(2010)
Directed Olaf Ittenback
Stars Irene Holzfurtner, Mathias Engel, Alexander Gamnitzer, Andreas Pape, Annika Strauss, Ralph Willmann, and Timothy Balme

Being a young gorehound back in the VHS bootleg days, you were always looking for the next Evil Dead type of film, with over-the-top gore, showing you the blood and guts action you’d never see before. When you hear of a German film moving through the great market, even though it wasn’t available in English or subtitled, it was extremely gory, you know you had to see it. That is when I first became aware of German filmmaker Olaf Ittenback and his 1989 film Black Past. On this SOV film, Ittenback was the writer, director, producer, special effects, visual effects, and one of the actors! He followed that up with The Burning Moon in 1992, another gore-filled low budget epic. For some reason though, I never followed his career after those initial titles. Maybe because the availability of other films, and then with laserdiscs and DVDs, I had my hands full.

Now some 30+ years later, I had the opportunity to return to Ittenback’s work with a film he made in 2010 that is now being released uncut for the first time in the US on Blu-ray from Unearthed Films, entitled No Reason. While I was expecting it to be packed with the gore, I was not expecting the extent he goes, nor how much his effects have improved in those 30 years!

The film is kind of a mind trip because we’re not sure what is really going on through most of it. It almost feels like sort of some existential mind-fuck. A woman who is stressing about moving with her husband and young son, with the possibility that he’s having an affair with the tart upstairs, she decides to take a bath to get her mind off the stress, only to wake up in a blood-filled room, with body parts all over the place. A man wearing black leather and a sort of octopus mask, tells her she needs to go through a ritual to remember her reality, before she can “move on”. This is when it almost moves into Martyrs territory with its intensity and violence.

The main star, Irene Holzfurtner, plays Jennifer, who is going through this trial of blood and violence. Throughout most of the running time, she is completely naked, usually covered in blood, and is usually in some state of an emotional breakdown. Making this film had to be extremely difficult for her, both on an emotional and physical level. The rest of the characters here are really “meat for the beast” so to speak since they usually are butchered in some horrible way, right in front of our eyes in a variety of demented ways. All the while, the octopus mask wearing man keeps trying to help Jennifer move on to the next level of discovery.

The story sort of loses it once we come back to reality at the end and didn’t have the payoff I was hoping or half expecting. All of that aside though, it is the gore that will either have you turning it off or sit in there in jaw dropping amazement at the effects and the violence. Because it really is extreme and highly effective. It has been an awfully long time since I’ve seen some gore effects that made me uncomfortable, and there were more than a few scenes in here that did it. From eyeballs being cut or scooped out, skin being cut and flayed, to other appendages being cut and bitten off, there is plenty of gruesomeness here to appease the most deviant gorehound.

I will say that I found it very strange to see Timothy Balme, from Peter Jackson’s Braindead fame, here at the end of the film as a pathologist, explaining life, or death as it may be, at the end of the film. He is speaking in German, which you can tell is obviously not his native tongue since he really is working on those pro-nun-ci-ations. Most likely used as a way to get a name in the film but I’m sure he was thrilled he didn’t have to be covered in the red stuff again!

Kudos to Ittenbach for keeping the passion for his work alive and well and still being able to give audiences something to react to. Since those early days of his SOV work, No Reason shows how he has advanced and improved in his craft. This is recommended, but only to those with an affliction for the gore.

This new release comes with trailers for other Unearthed Films, photo gallery, making of, and interview with Timothy Balme. To order your copy, head over to Unearthed Films now!