Chain Reaction

Director: Olaf Ittenbach
Starring: Christopher Kriesa, Martina Ittenbach, Simon Newby
Production Budget: US$1.5M
Running Time: 103 min
Released: 2006

A dead Raven starts a freak chain of events leading to a prison transport bus crashing in the Rocky Mountains. The prisoners escape, kill the guards, take a doctor hostage and flee into the woods, heading for Canada. En route they stumble across an old homestead, and a young woman 'milking' (by which I mean bleeding) a goat. They break in and find a strange family, who speak nothing but dire old-English, resemble 18th century pilgrims and drink goat's blood. It turns out they are a family of vampires or demons or some-such and things soon turn messy, very messy.

This movie is really, incredibly stupid, and at times hilarious. Made by German director Olaf Ittenbach, it is pretty well directed, the acting is mostly OK - especially considering they are mostly Germans playing Americans - and the dialogue is mostly terrible. The residents of the house are supposed to be speaking old-English, perhaps like the Amish would speak, but it is basically incomprehensible. It's kind of a combination of bad Shakespeare and Yoda. Apart from "Aye, have I", which Martina Ittenbach's character constantly answers to every request, I don't have any particular quotes that I could give, as I didn't write them down at the time (and the internet has failed me, curse you!). But trust me, there are some piss-funny lines in there, as the chuckles throughout the cinema at supposedly serious conversation can attest.

Thou be able to enjoyest much bloodshed. Wherein thine prisoners findest a saw of chain, thou does not know, but byest then hast reason been given over to madness.

Sorry, what I mean is, there is plenty of blood, guts and decapitations. Where the hell the prisoners find a chainsaw in a primitive farm house I will never know, but by that point, reason has already taken a severe beating, and soon gets sawn in two (or possibly twain).

This is apparently one of the less gory of Ittenbach's movies, but since he is considered one of the goriest directors around, there is no shortage. He often works as a special effects supervisor on his own and other director's movies, and it shows. The make-up and effects are really good for such a low budget film - although I suspect IMDB (where I get most of my budget info) might be slightly underestimating the budget - if not, I'm impressed. The battle scenes are fairly short, but highly entertaining.

Oddly, this is like a movie and its sequel all in one. Once the first lot of action concludes, our good doctor is sentenced to prison, and while being transported on a prison bus a dead Raven starts a freak chain of events leading to a... never mind. I guess they just didn't have enough material for a full length movie. And the melodramatic ending is surreal and stupid.

Taken with two or three beers and a few mates, you should have a good time with Chain Reaction (called House of Blood if you are in the U.S.). Aye, didst I.

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