Watch Garden of Love For Free

It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

The first must-see film of the year.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

The beginning of this movie pricked my ears up as a weary gorehound, However ends in a cacophony of plot! What I mean is.... This movie is what happens when untalented writers try to create a reason for the bloodshed. The foreigners attempting to pretend they're English are pathetic but the splatter effects are worth viewing if you enjoyed bad taste and the like. Not bad for a low budget gore movie but when you are a little older and possibly require more to keep your attention this loses points. To be specific this worked better when nameless, faceless killers were brutally murdering innocent people. as soon as I guessed the psychologist was after the inheritance (Booo) I was done. I will watch another Olaf movie but he better keep bringing the splatter and try to keep away from the clever stuff, like..... words

Garden of Love starts late one night in a seemingly normal farm house, however when local police arrive there after a phone-call they discover several horribly mutilated murder victims & one survivor a young girl named Rebecca Verlaine (Anika Julien) who is found in a come. Twelve years later & Rebecca (Natacza Boon) comes out of her coma & is adopted by some relatives, at first Rebecca has no memory of the horrendous events that left her entire family dead but slowly she starts to remember & soon starts suffering from terrifying visions of mutilated ghostly people talking to her. Rebecca & her now husband David (Daryl Jackson) decide to revisit her childhood home to confront her demons, what Rebecca finds at her old home leads to betrayal & brutal murder...Also known under the title The Haunting of Rebecca Verlaine in the US this German production was co-written & directed Olaf Ittenbach who was also responsible for the numerous gory special make-up effects which to fair are probably the highlight of the film. Not that it matters that much but first off I feel like I should mention the (proper) title Garden of Love (I can see why it was changed for US distribution) because I have absolutely no idea why Garden of Love is called Garden of Love, there are no garden's & there's not that much love either so why is this called Garden of Love exactly? Anyway, the film itself is notable for it's very gory set-pieces which are pretty impressive (no horrible CGI computer effects in sight) & that rather obvious fact that it was produced by German filmmakers in English for an English speaking audience & as such the barely legible broken English strange sounding dialogue gives Garden of Love a somewhat camp & surreal feel that I personally quite liked. I mean if the majority of the dialogue scenes in Garden of Love were written & shot properly it would probably make for an awfully dull film as the only thing of interest would be to see the next gore scene but with this slightly bizarre feel to it I found myself liking the whole thing. The first half of Garden of Love is a straight ghost story while the second half has a few twist's & changes direction & becomes a revenge story. I certainly didn't think it was dull & the strange uneven tone of the plot & the almost but not quite right sounding dialogue coupled with the cool gore scenes made for a fairly entertaining film, if not exactly for the right reasons.As I have already mentioned the real highlight of Garden of the Dead is the gore, there's loads of it. From slashed throats to decapitations to exploding heads to ripped out guts to face ripped off to heads ripped in half to someone being pushed through a wire fence with gory results to stabbings to someone getting their eyes drilled out to gory shotgun wounds & loads more besides. This one really hits the spot if you know what I mean. There's also a very amusing scene in which the ghost's take over a TV commercial for kitchen knives & the announcer says that this knife will cut through bone & proceeds to grab his female assistants arm & chop her hand off as a gory demonstration! I also have to mention that there are no quick editing or shaky hand-held camcorder moments which is just great & even more reason why I like this. You know, you can actually see whats meant to be going on!Although the film has that low budget made for video look about it the special effects are impressive & it has reasonable production values. The acting is very strange as obviously mostly German actors try to speak & act in English & it comes across as very stiff & awkward. Star Natacza Boon was actually born in England & even more bizarrely than anything in this film she had a documentary made about her by the BBC when she was 15 focusing on the fact that she apparently had the longest daily trip to school of anyone in the country as she travelled over 400 miles everyday to drama school (to end up in a film like this to, was it really worth it Natacza?) from when she was 12 until when she was 19.Garden of Love is an odd film made by Germans in a language they obviously didn't quite understand (think Troll 2 (1990) which was made by Italians in English) & as a result it has some unintentional comedy moments to go along with the rather impressive gore scenes. I liked it, so sue me.

This film is further evidence that Olaf Ittenbach is the current king of splatter and gore. There are directors who make scarier and more accomplished films than Ittenbach but no one currently orchestrates squashed skulls, severed limbs and general acts of mutilation better than this German maestro. Garden Of Love is a horror treasure - a highly entertaining mix of black humour and flying body parts.Garden Of Love is probably Olaf Ittenbach's most structured film, the time leaps and flashbacks which feature so prominently in his other works have been toned down. This has the advantage of making Garden Of Love more appealing to mainstream horror fans but is initially somewhat disconcerting for fans of the manic storytelling on display in films like the classic "Premutos". After overcoming the initial shock of the film's traditional structure and the noticeably improved production values, Ittenbach fans will not take long to settle into the film - despite the somewhat slow start. In fact, in the film's first 30 or 40 minutes is oddly violence free with the exception of the initial massacre and an ingenious butcher knife infomercial.The film's plot is admittedly rather thin. However, it more than suffices as a backdrop to the film's real purpose - blood, and lots of it. In short, the Verlaine family is massacred in their sleep and the only survivor, Rebecca, wakes from her coma with amnesia. Years later, Rebecah starts receiving messages from her dead family on the TV (just go with it!) and she returns to the family farm for a reunion of sorts. This is the point where Ittenbach kicks free of the storytelling constraints that interfere with his virtuoso approach to blood and gore and lets rip. My favourite scenes include Rebecca's inventive use of a power drill and a spectacular set piece in which the zombified Verlaine family members literally rip a team of police men to shreds. Skulls are smashed, holes punched through faces and bodies, heads shot off and torsos ripped in half. Ittenbach handles this scene with the grace and precision of a maestro conductor standing before an orchestra.The real brilliance of the film lies in the director's "more is more" approach to gore and his phenomenal skill at employing special effects. Garden Of Love is another showcase of brilliant blood and gore effects. Their realism and impact belie the film's modest budget. It is only the presence of some dubiously talented Ittenbach regulars among the cast that occasionally reminds you that you are watching a micro budget, shot-on-video horror movie. The exception to the mediocre acting is the lead Natacza Boon, who makes a reasonably convincing scream queen. The make-up artists and cameramen deserve a lot credit for the eerie atmosphere inside the Verlaine farmhouse.Garden Of Love exceeds all the requirements of a good splatter film. You can't help but sense that it will only be a matter of time before the rest of the world catches on to the pleasures of Olaf Ittenbach and his beautifully sick and twisted mind.

Olaf Ittenbach is absolutely, a master of brutal makeup FX and an artist who doesn't thrive on entertaining the whole family (children) to complete a film. Considering his budgets, Olaf performs wonders ("Beyond The Limits") not to mention write, direct and probably a thousand other tasks to get his films off the ground. Garden of Love is definitely not for the Hollywood film fan, looking for mega-stars with cute, comedic, predictable, punch-lines but rather an original and creepy ghost story with amazing and gory visual FX. If you want cute, comedy/horror or comedy/every other genre, buy/rent something else. If you need comedy/happy endings in your movies beware, you may be offended by their absence. I can only imagine what his collaboration with Buttgereit ("Nekromantik") will bring. Fantastic and refreshing work Olaf, I can't wait to see more.