Konterr
Brilliant and touching
TrueHello
Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.
Brendon Jones
It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.
Lela
The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.
Flixer1957
I am a veteran gorehoundmaybe one of those low-brow gorehounds referred to in other reviewsbut even I feel the need to sputter about this travesty, whether or not it's worth the effort.The sketchy plot involves one of the last men to see the Dahlia, aka Beth Short, alive in 1947. Now 92 years old, he is obsessed with seeing her one more time "before he leaves this planet." Presumably to return to whatever planet he and the other filmmakers came from. To that end, he recruits two hulking psychopaths and an equally deranged teen-aged girl. (If the hulks had half a brain cell between them, they would have offed the old goat and the girl for being downright annoying.) They hope to discover the new Black Dahlia by staging a fake casting call and luring starlets to their hideout. Of course, all but one of them fall short (tee hee) of expectations and are tortured and cut to pieces. Several dumber-than average movie cops investigate; one of them is butchered. No righteous payback for the four villains. THE END.As I sat through this, I had the feeling that Lommel had watched LAST HOUSE ON DEAD END STREET, then decided to stage a murder similar to that flick's infamous torture killing. Over and over, to the point where seeing people drilled and bisected actually becomes boring.
DEAD END STREET, with all its flaws, boasted some good locations, eerie music and atmosphere and a couple of convincing actors. Lommel disregards any sort of quality and instead goes for amateurish gore to the point of tedium, making matters worse by shooting the whole mess on video.I had no trouble getting through this without hitting the fast forward button. It was entertaining to see which rule of basic film-making Lommel would break next. It was also amusing to watch victims enter the killers' lair, see barred cells and bloodstained tables with shacklesand still not run when the running was good. I cracked up when the psychos went out to scatter pieces of their victims around the city. They do this in broad daylight and nobody notices them, even though the girl dresses like a reject from a School For The Retarded and the butchers wear clothing drenched with blood.Dark-haired Ivy Elfstrom, it should be noted, is a knockout. Too bad she doesn't actually look like Beth Short, any more than this production resembles a motion picture.I still can't believe that Ulli Lommel directed this. His second feature, TENDERNESS OF THE WOLVES, was skillfully made and well-acted. THE BOOGEYMAN and THE DEVONSVILLE TERROR weren't masterpieces, but they featured some interesting supernatural elements and were light-years ahead of BLACK DAHLIA. It's also hard to believe that this was directed by a man in his sixties rather than a cackling teenager with a camera, gallons of stage blood and some power tools. Most directors try to break new ground or improve with age but Ulli Lommel seems to be going the way of Jess (LUST FOR FRANKENSTEIN) Franco instead.Perversely, this flick almost makes me want to rent Lommel's CANNIBAL, ZODIAC KILLER, etc. Just out of curiosity. To see if all his recent movies are equally atrocious.Meanwhile, both halves of The Black Dahlia must be spinning in their grave.
Michael_Elliott
Black Dahlia (2006) BOMB (out of 4) Ulli Lommel version of the legendary murder takes place in present day L.A. where three psychopaths are doing copycat murders and might have a link to the 1947 case. I'm not sure what in the hell happened to Lommel but after creating the somewhat spooky The Boogeyman he has turned out nothing but pure crap including a sequel to that film plus other recent "real life" films like Green River Killer, BTK Killer and Zodiac Killer. I was expecting a piece of junk when I received the screener and that's exactly what I got. The entire film features the exact same stuff happening over and over. An actress goes for an audition, runs into the killers, gets slaughtered and the next day police talk about it. Even at 82-minutes this thing seemed to go on forever. Dreadful in every way imaginable so go see the DePalma flick instead.
cycoone
I've seen bad movies, most of them are bad in a funny way. This movie is just bad, really bad. My wife bought what she thought was the theatrical release, turns out they had messed up the boxes or something. We just watched it so we haven't had time to take it back yet, but it won't stay on the shelf for long. (For a funny bad movie watch Legend of Rollerblade 7.)Since IMDb won't let me submit a rating without writing a few more lines than this POS deserves, I'll elaborate. The scenes are repetitive to the point where fast-forwarding through all but ~10 minutes of the movie is enough not to miss anything. Cheap gore is overused, and despite it all no one on set seems to understand what a joke their movie is. Pretentious filler by wannabe artists.
spring_er
I was going to rate this movie a 0, but you cant in this. All I gotta say is...81 minutes of CRAP!!! what a pathetic movie, it's meant to be a thriller but my friends and I laughed all the way through it, the actors should go or go back to acting school, because seriously 10 year old children can act better than that.Having to say that we watched the whole thing just to see if it went anywhere, and I tell you what, it doesn't. The end is bodged up and the you can tell it's a home made movie, the director on should be ashamed of this "E Grade" film, I would have gotten better value of barney and friends than this. If you want to waste your money on this then go for it, but please if you do then watch it drunk, you will laugh more.RIPPED OFF!! but laughed so yeah I guess i can push it up to half a star rating then.