Legion of the Dead (2001) by Olaf Ittenbach

Director: Olaf Ittenbach

Year: 2001

Country: Germany

Alternate Titles: N/A

Genre: Supernatural

Plot:

Heading off on a road trip, a pair of friends are abducted by a serial killer and taken to a remote town in the desert, where they get brought to a diner in a small town that’s under siege by demonic henchmen looking to make an army of the undead, and must help stop their advances.

Review:

This was a pretty troublesome and hard-to-enjoy genre effort. Like most of the director’s other genre efforts, this one tends to work the best when it’s focused exclusively as a means of delivering chaotic and over-the-top gore throughout here. The various encounters here, mainly possible because the people here are supernatural so they’re able to sustain injury without much repercussions, help to allow this one to dive into a series of likable and somewhat funny confrontations that focus on the agents being subjected to a slew of comical misadventures while trying to bring about the chosen ones for their army of the undead, from slicing off their own limbs, being shot repeatedly, being impaled with foreign objects, or even being blown up in an explosion, among other encounters here, which provide this with the kind of fun and gruesome setpieces that are immensely enjoyable. The final confrontations in the bar are where it all comes together, featuring plenty of fun gunfights, martial arts battles, a few solid revelations thrown in, and a frenetic pace that’s immensely cheesy and enjoyable, making for a lot of the positive points here.

Beyond that, this is a really difficult one to get a handle on. The main thing is how little sense this makes, throwing in so many extraneous plot points and subplots that it becomes so dense it’s hard to figure out what happened. The whole first hour has some immensely confusing and problematic storylines, from the serial killer abducting the best friends and taking them on a journey through the desert, who takes them to this remote town where they find a group of henchmen running around killing people to start claiming bodies for a demonic entity looking to start a demonic Holy War against humanity. That’s not even covering the lives of those in the small town, from the bar patrons to the bar, the regular customers who are trapped there, or the early scenes offering nothing to the main story that makes no connection to the rest of the film but only serves to have more blood and gore involved. On top of that, the whole thing is filled with some absolutely cringe-worthy comedic interjections that are supposed to be funny but just come off as annoying and aggravating, mostly centered on the absolutely banal recurring theme of the hapless henchman paired with the competent and experienced one trying to keep it together, which is hard to get through, lowering this overall.

Overview: **.5/5

An intriguing if problematic genre effort, there’s enough to like here as a straightforward, single-minded gorefest that it has some worthwhile factors here to counteract the negatives that bring it down. Those with an interest in this style or approach or who are fans of the creative crew will have the most to like, while most others out there should heed caution.