenbach
Written and Directed by Olaf Ittenbach
Edited by Ulf Albert
Director of Photography - Michael MullerHugo - Andre Stryi
Walter - Christopher Stacey
Tanja - Ella Wellman
Matthias - Olaf IttenbachMost of the time I had no idea what was going on in Olaf Ittenbach's German horror opus PREMUTOS, and I watched the movie twice. I would have liked to have viewed the movie in its native language with subtitles to see if something was lost in the English voice-over, but there are no subtitles to be found anywhere on the disc.
It's not that PREMUTOS is particularly complicated, the movie just jumps back and forth through time every so often and can be a little disorienting to viewers who might need that extra bit of guidance...kinda like myself. But once the action gets going, the absolute carnage is understandable in any language. PREMUTOS proudly runs a body count total at its completion stating that 139 bloody, dismembered, exploding, gunned-down, impaled, skinned, burned, eviscerated, fileted, crushed, smashed, chopped, diced, minced, and liquified, corpses were splattered across the screen during the 100 minute running time. For the mathematically impaired gorehounds out there, that's a bucket of guts for approximately every 47 seconds of movie!
Peter Jackson's DEAD ALIVE fans can eat their hearts out, ain't no body going to make a movie as bloody as PREMUTOS for a long time. There's just too much splat for the buck to be able to top it.
139 bodies. I'm just floored at the amount of carnage witnessed. That's enough for 20 of the usual micro-budget video fare on the store shelves. This is the kind of movie politician's like Lieberman create entire crusades against.
139 bodies.
But the question remains, is the movie any good? I guess that depends on your take regarding Euro-horror. Personally, I'm not a fan. I've yet to find a title that is developed enough storywise for me to fully appreciate, PERMUTOS included. Maybe it's the cultural differences, my sensibilities seem to be in alignment with the Asians, where character and atmosphere are put about everything else.
The one thing PREMUTOS has going for it, outside of 139 bodies, is originality. It takes the standard living dead premise and places it in both a biblical and historical context in an effort to add depth and weight to the story. Premutos was the first fallen angel, even before Lucifer. Wherever mankind sees fit to deliver mass mutilation upon one another, Premutos is there to rise out of the bloody battlefield muck to finish off any survivors. He was there during the dark ages when barbarians went ax-to-broadsword in the open field, and he was there during the world wars, when man raped the Earth of its lead and other metals just so he could pump it into his brothers.
If there is a moral to the viscera, then it's "in war there are no victors." Other movies have used that same concept, it's universal, but I've never seen anyone have fun with it before. Ittenbach wraps his own concerns and philosophies around the genre confines he loves to work within, and that's the hallmark of a true artist.
The movie never mentions whether or not Premutos was the puppeteer pulling the strings behind these gruesome points in time, but every so often it does seem hinted. I'm not sure if this is something lost in the English language dub, which isn't as bad as I've been told. It sounds like some of the earlier anime dubs in that there's little or no background noise. Without that dimension of ambient sound, the voice actors sound "recording studio flat" regardless of their emotional performances. In all fairness, the movie was filmed non-sync and the German dub is just as "recording studio flat."
The DVD is a standard EI presentation. German and English dialogue tracks. An hour long making-of featurette. And three separate EI trailer vaults. The movie looks clean, or as clean an 16mm can look, and I didn't notice any artifacing in the transfer. It would have been nice to have subtitles, but I can guess viewers can't have everything.
But damn, 139 bodies...