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.
The penultimate season of Tales from the Crypt (1989–1996) aired its first three episodes on October 31, so it’s understandable that at least one of those three stories is set on Halloween.
Sandwiched between “Let the Punishment Fit the Crime” (Russell Mulcahy, Ron Finley) and “Whirlpool” (Mick Garris, A. L. Katz & Gilbert Adler) is the most severe episode of the bunch. Maybe the entire series? William Malone and Dick Beebe’s “Only Skin Deep” traded the show’s typical sense of fun for startling amounts of bleakness and kink.
“Only Skin Deep” is, apart from the Crypt Keeper’s intro and outro, noticeably unfunny. There are no considerable attempts at making the viewer laugh. Come to think of it, if those bookends had been replaced, and there was more of a sci-fi element in the story, HBO could have easily squeezed this tale into that successor anthology, Perversions of Science (1997). In Crypt, though, “Only Skin Deep” is much too grim for an audience that had become accustomed to campiness and levity.
What makes “Only Skin Deep” feel dark, among other things, is its protagonist. Showing up to a Halloween party where he’s not welcome, and where his former girlfriend (Diane DiLasco) is attending, Carl Schlag (Peter Onorati) first comes across as your standard bitter ex. You soon realize it’s much worse than that, once Carl threatens Linda (“You know, silly me, thinking I gave you what you deserved. If I’d have done that, I’d have killed you”). Now, I haven’t forgotten that Tales from the Crypt was teeming with vile men who did women harm. Yet Carl’s brand of misogynistic menace hits differently—it borders on being too realistic for this kind of series.
Mike Vosburg’s EC-style comic cover for “Only Skin Deep”, as seen in the Tales from the Crypt episode.
Despite donning a party mask for much of the episode, Carl can’t ever mask his true nature. The invitation did say “come as you are”, after all. That inability to change and be better, however, is why Carl ends up in such a karmic predicament. His outburst of anger at the party attracts the attention of one loner partygoer named Molly (Sherrie Rose, who was also in Season Four’s “On a Deadman’s Chest”). Her bone-white, featureless “mask” and body-bag costume don’t initially register as too strange, especially on a night like this. But at a party chock-full of colorful, cartoonish, and lighthearted ensembles, it does look out of place.
Darkness attracts darkness as Carl ditches the party and accompanies the mysterious Molly to her place. Which, by the way, should have been an immediate red flag. But perhaps she’s so hot, he doesn’t seem to mind the serial killer aesthetic. Resembling a warehouse that has been converted into living spaces, but never then decorated to remove the cold, industrial look, Molly’s home (or lair) is as gloomy as this whole episode feels. It’s like the set of a grungy music video, albeit a tad cleaner. The environments in a typical Crypt episode tend to be small, overfilled, and broken-in. Warm, regardless of any weird goings-on. All that empty space in Molly’s hovel, on the other hand, elicits a creepy feeling that Carl was unwise to ignore.
Tales from the Crypt featured more sex than it didn’t, but hands down, “Only Skin Deep” boasts the steamiest scene in the show’s history. Pushing it over the line, in addition to Onorati showing bare buns and the camera never turning down one of his pelvic thrusts, is the twisted dirty talk. Carl stays in the moment, whereas Molly unleashes charged lines like “the hurt, the anger, give it to me” and “take it out on my flesh like you want to”. It’s all quite kinky, as well as tied into the story’s theme of pain.
How else “Only Skin Deep” differs from other episodes is its twists. Or rather, its lack thereof. Nothing comes as a great surprise here, particularly because the deuteragonist’s ulterior motives are so obvious. By no means is Molly a wolf in sheep’s clothing; her face is a fright mask, she practically reeks of death, and she lives in what can best be described as a serial killer’s hideout. That last-act revelation of Molly’s mask really being her face is also nothing shocking. Cleverness is certainly not this episode’s strength.
A page from “…Only Skin Deep!”, as seen in EC Comics’ Tales from the Crypt.
While “Only Skin Deep” isn’t the most universally loved episode of Tales from the Crypt, it’s an interesting preview of William Malone’s future as a director. Most notably, he went on to helm House on Haunted Hill (1999) and FeardotCom (2002), the former of which was co-written by Dick Beebe, this episode’s writer. Dark Castle Entertainment, that genre house founded by Crypt producers Joel Silver, Robert Zemeckis, and Gilbert Adler, was instrumental in bringing out Malone’s gruesome, over-the-top vision in House on Haunted Hill. However, FeardotCom and Malone’s Masters of Horror episode, “Fair-Haired Child”, are the most stylistically compatible with “Only Skin Deep”.
As one might guess, this episode is nothing like its source material. The “…Only Skin Deep!” found in the pages of EC Comics is set during Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and save for its last couple of pages, is pretty sweet in nature. There, a man named Herbert is enamored with a woman he met five years prior to the present-day story. Every year, he has come down to Mardi Gras to see Suzanne, who’s always dressed as a hag-faced witch. Well, this time, Herbert plans on popping the question and marrying someone who is, for the most part, a total stranger. Suzanne accepts his proposal, but with one condition: they stay in costume until they’re officially hitched. You can probably see where this is going…
Once they are married, Suzanne remains incognito, even when she and Herbert have consummated their vows. A semi-predictive nightmare then rattles Herbert; he dreamt that Suzanne’s real face was as wizened as her mask. Finally, in his haste to find out the truth, Herbert winds up killing his new wife. Faceless and well on her way to bleeding out, the dying Suzanne manages to say she never wore a mask.
For more traditional EC-style ghastliness, your best bet is reading the comic. It’s wickedly sad. For something less conventional, as far as Tales from the Crypt goes, the role-reversing adaptation is worth watching. It’s not the best this show had to offer, although Malone’s visual style, plus the sexual abandon, does set the episode apart. If nothing else, “Only Skin Deep” leaves an impression that, even years later, shows no signs of fading.
Season Six of Tales from the Crypt can be streamed on Shudder, starting on June 5.
Tales from Tales from the Crypt celebrates the show’s Shudder premiere by singling out one episode from each season. So don’t even think about changing that dial, boys and ghouls. More spot-“frights” are to come.
Carl discovers Molly’s collection of human ‘masks’ in the Tales from the Crypt episode, “Only Skin Deep”.
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