User Reviews

Imagine a film similar to "Hostel", but made in Germany by the true masters of splatter, from the director of Tortura, the special effects master of Dard Divorce and presented by the director of Torched. Happy New Year! Last year director Marcel Walz made a movie called "Tortura" featuring a group of psychopaths with a sadistic blood lust. They snip off a man's fingers, cut off his nipple, saw off his foot, wrap him in plastic and leave him to bleed to death in an alley. After that they abduct three girls, ripping out the first girl's tongue and forcing her to slit her own throat while they disembowel her. Then they peel the skin off of the second girl's arm and rip out her eyeball. Then, they force the third girl to stab the second girl to death. It was a very violent movie! And now with "La Petite Mort", director Marcel Walz takes torture to new heights with help from the master of gore himself, Olaf Ittenbach! In La Petite Mort, three friends, Simon, Nina and Dodo are traveling to the beautiful city of Mallorca in Spain for their summer vacation. Along the way, their flight gets delayed in Frankfurt Germany where they end up getting mugged. Depressed, they stop in for a drink at the "Maison de la petit mort," (meaning house of the Little Death, a metaphor for a sexual orgasm). A torture-for-profit place of business run by Lady Boss Madame Fabienne (played by the talented actress Manoush) who, along with her two crazy daughters, inflict acts of terror too unspeakable to mention by any decent human being with morals. That being said, I shall now mention some examples.

To start things off, one of the victims is silenced with a mouse trap on the tongue while another victim is getting stabbed in the arm with hundreds of needles. After that, Olaf Ittenbach kicks the gore factor into high gear as we witness a man getting his eyeball stabbed and cut out with a knife. Luckily for him now he won't have to witness his manhood being taken away as the killers graphically cut his penis in half and rip out his intestines! And if that wasn't enough for you, another victim gets brutally scalped until her brains are exposed like a Hannibal Lector lobotomy,leaving her alive just long enough to scream one last time before her throat is sliced open! Next on the menu, a woman's arm is shoved into a meat grinder, and she is forced to drink her own blood while her hand is being mangled into a mess of bloody ground beef. Meanwhile, another victim is beaten repeatedly with a hammer until brain matter is falling out of the victim's skull, similar to the bludgeoning in "Seed" but minus the CGI.

Without giving anything else away, La Petite Mort, needless to say is a must own for gore hounds and fans of Olaf Ittenbach's special effects! Presented by Ryan Nicholson, filmed in high definition on a hand-held camera in widescreen letterbox format and color corrected in a cinematic green tint, La Petite Mort adds a professional motion picture look to the underground gore scene. My screener came boxed and signed by Manoush herself! If you thought Tortura was very violent movie you may (or may not) be happy to know that Marcel Walz outdid himself with La Peite Mort! I can't wait to see what kind of sick, depraved filth he comes up with next!

This was a whim buy. I was recently on Unearthed's store site and had seen this movie floating around for some time now. Advertised as "From the director of Blood Feast" was never a huge glowing endorsement for me as I never saw Waltz's remake of that film. After doing some minor research on the film, it was brought to my attention that Ittenbach was responsible for the SFX. Being a huge fan of Premutos, Black Past, and, of course, The Burning Moon, I knew that La Petite Mort would at least have some redeeming qualities to it, even if I pretty much knew what to expect before I even purchased the film.

The films plot is about as hollow as they come. Three vacationers, one of which is blind for seemingly no reason, find themselves stupidly in a fetish club owned by women who create snuff films for profit. From there the three are kidnapped and tortured to death. That's pretty much it.

I have to say I was really quite disappointed with this film. The rating on this site is quite bad, but several of the reviewers have at least explained that the film is worth seeing for fans of Ittenbach and gore fans alike. But I disagree. There is nothing here that I haven't seen many many times before. Perhaps it is the 42 years of watching these sorts of movies that have jaded me. But La Petite Mort did a lot wrong in numerous departments.

Aside from Manoush as Maman, and Thomas Kercmar as The Kobold, the acting in this movie is pretty awful. The three leads are given ample time to make the audience give a crap about them. Matter of fact, the first 25 minutes of the movie is just those three wandering around. If there were ever an opportunity to have us connect with these characters, now would be that time. Instead the characters come across as annoying. And the blind character still has me scratching my head. Why include a character like this if there isn't going to be more to connect her to the audience? As well, during her inevitable torture and death, none of her blindness is even once used in her torture. As awful as that sounds, it feels to me like there was a huge lost opportunity there to really drive home the cruelty of the film. This is just one of several areas that ruin what could have been something really grisly.

And again, the acting from the three leads really ruin the extreme moments of the film. A movie like this is meant to really bother the viewer watching it. And the acting from those being tortured needs to be as realistic as possible. It creates empathy for the victims, making it a lot harder to watch and endure. This movie makes some small attempts at that basic idea, such as the male victim pleading with Maman not to cut his genitals off. But it falls shockingly flat. And then when the horrific act comes, it doesn't feel as impactful as it should. Because it is acted so poorly. It's a shame really because I really liked the performance from Manoush. Manoush is pretty much the only actor worth much of anything until Kercmar shows up.

So a lot of the viewers of this sort of stuff usually don't give a crap about acting and what have you. It's the red stuff. Acts of immeasurable torture and pain. Indescribable evil and torment. Well, I suppose this movie has a lot of that. But is it really worth it? If this is your first time viewing a movie like this, then sure, it would probably rock your socks off. But when you have grown up watching film such as the original Blood Feast (or any HG Lewis gore film for that matter) Mark of the Devil, Last House on Dead End St, Cannibal Holocaust, etc, the actual acts of violence one sees in La Petite Mort are absolutely old hat. And coming from Ittenbach, I expected way more creativity. Now that may not be his fault as he is not the director here.

Let me just outright tell you what to expect. A mouse trap to a tongue, which should mess your tongue up pretty bad, but the victim winds up talking like nothing is wrong. Numerous needles in a girls arm, only for the next scene for all those needles to be gone and with no visible scars. A man has his eyeball cut out from his head with a butcher knife. Then his manhood is cut off. The scene ends with one of the killers bathing in the mans intestines as they fall from his body. The blind woman is scalped revealing her brains for the world to see. Apparently the skin from her head must have been holding her brains in because she has absolutely no skull. She is scalped and the brain is just there, right under the skin. And she remains alive long enough to simply have her throat slashed. The final girl who got the disappearing needles in her arm is beaten mercilessly with a hammer to the head, until her brains fall out. And then in the next scene she appears to be perfectly intact. She actually is killed when she is stabbed in the gut.

I thought the torture and the kills lacked any sort of creativity to make it stand out from the rest of the genre. As well as the fact that they were not handled as well as they could have been. Again, this is a genre that relies on its ability to be realistic. And this movie does a lot to take the viewer out of that equation. The hammer to the head scene was poorly, poorly handled. The scalping scene was even more poorly handled. So much was so poorly handled that I found myself mostly bored and frustrated.

When I bought this movie I was really expecting to walk away feeling sick to my stomach. And I was also not looking forward to the experience as torture films are not exactly my favorite from the horror genre. But I really just found this film to be boring, poorly made, and disappointing in the areas in needs to shine the most. Torture films are not rocket science. The plots are always the same. However, what makes the good ones stand out are the films that find a good balance of empathy and gore. Without those elements films like these fall apart at the seams.

As it stands, La Petite Mort is not a good torture film. It is too frustrating to be among the better films in the genre and it does not do enough creatively to make it stand out among its endless peers. I can't recommend the film to any hardened gore fan. Maybe a beginner. But no serious gore fan is going to find any of this movie acceptable.

Maybe the best thing about the 75-minute film "La petite mort" (an orgasm metaphor referring to the sexual parts of the movie) is that it does not take itself seriously at all. It's offensive against males and females equally, nobody can actually be offended. Manoush's character had me glued to the screen because it's such a hysterical character, while Habeck had me glued to the screen for other reasons. She's pretty stunning. The director is Marcel Walz who started filmmaking a t a very young age already. He was in his early 20s when this was made and has written and directed no less than 15 films in the last 10 years, one of the big names in the German gore movie industry. This film here has a trio of young people including a blind woman and a couple, having a nice time during a vacation. Lots of harmony and positive atmosphere early on, but things get rough pretty quickly. Pretty much everything except the first 15 minutes take place at the torture club and the ending is already told us in the very first minute in a similar manner like "Blair Witch Project".

Everything from that moment on is pretty much torture porn and very graphic. Stay away if you cannot deal with murder and the likes of a tongue being put into a mousetrap. There is no graphic nudity, but the film is packed with tight clothes and suggestive camera angles. The male protagonist is played by Andreas Pape, also a prolific actor and filmmaker in these kinds of films. The two girls are not that well known. And Thomas Kercmar has a cameo as well playing a lustful kobold in possibly the most hilarious sequences of the film. He is another example of how this movie does not take itself seriously at all. Also pay attention how one of the girls manages to flee when she is alone with the kobold. This would not have happened with any of the consequent females around. You could occasionally see this film as men-hating, but looking at the way Manoush's character talks about females as well, it's really against both genders, so nobody should really be offended as I wrote earlier. There's also some major plot weaknesses in this film, but it's surprisingly irrelevant as the whole thing is so absurd. For example during one situation, a girl basically has her skull smashed repeatedly, but still she is pretty much fine shortly afterward, physically and mentally. Or look at the irony of the one girl with moral doubts actually being the one who gets the final kill.

Not too long ago, a sequel came out which is not half as good as this film. This one here is one of these movies where you cannot look, but also cannot look away. So yeah, recommended, I guess.

I was attracted to this film by (a) the fact that two of the lead roles were performed by a Magdalena Kalley and Annika Strauss who both impressed me with their performances in Unrated: The Movie (b) I had heard good reports about the special effects work of Olaf Ittenbach and the director Marcel Walz (c) the main leads included Manoush and Andreas Pape who are two actors who can be guaranteed to give top class performances in any role.

The first 15 minutes of the film is devoted to an introduction to the quiet lives of three ordinary young people. The subdued, relaxed mood suddenly changes with an encounter in an alleyway with a mugger with an introduction of tension to their relationships which is then developed with a subsequent visit to a rather seedy establishment. From that moment, the viewer realises that the trio are in for a rather troublesome and painful experience. This scenario provides special effects master craftsman Olaf with the opportunity to really let rip with a barrage of gory goodies. At some points in the film, the bits and pieces were coming apart and flying around so fast that it was difficult to keep track where they were originating from. This was aided by some accomplished camera-work.

The producers really presented an ace card when they cast Manoush in the role of the mother. I cannot envisage any other actress playing this role as effectively as Manoush. It was tailor made for her. Her performance was enhanced by some excellent close up camera work to capture her expressions. The film has English subtitles but they were not needed when Manoush is on screen because the sinister look she projects when directed at the camera or the person she is performing opposite speaks for itself. There is no mistaking the message that she is conveying! Full marks to Magdalena and Annika in their roles as the wicked daughters. Their attractive appearance certainly contrasts dramatically and sharply with their dark and demented attitude and the relish in the way that they go about the tasks assigned to them by their mother. Their performances in this film fulfilled my high expectations and prompted me to make a note to look out for the next film in which they appear together, ie Game Over.

It is always pleasing to find ones attention attracted by a 'new' name on the list of credits as a result of a noteworthy performance. Anna Habeck in the role of Dodo, one of the trio, caught my attention on this occasion and I will certainly be seeking out her next release titled 'Popular' when it becomes available. This is also directed by Marcel Walz.