Dear Diary: I Ate Someone Today…
Dear Diary,
I ate someone else today. I know I vowed not to eat anymore people; he just looked so delicious. I couldn’t help myself. I’m getting fat, aren’t I? I’m vowing right now not to eat anyone else – at least not until I’ve lost five pounds. Met a new guy today… He looked so yummy. Oops, I’m doing it again.
Diary of a Cannibal…
They met on the internet. They fell in love. They drove to the desert and stopped at an abandoned warehouse. They wandered inside. Inside they found unspeakable horror. Only one of them survived the ordeal. From a hospital bed, an injured Noelle tells shocked police detectives a tale of cannibal terror. In recounting her ordeal, the detectives learn of an even more awful truth behind the actions of this tragic couple. Horror master Ulli Lommel’s depraved tale of a modern-day cannibal is based on the real-life case of a man who murdered and consumed his lover – liver and all – in a strange act of consensual love. In Lommel’s film of the events, two star-crossed lovers enter a world where madness rules and even a loved one can transform into a flesh-eating cannibal.
Why do I get the feeling there won’t actually be a diary in this movie? Probably just used the word “diary” in the title because it sounded less generic than just calling the movie Cannibal (the film’s original title and a recent release froom Unearthed Films) and better than Recounting of a Cannibal, The Cannibal Flashbacks, or Official Police Statement about a Cannibal.
As much as I pride myself on being a bad movie watcher and considering I’m usually the guy who ends up reviewing the dregs of made-for-DVD horrordom, I don’t know if I should be hang my head in shame to admit I’ve never seen a Ulli Lommel film or just consider myself one of the lucky ones. Just as Uwe Boll has made a name for himself making movies based on video games, fellow German-born filmmaker Lommel has been earning a rep the past two years for his fondness for making movies based around real-life serial killers. If you’ve been to a video store in the past two years you’ve probably seen cases on the shelf for movies named Zodiac Killer, B.T.K. Killer, and Green River Killer. He also released a film called Black Dahlia right around the time the big screen Black Dahlia opened in theaters. Other recent offerings from the increasingly prolific Lommel include a non-serial killer flick called Zombie Nation and a very loose adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven (which is out in on DVD shelves this Tuesday).
That initially seems like a pretty impressive output for just two years time, but not when you consider that his films are reportedly made for pennies on the dollar and from what I’ve read, they look it. I also keep reading about how quality-wise these films are generally scraping the bottom of the barrel, which is really kind of pathetic considering Ulli Lommel has been making movies for over 35 years.
Lommel’s most famous film is most likely the 1980 horror flick The Boogeyman. Somehow I suspect the vast majority of today’s audiences will see “From the director of The Boogeyman” on the DVD case (artwork that I was nice enough to pilfer from the fine folks at DVD Empire) and immediately think that lame Boogeyman flick that Sam Raimi produced two years ago.
Ulli Lommel’s latest opus, Diary of a Cannibal, will be released to DVD by Lionsgate – What a shock! – on April 24th.
Since I’ve never seen a Ulli Lommel film, I invite any of you to tell me of your experiences watching any of his recent horror flicks – positive or negative. I want to know what I’m missing out on and if there’s any reason why I should finally break down and experience the magic of Lommel for myself. So if you’ve seen a Ulli Lommel film and survived, know anyone who has seen a Ulli Lommel film, or just want to expound on why there are so many crummy German genre filmmakers out there, then please come to the Foyer on the message board and fill me in.
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