In 1987, Andreas Schnaas raised 5000 marks (or about two thousand dollars) and filmed, independently and with this paltry sum, an extremely nasty movie he named VIOLENT SHIT. It's a fairly senseless movie - Schnaas plays the main lead as Karl, an unstable man who goes on a killing spree. That's it. That's the entire plot. The film unapologetically boils down to a series of grisly, and often sexual, murders with zero insight, characterization, or any of those other things we've come to expect from movies. Worse, Schnaas violated copyright law by including a song from 1980s heavy metal band W.A.S.P, without due credit or permission. Nobody could sue him, however, due to the fact that the film made absolutely no money.

Here's why: Schnaas released VIOLENT SHIT in Germany straight-to-video, and the German government promptly responded by immediately banning it.

Still the film somehow gained a cult following, which only encouraged him to make more films, which inspired other German directors to make the same kind of horror films. This only brought attention to the poor craftsmanship and copyright violations in the original, and the bad quality of the movies suddenly being churned out of Germany stunned even hardcore horror critics and fans.

Despite these sensible criticisms, I saw VIOLENT SHIT when I was a sullen teenager, and, being the proper sort of miserable teenager - I loved it, and pursued the rest of the growing canon of German-made, poorly-produced, gore movies.

Apparently, a lot of other people, teenagers or otherwise, loved it as well. With such a cult following, Schnaas was able to produce more films featuring similar content and theme. This includes two sequels to VIOLENT SHIT, a "remake" of Italian splatter film ANTHROPOPAGOUS, and a series of movies loosely inspired by Germanic/Norse mythology, which include GOBLET OF GORE and NIKOS THE IMPALER.

Despite some content change-ups, all Schnaas films share a common theme throughout - terrible acting, threadbare or non-existent plotlines, and gore. What do I mean by gore? Well, GOBLET OF GORE, for example, is about an ancient and magical goblet. When people drink from said goblet, they are transformed into violent rapists with, well, "super penises." Said penises grant them the ability to do stuff like make your head explode while you are fellating them.

In fact, after recalling the movies, I'm quite certain that Schnaas would be perfectly content making films without any of that extra stuff like characters and storyline if he thought he could get away with nothing but murder for the full running time of any of his movies. However, his motivations and aspirations for his films have been quite clear from the beginning, and there is nothing I like better than honest films.

But over the years I kept wondering what attracted me to these movies as a teenager, and why so many other people liked them as well. Despite the overall... badness of them, there seems to be an underlying spirit to them all that you just can't get in a movie theatre. And indeed, almost twenty years later, I've finally solved the riddle of what made these films popular, and why they're still relevant today despite all of their flaws.

A few years ago, when commercial films such as SAW and HOSTEL were released, were successful, and inevitably began to take mainstream criticism for being exploitive, misogynistic, and devoid of value both culturally and aesthetically, I was a little surprised by the arrived conclusions.

After all, long before these movies, I grew up watching such things in the form of some of the lowest budget and unheard of films imaginable, and this new spate of movies just seemed to carry the tradition of extreme and underground movies into the spotlight, complete with corporate-backed budgets and watered-down, or sanitized content. It's sort of the same fate that "alternative" music suffered in the 1990s with the rise of Nirvana and all that resulted from it. It used to be called "post-punk," folks, but I suppose it was decided that label wouldn't move enough records in the end.

So I was perplexed. Why was this concept of "torture porn" being treated as brand new? Never mind the German stuff, I can certainly point to a spate of mainstream films from the 1970s that would be labeled in the same manner in this day and age - but many critics, and many critics who should know better, were treating these films like a set of bared breasts at a suburban PTA meeting. Furthermore, if one knows ones their horror films, one would realize that, indeed, SAW and HOSTEL are most certainly sanitized versions of the real deal - above or below the mainstream/public eye. One only has to look to the spate of Italian cannibal films released in the early 1980s as proof to understand the underlying concepts of these films.

But then it all has to do with perspective, doesn't it?

If one is unaware with the history or lineage or whatever you might call it behind such films, one can hardly discuss them in any serious light. It's not hard to see the influences in the writing of contemporary horror films, even at the corporate/mainstream level where teams of writers on salary generally handle the scripts to the point where the films themselves are diluted beyond recognition and, well, often weak.

So I came to realize that less people than I thought were actually watching films that weren't blockbuster hits with huge and national distribution. Kicking about on the internet, I came to realize that even discerning horror fans couldn't seem to find things that weren't advertised on the television or through some other forms of consumerist-based communication. It's certainly odd, especially with the internet making such things readily available, but that's how it seems to be.

Which brings us back to the shoestring budget gore films of the 1990s, and their undeniable influence on modern (and much bigger budget) horror films of the 2000s. While we're starting in this column with the films of Andreas Schnaas - one of the more recognizable names among such forgotten films - there is, in fact, ample and vast ground to cover, and it seems largely forgotten or ignored altogether these days.

For anyone who has seen one and dared review it, Schnaas films are generally labeled as "infantile shit" and "a fucking waste of film," but these people seem to be the same people I've outlined above in terms of modern horror critics and their mislabeling of, well, modern horror films. They're simply uninformed and the point of such things has long flown over their head.

That's okay, too. For before one can actually understand Schnaas and German gore films in general, one first needs to understand German culture and its approach to film and television.

I'll save you the trip to Europe and explain what I mean.

Years ago, I was in Vancouver, British Columbia working as a software trainer for a company that was consulting for a very large, worldwide corporation. They had sent a number of fellows from their Berlin office to partake in said training, and on the evening of the last day, my new German friends indicated that they would like to go out and experience the city.

Apparently, this involved me acquiring "good hash" and "loose American girls" for them, and during the process of trying to be a good company host, one of them happened to engage me in a somewhat drunken conversation about the television sitcom: KING OF QUEENS. The show, apparently, was more important than anything else we were trying to engage in.

Was I familiar with the show? I was.

Had I ever seen the show? I hadn't.

Outrageous - why hadn't I seen the show? It was so American, after all, and it was awesome.

I did my best to explain that it was a mere throwaway sitcom and I didn't really watch much television in the first place, but he didn't seem to understand what I meant. He could not grasp the concept. He proceeded to show me his cellular telephone, on which he had downloaded and saved every episode of the show via the internet (and apparently, took overseas with him.)
Eventually, I had questions of my own: Why KING OF QUEENS? Why David Hasslehoff? What the hell, Germany?

I was informed that in Germany, their "arts programs" are severely controlled by government regulations that enforce culture by promoting German content over foreign content. This means that 90% of everything you see on German television or hear on German radio or watch in German movie theatres is Germany-produced, by law. This also means, I was told straight from the source, that the vast majority of their programming sucks because of the laws. Think PBS... all of the time... everywhere... forever.

And while the rules may have changed since the forging of the European Union, I don't think that this is the case. I recently stumbled across an article about German filmmaker Uwe Boll that explained how he could make such terrible films and essentially stay in business. And, yes, that's right - the production and distribution of his films are heavily subsidized by the German government under cultural preservation laws, so he can't really lose his job to public demand no matter how awful his films may or may not truly be.

And as awful as I may personally think American-produced sitcoms are, they apparently don't hold a fail candle to the television programs produced in Germany, whatever that might involve.

This brings us back to Andreas Schnaas - and outlines why movies that are dismissed as "puerile garbage" in Western society, suddenly become tremendously important when viewed in the proper light.

And interestingly enough, Uwe Boll cut his teeth as a director in the very same subversive scene that Schnaas helped evolve. He is cited as the only member of the group to have "made it" in the most commercial sense of the word.

So it seems to me that even big budget Uwe Boll films may be of more importance than they're given credit for, and Boll himself may be far smarter than most of us like to label him. Our general Western perspective, or lack of it, may in fact make us look like the clowns, as we've been too wrapped up for far too long as viewers in mixing up concepts between art and commercialism, and criticizing things that obviously need no critical thinking to discern.

A great Western example would be the WATCHMEN film, which, despite its source material was made and produced for commercial consumption. Perhaps it's a "good" version of a film produced for commercial consumption, but that is still all it is at its core, and you can't properly apply critical theory to three-hour long commercials (although you can certainly apply critical theory developed specifically for three-hour long commercials, which is how ingrained these things have become, to the point where we form systems as support towards other support systems, essentially.)

So - German gore films. Misunderstood? Certainly. Poorly crafted? Probably. But are they bad films? I don't think that they are. In fact, I think they're quite important, especially in these times.

As the lines between actual "art" and consumerist propaganda continue to waver and blur in the mainstream for the despicable cause of making somebody else even richer than before, it's important that we note and experience what is genuine and what has been broken down into a formula or trend for the purpose of mass consumption. Obviously, I sensed this even as a teenager, despite the inability to fully understand why I liked Schnaas films so much.

You are being tricked. Anchor Bay re-released NIKOS THE IMPALER for a larger scale distribution than usual and it's as good a place to start as any, although if you're looking for better crafted films to go with your subversion I'd actually recommend J?rg Buttgereit - whose films are far darker and more serious, thematically-speaking, and just as nasty in terms of gore. Nobody in Germany is sure of where Buttgereit came from, but there has to be an exception for every rule.

If you haven't seen any, seek out these films immediately and remedy your situation before it is too late.