Editorials
[Butcher Block] Banned Underground Splatter ‘The Burning Moon’
Butcher Block is a weekly series celebrating horror’s most extreme films and the minds behind them. Dedicated to graphic gore and splatter, each week will explore the dark, the disturbed, and the depraved in horror, and the blood and guts involved. For the films that use special effects of gore as an art form, and the fans that revel in the carnage, this series is for you.
After the fall of the Third Reich, Germany very rarely made horror films in an attempt to shed its violent image. What little horror was released tended to underperform. But in the mid to late ‘80s, an underground movement emerged; a handful of low budget, straight to video extreme films that gained an audience despite a ban from the German government. Films that rode the wave of the splatter movement and placed heavy focus on gore, Satanism, graphic murders, gory sexual deviances, and often necrophilia. One of the most influential on Germany’s underground horror movement was Olaf Ittenbach, a special effects artist and horror movie director that helped bring German underground horror into the media spotlight.
Among Ittenbach’s first was The Burning Moon, shot on VHS in the early ‘90s. Which means every bit of the low budget, grainy aesthetic that you think. Yet, despite this, the movie is far better than Ittenbach could have gotten away with. For one, he’s got an eye for composition that elevates his film beyond a home video quality, and most surprising is how coherent his narrative is- yes, there’s actually a story.
The Burning Moon is a sort of depraved anthology, in which a heroin-addicted teen brother forced to babysit his kid sister and decides to tell her the most warped of bedtime stories. The first, Julia’s Love, doesn’t particularly invoke the taboo horror that’s associated with Ittenbach’s work, in which young Julia goes on a blind date with a guy that happens to be an escaped mental patient. When she realizes who he is, she flees, leaving her wallet behind for him to follow her home. Granted, it does culminate in a gory bloodbath, but still not enough to warrant its banned, depraved status.
Until the brother gets to the second story, The Purity. It’s a strange story of a priest that moonlights as a Satanic priest at night, raping and murdering victims and delivering sweet eulogies at their funeral during the day. Yet it’s poor town villager Justuz suspected of being the murderer instead. This story devolves into pure insanity before Ittenbach goes further and unleashes a 10-minute sequence that’s literally a glimpse in hell. Cannibalism, extreme sadomasochism, a gory orgy or writhing bodies and viscera, and a ton of torture.
The special effects and gore makeup are downright impressive for the budget. Split torsos, burnt bodies, sprays of blood, eye trauma, and so much mutilated organs, and all of it well done. Ittenbach once worked as a dental technician, which translates uncomfortably well in the hell scene that sees a tormenter take a power drill to the front teeth of its victim. The screams of pain amid the intimate examination of enamel being shaved away is downright cringe-worthy.
The special effects and direction feel even more impressive under the context of just how much Ittenbach did behind the scenes. Writing, directing, starring (as the drug-addicted brother) location management, lighting, special effects, and oh yeah, stunts. That scene with the person running, fully lit on fire? That was Ittenbach. There wasn’t a role he wasn’t willing to take on for the sake of his vision.
It’s easy to take one look at the VHS quality and not so great acting, and dismiss something like The Burning Moon. It’s a bleak, nihilistic entry that earned Ittenbach a reputation for splatterpunk. Mean, dark, and earning every bit of its gory reputation, Ittenbach isn’t for everyone. But he’s an important cornerstone to horror, and more importantly, German horror, and The Burning Moon is a great entry into his work. Like most German underground horror that was banned, it hasn’t been easily available here since initial VHS release. Lucky for us we live in an age where services like Shudder and companies like Intervision Picture Corp, an offshoot of Severin Films, pick it up for streaming service and home release.
I first heard about The Mandela Catalogue through a couple of nephews who were obsessed with the ARG’s sinister mythology. It was only after watching Wendigoon’s in-depth analysis of the series that I realized just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
In fact, I’d already been exposed to the nightmarish visuals of Alex Kister’s YouTube creation for years at that point without even realizing that it was the origin of several viral “cursed images” and spooky memes that had leaked into the wider internet – with this viral element actually being a part of the Catalogue’s overarching narrative.
Flash-forward to 2026 and the unprecedented success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms has led to Hollywood betting on horrific internet properties with existing fanbases, which means that Kister’s unique hybrid of both religious and analog horror is finally headed to the big screen with a script written by Kister himself alongside Tyler Clifton.
While this news shouldn’t be too surprising if you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing success of The Mandela Catalogue (both myself and Wendigoon having previously predicted that the series would inevitably make the jump to theaters one day), plenty of horror fans are likely confused as to why so many folks are excited for what appears to be a Hollywood adaptation of a series of creepy .jpeg images under a VHS filter.
With that in mind, today I’d like to invite fellow readers to accompany me as I explore the origins of Alex Kister’s viral hit and attempt to explain exactly why we should all be excited about the Mandela Catalogue adaptation!
From High School Writing Project to Internet Horror Phenomenon
The first seeds of The Mandela Catalogue were sown when Kister was still in high school and developed a writing project subverting religious tropes in a world where biblical history had been altered by demonic forces. A little while later, Kister came across an analog horror contest on Reddit and decided to adapt his ideas into a standalone video where he would edit a religious kids’ cartoon –The Beginner’s Bible: The Nativity, to be specific- into something far creepier. This is how the iconic Overthrone video was born, with this viral short film taking on a life of its own as fans demanded more eerie content from Kister.
Though the video was originally meant to be a one-and-done sort of affair, with Kister actually regretting some of its primitive visuals and considering the editing amateurish and “YouTube-Poop-like” when compared to his current standards, fan reaction and free time during the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged the (then) seventeen-year-old filmmaker to continue producing content set in this same world. The Mandela Catalogue name was inspired by the Mandela Effect conspiracy theory, as the series would slowly begin to explore the subtle horror of alternate histories.
Inspired by existential dread brought on by extended periods of quarantine as well as a personal crisis of faith, Kister continued to expand his alternate timeline where the rise of Christianity had been prevented by what was presumably the Devil disguised as the Archangel Gabriel. This alternate course of fictional events led to the existence of certain paranormal anomalies that had come to be accepted as “normal” by the 1990s, which is why most of the series’ supernatural horror is presented in such a matter-of-fact manner.
Most of this background information and religious lore is delivered by increasingly cryptic broadcasts and in-universe PSAs, as well as the occasional found footage video, that often have to be decoded by clever viewers. Of course, it’s the consistently disturbing imagery that made the series so popular – much of which was originally created by Kister on a smartphone!
The Alternates: Horror’s Most Unsettling Modern Monsters
The show’s early episodes mostly take place within the fictional Mandela County in Wisconsin and depict life in a world where demonic entities are capable of using media to enter our reality. This process usually involves scaring victims into killing themselves and then repurposing their bodies as horrific doppelgangers referred to as “Alternates”. This terrifying phenomenon has become so common that local police already have specialized procedures in place to deal with the issue, though this usually consists of simply ignoring calls for help so as to avoid spreading so-called “Metaphysical Awareness Disorder” any further.
Over time, Kister would expand this mythology and incorporate different kinds of Alternates into the mix, though the story never stopped deconstructing religious concepts. The series’ second volume exponentially increased both video quality and the overall narrative scope as we began to follow the lives of characters who had already grown up in this dystopian hellscape where the government is forced to prohibit religion, television, and even mirrors in the hopes of mitigating the damage done by the ongoing invasion of otherworldly entities.
The really interesting part comes into play when you realize exactly how the Alternates make use of scary media in order to spread their demonic influence, with the analog horror of it all being a diegetic part of the story and something of a memetic trap orchestrated by the false Gabriel.
I particularly appreciate how some characters begin to suspect that there’s something wrong with their version of reality and that things weren’t meant to play out this way, especially when Mark utters the haunting line “who have I been praying to all this time?” That’s why I think The Mandela Catalogue is an effective piece of religious horror even if you don’t subscribe to the Christian worldview, as the mere idea of a world where evil has already won is a universally terrifying concept in and of itself. Not only that, but the series’ uncanny analog imagery alone is already worth the price of admission, as you’ve likely already noticed by looking at the pictures accompanying this article.
Why The Feature Adaptation Could Be Horror’s Next Big Success
It’s actually been a whole year since Kister first announced that he had been working on a feature-length screenplay for a Mandela Catalogue movie since 2022, with his proposed story following an ensemble of high-school graduates who uncover a supernatural conspiracy after the mysterious disappearance of a fellow student. This premise sounds similar to narrative elements present in the series’ second volume, but I’m pretty sure that Kister is going to go the Kane Parsons route and make the movie more of a spin-off than a re-imagining of its source material.
While notable Hollywood producers like Aaron B. Koontz, Scott Stuber, and Steven Spielberg himself are backing the upcoming project, I feel like there’s no one better to adapt this deeply personal exploration of faith and the dark side of communication than the person who first came up with it. That’s why I can’t wait to see Kister’s work on the big screen, as I have a feeling that this young filmmaker is the next one on the list about to make cinematic history – especially since this is clearly a passion project that has been in the works for years at this point!
That being said, there’s always a chance that the film could end up unleashing a fresh wave of Alternate incursions, but I guess that’s just a risk we’ll have to take.
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