Black Dahlia (2006)

How sad is this?

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

I thought it was the other Black Dahlia film and switched it off after eight minutes, like several other reviewers. Then I went back to it. I laughed my ass off the whole way through.Maybe it comes from being a Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan, but I have a genuine affection for movies this bad. It has the setup of a porno movie, except it's cheap splatter film horror.The murders take place in what looks to be an abandoned jailhouse. You never catch on to the identity of the big guys in bondage masks and butcher's aprons who are speechless and stone-faced.They cut the women up, though you don't see how because they couldn't afford the special effects. Then they have rubber limbs and guts that they set out on the sidewalk as the mark of the killer.The little blonde who facilitates the murders has the most lines. She looks like a petite dominatrix from S&M fetish films, and I think she is. She lures the women in under the ruse of auditioning for a film about the Black Dahlia. She's very perky when she says stuff like, "Shut the **** up, b*tch!" While the guys are working over the poor victim with saws and drills and fake blood is spurting all over the place.There is a silly plot with the police investigating the crimes, who seem to be one irritable African-American cop like something out of "Repo Man," and some homely lady cop who might have been a bailiff on "Night Court." The guy obsessed with the Black Dahlia who gets caught up in the murderer's scheme looks like he might still be in high school. He interviews the little dominatrix and this weird old man and at the weird old man's house. The weird old man is supposed to be the last director to see the Black Dahlia alive. He ties into the climax of the film, which you surely don't want to miss.I did enjoy the interrupting still and video footage that come out of nowhere and make it like a cheap version of "Natural Born Killers." The soundtrack is a dramatic classical music affair, including a "Sanctus," by which composer I don't know, which is rather stylish as the film reaches its feverish peak. They also use Sinatra tunes when they are dismembering the bodies.This film is a lot of laughs precisely because of how bad it is, which is so bad it's good!

There is no way I can, honestly, justify the act of seeing this movie. The fact that the movie had taken time and effort to be made, kind of sickens me. Ulli Lommel is a complete talentless hack and deserves no more than to vanish in obscurity along with his abominations that a very few can stomach to call "movies".I'm sure we've all seen our share of bad movies. For most of us it started with Plan 9 From Outer Space, but I could at least chuckle and like it ironically. With this "thing", I couldn't even muster up the energy to finish it the first time through (and I kind of wish I hadn't taken the time to do it on the second try).The acting is sloppy. The actors are ill-placed, poorly rehearsed, and lack any sort of natural flow. It doesn't help that the script is a complete mess that only manages to tell a repetitive and unoriginal story between bouts of horrid/forced dialogue. The editing borders on "monkey with Windows movie-maker" bad. Every student-film cliché in the book is in this movie and put along side Ulli Lommel's worthless skills as a director, this film comes together to make a giant waste of time.There is nothing, I repeat NOTHING, redeeming about this "movie". What makes B movie legends like H.G. Lewis so fun to watch is there movies are ridiculous and cheesy, but this film was enough to make me think about hurling my T.V. out a third floor window. I hope this film never reaches "cult status" and that no more people will get suckered into watching this flaming pile of godawful film making.If I had to give Ulli Lommel was piece of advice it would be to quit and go home, find something else to do, because this is clearly not working out.

The movie is not for everyone and is a bit repetitious. However, the repetitions help build up to the ending. Admittedly I was drinking when I watched it. I was in prison some years ago and used to be tortured regularly by my cellmate (and occasionally another inmate) until I screamed. I did not really mind it and, unlike the movie, was not cut open. One time in between tortures, my cellmate had a smile on his face and I asked him, "You like this (torturing me) don't you?" He shook his head yes. Perhaps that helps explain why I liked the ending of the movie when everyone, except the victim, was beaming with glee. Besides the ending, I also liked the girl in pigtails and the marching scenes.

For most reviewers, this movie is atrocious, is feces, is garbage. To all those who think so I would like to suggest considering that Ulli Lommel's "Black Dahlia" (2003) was made at the end of the twenties and by somebody standing above critic from the gutter, like Salvador Dali or the early Luis Bunuel. In this case people would praise fantasy and techniques used for film topics that we otherwise have known until nausea. Is it that what Lommel wants to show when he presents four or fives times the almost identical killing scene? Or is it the fact that repetition recurs to itself and this process of self-reality is necessary to introduce new aspects of the crime that nobody would have foreseen? As a matter of fact, Lommel presents in this and his other movies practically the whole set of "alienation effects" (Brecht) which destroy the automatized attention horizon of the spectators.Since most reviewers are also convinced that Lommel just wanted to profit from the success that was to expect from Brian De Palmas "Black Dahlia" which was released in 2006, let me tell you that the two "Black Dahlias" have nothing to do with one another. While De Palma's film is strongly based on the story of Elizabeth Short, Lommel connects a series of crimes in the present with the 1947 Los Angeles murder case. Lommel's idea that the modern series of killings could be motivated by the 92 years old producer who never had a chance to make his movie with the original "Black Dahlia" some half a century ago, is very original. Another important point is that according to what can be seen in Lommel's "Black Dahlia", it was already made in 2003 and only released in 2006. It would not be first time that two persons who did not know of one another's plan would come up with the same result. The auto-car was invented no less than three times by three different people who did not even know one another.Last, but by no means least, one word about the constantly criticized style of Lommel. It seems to me that it is adequate to the semantics of his stories, thereby forming what is called in literature theory an "isomorphy". Lommel's movies are not pretentious, they show what the director wants to show, and Lommel does not even think that he is a second Fassbinder. Thus, I would like to introduce "pretence" as the kernel-criterion for judging if a movie has deserved a high or a low rating. In order to compare Lommel's and De Palma's "Black Dahlias", I have borrowed and watched both movies and given the latter a "1", because De Palma's movie is pretentious. The dramaturgy is not adequate to its topic, it is unnecessary complicated instead of being complex. Did nobody of all those wonder, who made Lommel's movie down on the cost of De Palma's film, why De Palma's "Black Dahlia" was nominated by an Oscar but at the same rated with only 5.5 by ten thousands of people?