Selma (Karen Breece), an archaeologist, 38 years old, discovers during excavations in Morrokko a 5000 year old Portal, which door is locked from the inside by a strange mechanism. She also finds an ancient card, written in a secret language which isn’t spoken since over 3000 years. A short time later, Gabriel Moses (James Matthews), a pretended art dealer wants to buy the ancient card. An argument between him and Selma escalates and Selma gets killed in a shootout. Suddenly, she finds herself in medieval time and fortuitous gets one of three secret amulets which she is losing quickly again to one of Moses’ thugs. Selma gets killed again. From now on, the world seems to change rapidly in a supernatural way. She finds herself in the astral world, a dimension in the beyond. Horrifying creatures appear and try to kill Selma again, the landscapes seem to change more and more unrealistic until a dark skinned man appears, leading her away from those monsters to the guides Elias (Daryl Jackson) and Luise (Martina Ittenbach). He explains, that Selma returned to her first earthly life, to close the door to hell. She gave her amulet to Moses. In her second life in 2009, she found the portal – the door to hell. David himself lost 2600 years ago one Amulet to Moses and also did Luise in early medieval time. Moses became invincible. The card tells, that those three amulets are building a key which can unlock the gate to hell. Selma has to find the reminding on her life, she was living in the year 2009 and where she hides the card. A long way leads them through the precipice of hell to arrive at the place where card is hidden to destroy it. The closer they get to their destination, they have to realise that Moses already opened the gate to hell….. Legend of Hell is produced, written and directed by Olaf Ittenbach. The acting is pretty bad, the camerawork and editing is pretty good. Legend of Hell is a bit confusing, some scenes simply do not make any sense, and at times it is quite boring. There are violent swordplay and gory shootouts but the fight choreography isn´t very good. And the shoot outs are a bit too exaggerated, I mean sure I like big juicy squibs but here we see how shotgunblasts make skulls explode even from more than 50 feet away. The soundtrack is good. Of course there is beautiful gore fx here and there, as can be expected when Olaf Ittenbach is at the helm but I should mention that there are some real lousy computer rendered effects (especially the demons) in this flick. The visual fx, there are a couple of scenes when they use green screen, look cheap and do not work. There´s no T & A in this.
This review is based upon the german region 2 DVD release from LFG, it´s uncut and it´s german language only.
Rating: 3 out of 7. Legend of Hell is a ambitious new effort from Olaf Ittenbach but unfortunately it isn´t very good but I give it points for the ambition, some of the visuals and the bloody battles which are the clear highlights of the flick.
/JL
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