Legend of Hell

source: Legend of Hell

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An archaeologist discovers an ancient artifact and scroll which starts a series of events that kills her several times over in various time periods, past lives and locations. It seems that the artifact and scroll are linked to a gateway to hell. Various hellish creatures pour in throughout history, it looks like the gateway has been opened. The archaeologist teams up with warriors and guides from the past to try and close the gate. The plot is sometimes confusing, sometimes boring, if this had been tidied up it would have been a much better movie. The effects are sometimes good and sometimes below average, the acting is up and down again sometimes good and sometimes below average. You do get some half decent battles, plenty or gore and blood splattering which makes this movie at worse average to better than average but could have been so much more better. I'm not quite sure why there have not been any more reviews or comments on this movie at the time of me writing this as the movie has been out a couple of years. Overall I have seen quite a bit better in this genre and a hell of a lot worse too and after all the searching and watching of movies like this it is getting harder to find and more good ones to watch so after 600+ it was a nice surprise to find this seemingly forgotten effort.

Unfortunately, the version of Legend of Hell that I saw was severely cut, devoid of all of its juicy gore, which is a bit like playing Metallica's Master of Puppets with the sound turned down really low—practically pointless. Not that I think that the inclusion of buckets of OTT violence would have improved matters all that much: Ittenbach used to be content with being the king of underground German splatter, where shoddy direction and poor acting were excusable just so long as people were graphically torn apart in creative ways, but now it seems that he wants to be the next Uwe Boll, his films more ambitious in terms of scope, boasting a larger cast and barely passable CGI, yet completely lacking in narrative cohesion, competent performances, and directorial acumen—and most importantly, no longer possessing that low-budget charm of his early work. In short, Legend of Hell is a total stinker. I won't go too much into the plot, because, quite frankly, I didn't have a clue as to what was going on from start to finish. Suffice to say that the film hops from time period to time period, and from place to place, with no semblance of logic, and introduces characters with little explanation as to who they are and what relevance they have to proceedings. There's a bad guy who wants to get his paws on an ancient scroll, an archaeologist who leans over so you can see down her top while she examines artefacts, a bald black dude who can't even roll down a sand dune convincingly, and a pair of random barbarians. The dialogue that these poor saps have to utter is trite fantasy waffle of the highest order. These guys randomly do battle with the evil denizens of the astral plane—dark breeds, head rippers, the greys, and the zombies that roam the City of the Dead—which is where the gore comes in. Unless you too are watching a heavily censored version. In the name of fairness, I'm going to hold back on rating Legend of Hell until I can find a fully uncut version, but I really can't see it being that much more of an enjoyable (or understandable) experience.