Last year, between the two of us, we watched an average of 317 movies.
This year our goal is to top that by watching at least one a day.
And as an extra special torture, we've decided to write about all of them.

07 June 2008

Garden of Love, dir. Olaf Ittenbach (2003)

NIKKI says:
Just look at that poster... as if I'm not going to rent it. I was hoping for an undiscovered horror classic and got a movie worthy of the MST3K treatment. This was shockingly awful. But not in you typical shockingly awful way. The writing was so misguided that it almost became endearing. Just try to watch the scene where Rebecca is told of her father's crimes in detail and tell me you don't just want to give the movie a big hug for trying.

But the plot is not the point here. It's background, really, with the effects taking centre stage. This one is all about the kills, and they're actually very effective. The director is apparently a modern-day German Tom Savini, responsible for the gore work on Bloodrayne, Seed, and Uwe Boll's new Tunnel Rats.

The basic, basic plot is this: a girl starts seeing her dead father in TV screens and learns she is the sole survivor of a massacre 12 years before in which her father slaughtered about eight of his friends. Rebecca lived, but lost all memory of the event... until now! Now she hears her father beckoning to "join him" at their old farm, because things are not as they seem. Cue lightning strike.

Rebecca gets a few people killed on her way to learning the truth about the Garden of Love Massacre. You'll guess the ending a mile off, and marvel at the script that lets a guy get an electric drill several time to the face and live to converse.

The acting is poor, the direction is terrible, the editing is almost non-existent (five-minute soliloquys without cuts or coverage -- it's like a play!), and the plot holes are so big, my entire head could fit through them. (They kill a guy for his daughter's inheritance, get it all, then have to kill her to get her inheritance?!?!?)

But we laughed and laughed. I said to Steve -- I'll remember this one fondly for as much as we laughed during it. So bad, so silly, so brutal.

1.5/5

STEVE says:
Short of outright recommending Garden of Love, I will say that it wasn't a complete waste of time. I mean, it was complete and utter shite, but it did have two things going for it: 1) the effects, which were kick-ass, in-camera splatter and gore effects and not CGI, thank the maker, and 2) the unintentional hilarity-bordering-on-absurdity of the script.

I have to give a heads-up to the film's costume designers, Cordula Jung and Barbara Schwarz. I knew this movie was going to be a laff-riot when the professor/love interest came sauntering in wearing a cravat without a hint of irony. Thank you, ladies.

1/5