Dard Divorce (2007 Video) User Reviews

Worst audio mixing I've heard in a long time

[hexrei · 3/10 · 12 October 2008]

Everything the two reviews above me has said are correct. Outside of some excellent gore/torture scenes, it's just a bad film.

I just wanted to add that the sound mixing was really, really terrible. The music was nowhere near good enough to overwhelm the film which it began to do about halfway through. There were some scenes where the music was so loud I literally couldn't hear what the actors were saying.

Of course that wasn't such a bad thing because the dialogue was terrible. It sounded like it was written by someone with a very tenuous grasp of English, perhaps learned via Baywatch reruns. All in all, don't bother unless you love gore and torture films, because that's what most of this film is.

Torture Divorce: The German Way

[Vomitron_G · 5/10 · 1 April 2008]

Well, what the hell... Why don't I be the first guy to comment on Olaf Ittenbach's latest outburst of cinematographic violence? First off, in order to make this comment a bit more useful to anyone who might read it (or just to give you an idea where I'm coming from), let me say that I've only seen one Andreas Schnaas movie (VIOLENT SH!T 2), and I simply loathed it. Couldn't even laugh with it, and I'm not interested in seeing anything more by this guy. I've only seen one Jörg Buttgereit movie so far (NEKROMANTIK), and I basically fast-forwarded my way through that one (sorry guys). Just couldn't get into it, I guess. And when it comes to director Uwe Boll, I'll just let other people comment on his work. Now, regarding Olaf Ittenbach: I have a lot more appreciation for the man's work (as a director and especially as a special effects artist), because he managed to entertain me quite a bit with the two movies I've seen from him so far, LEGION OF THE DEAD and HOUSE OF BLOOD (aka CHAIN REACTION). So, I guess I can safely say that if anybody throws a random Ittenbach movie at me, I'll catch and watch it.

Now that we have that out of the way, we can get to... DARD DIVORCE. Basically, it's Ittenbach's take on the vastly growing and ever so popular "Torture Horror" genre. And let me tell you right away that there's good and bad news (I'll let you figure out yourself what falls in which category exactly). It really feels like an Ittenbach movie. The thin, muddled mystery plot, with all its lies and false truths, was kind of fun to behold, but - let's face it - was merely an excuse to present us three long and exquisitely gruesome torture sequences. And besides that, there's even quite a bit of random acts of violence and bloodshed in a couple of other scenes (handgun-splatters, head blown off by shotgun, knife-stabbings, head-bashings,...). The plot itself, is both extremely simplistic but yet still rather unpredictable (or maybe I was just being distracted too much by the excessive amount of torture and gore). Nevermind the weird word "dard" in the title, as its meaning isn't really as profound or mysterious as it might sound, and it even gets explained in an utmost banal, quite stupid and somewhat laughable manner pretty early in the movie.

Now, I'm not the biggest fan of this "torture" genre (not by far), and actually, by now, there's torture movies and there's... torture movies and then some (if you know what I mean). As much as the next guy, I loved the first SAW (I still have to see the other installments though). I can even dig a lot - and I do mean a *lot* - worse movies like Lamberto Bava's THE TORTURER. I also appreciate raw and gritty efforts like Boyes & Mason's BROKEN. But then there's abominable flicks like Ulli Lommel's THE TOMB and I pretty much hated the pretentious and irresponsible MURDER-SET-PIECES. So where exactly do I place Ittenbach's DARD DIVORCE between all this? Hard to say, really, but it's definitely amongst the stuff I can enjoy (granted, not always for the right reasons, like, try: unintentionally funny sometimes).

We've gotten used to the fact that Ittenbach's cinematography & photography at least is above the level of what we regularly get to see in some of these low-budget companion efforts. The man simply has a bit more style than some of his fellow contemporary directors working in the same genre. But right from the moment the first member of the cast starts to speak - no offense Martina Ittenbach - you just can't ignore the fact that you're watching extremely poor acting and hearing lousy dialogues (and yes, this continues until the very end of the movie). During the first 20 minutes or so, Ittenbach even ventures into sheer cringing soap-opera territory, by introducing us a married couple in the middle of a divorce, with all the necessary quibbling over who's gonna get the two kids and all the money and stuff (accompanied by a soft melo-dramatic score even). Plain bad, really, and the two kids (little boy & and a 14-year-old girl) naturally have none acting abilities whatsoever - (luckily they have limited screen time). So yeah, after 20 minutes I already was thinking "Man, I'm gonna flunk this flick severely". But then, the first torture-scene came on. And some more random craziness. And another torture-scene. More shoot-bam-splat-boom mayhem. And another torture-scene. And before I realized it, this movie got me going. Boy, really, those torture-scenes are *nasty*! And Ittenbach's make-up effects are pretty damn excellent at times. One of my favorite gore-bits in the movie was where one guy's lower-jaw gets completely rammed away by a hammer with a couple of firm strokes. Awesome, and I literally uttered "Aw!" in the theater. And the good old needle-in-the-eye trick always gets to me too.

And then we get a couple more of Ittenbach trademarks, like the (inexcusable?) portrayal of full frontal male nudity (sorry, but to me it always looks goofy when a man just undresses - for no apparent reason at first - and then walks naked and ding-donging towards the camera), as well as the mutilation of male genitals ("Ouch!", I went again). In the end, after all the madness, the mystery also neatly gets explained in the most easy (and silly) way possible in a movie, by having a character just explain it. And then there's the little epilogue-scene, et voilà, another Ittenbach effort for the records that somewhat satisfies, but barely passes the test. I'm pretty sure that there's folks that will rate this a lot higher than me, but it's just that I love my Ittenbach flicks more when they're spiced up with a bit of demonic/supernatural stuff. Oh well, one can't always have it his way, right?

One of the worst movies, with some of the best gore

[Saturnfly · 3/10 · 8 August 2009]

For starters this movie to me, seemed like it was shot by a twelve year old. The actors (if you can call them actors) were very ameturist, illogical and entirely unbelievable. The story dragged on, it was strange and a lot of the parts should have really been cut.

However... I think on some level, the director's idea was idealistic and original, he could have done this film brilliantly if he had a well prepared and experienced cast.

Now for what I actually saw the movie for, the gore... It was terrific, I was disgusted by every minute of it. Blood, limbs and protruding intestines, brilliant!

This is a joke or not??

[dschmeding · 1/10 · 16 October 2008]

Dear Mr. Ittenbach... you are an important part of the German horror movie scene and I give you credit for that. Although I am not a big fan of the later movies like "Beyond the limits" you sure progressed as a director.

With this movie I wonder why anyone would waste their time to produce something like this.

1. The main actress is ridiculous. Either make a German movie or an English one but don't put someone who can't either act nor speak proper English in the lead role of a movie in English language. The whole "my parents came from Germany to the USA"-thing was a real cheap try to cover this and its absolutely unimportant to the plot.

2. If you go for a tough mafia/drug gangster environment like in "Beyond the limits" at least make sure that the shoot outs don't have everyone laughing while getting shot and the shooters acting like in a cartoon.

3. If you want to go for the pathetic torture-porn style please stick to it and don't mush it into a story like this that falls apart on all sides.

4. Someone should really slap your editor ... the editing was some of the worst I have seen in a while. The telephone scenes with the endless dissolves were hurting my eyes.

5. While you are at slapping people please slip your sound mixer even harder (altough I guess thats also the editors mistake). If you have people with uninteresting monologues and put ridiculously loud and bad music on top so you barely hear anything i wonder if the movie was edited on crack.

6. The Effects were great as always and the cinematography was way too good for the many other flaws that could be forgiven in a school project but not in such a movie.

So please... either make trashy and gory movies or try on the more serious stuff but this looks like you don't know where the hell you want to go. At least I learned that "dard" is Persian for "pain" and believe me... this movie was pure dard for my eyes,ears and brain.

honestly, the worst movie I've ever seen.

[bargebum · 1/10 · 18 June 2010]

I signed up to IMDb solely so I could write a review on this hideous movie.

My friend and I hired this movie because we were in the mood for something gory along the lines of Saw or Hostel.

What we got was the most ridiculous steaming turd movie I've ever seen.

We should have seen it coming, the director cast his wife who speaks ridiculously broken English as the lead actress. Off to a bad start.

It wasn't until I went through and read some other reviews that some of the ridiculous, and pointless scenes in this movie came flooding back to haunt me... The cutting in half of a child from head to toe, the nude man dismembering a carcass that went for about 5 minutes, I seem to remember a man hacking off someone's head with a shovel and then saying something along the lines of "don't lose your head".

I even remember some sort of sexual assault of a woman who had been punched in the face by a detective.

The worst part about this movie is that my friend forgot to take it back, and as a result we got charged 50 dollars.

It's like paying someone 50 dollars and getting them to belt your head against a wall for 90 minutes.

Does that sound like a sensible financial decision? No? Neither is paying to watch Dark Divorce.

Next Time I'll Just Pluck Out My Eyebrows With Garden Shears

[redrobin62-321-207311 · 1/10 · 10 February 2016]

Oh, how this movie blows. Let me count the ways.

1. Lousy sound mixing. The background noises (footsteps, chatter, glasses clinking) were too loud. 2. The ambient music was too loud. 3. The acting was the worst ever - stiff, wooden, pure amateurishness. 4. The dialog sounds like it was written by a dyslexic baboon. 5. One punch to the mouth and the blood flow is THAT extreme? So how come further punches add no more blood to the actress' face? 6. A lot of useless gore. Gore just for the sake of gore. This film may as well had been shot in a massive pool of blood with everyone just swimming around in it yelling at each other. The effect would've been the same and they could've saved on editing.

To Dard Divorce's credit, the editing wasn't actually that bad for an amateur creation. I suppose the one star could be for that.

no words to describe this movie

[lucbarry · 26 June 2009]

this is one of the best comedies I have seen in the comedy genre, I just love how the actors pretend to act really bad but it doesn't stop there its really cool how even the editors and mixers go so far as to purposefully screw it up so to make things really funny for the viewer

AHHHHH....F*ck IT!!!!!!!!!

THIS IS THE WORST MOVIE I HAVE EVER SEEN PERIOD!!

editing = awful mixing = awful acting = awful story = awful everything else = awful

The lowest score I can give this movie as per IMDb's ratings is 1 out of 10, my personal score is -10 out of 10 ,what can I say, the second worst movie in the world is a Masterpiece compared to this ,this is my first ever comment on IMDb ,iv been too lazy to comment before if you want to know how bad this movie is ....I felt compelled to get up off my lazy A** for the first time and write this comment.

Only suggest this movie to someone you hate

[edwin-van-unen · 2/10 · 5 September 2011]

This film must have the worst actors I've ever seen, I mean even sitcom actors are Oscar worthy compared to this.

Then the way the story is being told..... it's a wonder I didn't fell asleep. The only reason I'm giving this movie a 2 out of 10 is because it only wasted 87 minutes of my life, where most movies are several minutes longer (Yeah I know I just should have pressed the stop button, but I guess it's my stubborn nature that keeps me watch the movie to the end).

The idea and actual storyline might have been OK, but they screwed this one up so bad, that this doesn't even matter anymore... I hope that tomorrow when I wake up I'll believe that watching this was all a bad dream.

Like I said, use this movie by suggesting it to people you REALLY don't like and wish they'll have a awful night.

A Bloody Mess

[horizon2008 · 1/10 · 13 October 2013]

My this is bad. So bad. Really I think some of these directors who make this kind of garbage need to go and watch a few movies to get a sense of how a film should be. It honestly looks as if this guy Olaf has never seen a decent movie in his life Maybe he thought it cool to have ten gallons of fake blood a bit of a latex, and to then throw out any old crap and call it horror, but he's sadly mistaken. Dard Divorce is one of the most amateurish pieces of wasted celluloid I've ever seen, with the word dard apparently meaning pain. Well it truly was a pain to watch this nonsense and I laughed out loud when the word first appears with a policeman saying they'll have to send it to the lab to find out what it means. Yes, it's really that good.

The leading "actress" here should go back to working at a fast food joint or something because I hope I never have to suffer her on my screen again. A low budget movie does not have to mean low quality acting. That's been proved many times in this genre. Horror fans are much more forgiving however when it comes to acting if there's some decent pay off in the end, Dard Divorce unfortunately didn't have any though.

I can at least say I got to the end of this tripe which I surely want a medal for. There's far too many idiots out there with a camera now thinking buckets of blood makes a good horror film. But what makes a good film is great acting and a bit of intelligence. At the end of the movie they couldn't even spell the name of the dead dog correctly on it's cross at the grave. Spelling Bonny (maybe Bonnie) as Bony lol. What a bloody mess indeed. Goodbye Dard Divorce forever.

Actually not bad if you're a gore fan

[Humdinger69 · 6/10 · 14 November 2013]

After skimming through several bad reviews for this movie, I had low expectations, maybe that's why I enjoyed it as much as I did, that and the incredible gore.

While suffering from a rather slow start, it gets good once the gore gets going. There is some incredible action and gore in this movie. Some of it is pretty unnecessary and is done simply for the sake of showing more bodily mutilation on screen, this is one of those things where whether that's a good thing or a bad thing all depends on the viewer, personally I loved it myself!

That's not to say the movie doesn't have it's flaws, because it does (hence my lower rating). Some of the gore effects aren't all that convincing (which is forgivable considering this movie had a limited budget), the acting is not so good, the shaky cam during the gore scenes is annoying, there are at least two scenes where the music drowns out the characters voices, and another where two songs actually play over each other! It's really annoying.

Also the scene where the main woman (played by director Olaf Ittenbach's wife Martina) is getting beaten while tied to a chair, could have been really effective if it didn't look so fake. If they could do a decent job of making all of the other scenes of violence look reasonably good, why not this one? There is also a part during that scene where the guy torturing the woman decides for whatever reason to untie her, then she stabs him in the neck with a broken glass bottle, brilliant dude!

Given the amount of gore in this movie most of the flaws can be forgiven so a certain extent, but they did taint my enjoyment for this movie a little. I would still recommend it to gore film fans. Remember, watch it for the gore and nothing else.

dud divorce

[vubellevinh · 1/10 · 1 January 2010]

oh my gosh. The director and editor should be banned from ever making movies like this along with some people on here saying it was an OK movie. Unbelievable is all I can say.

What the hell was that movie. Bad acting/ bad editing/ cant hear anybody saying anything cos crap music was so loud.

How in the hell do film companies let movies like this pass through i wonder.

I just want to kill myself for watching such a bad movie.

Couldn't hear a thing with actress' accent let alone the stupidly loud 'background' music. The kids were just as bad especially when the daughter was just standing there while her mother was bleeding to death. I don't know whether the bad acting was done intentionally or not but I felt sorry for the actors. You'd wonder whether they even got paid.

I would also like to thank my local videostore for quality control of their video intakes without even watching it first so their customers don't have to go through the pain. I want my money back please.

Its so bad that its actually funny. Be afraid be very afraid...of this movie!!!

GROSSly underrated (get it?)

[scrappy-87331 · 8/10 · 2 April 2022]

Thinking too many ppl dont understand the ratings system. 3.8? Really? That's a 38%--an F! This movie is by no means an F-rated production. Very well-made for a lo-budget, gripping storyline, AND plenty of noice practical special effects. Stop lo-balling horror dumbasses--if u dont like horror, piss off.

Stupid title; OK film; fantastic gore.

[BA_Harrison · 7/10 · 8 November 2008]

In Dard Divorce, Olaf Ittenbach's stab at 'torture porn', the director once again casts his pretty wife Martina in the lead role, despite the fact that she isn't a particularly good actress and her thick German accent often makes her difficult to understand. Not that his nepotism matters too much: she isn't the real star of the film anyway-the gore is! And with more graphic nastiness than all of the Hostels and Saws put together, this is one film that gore-hounds should find entertaining irrespective of how awful the acting is.

Martina plays Nathalie Stein, an alcoholic mother in the middle of divorce proceedings whose husband suddenly goes missing, along with both of her kids, and a couple of briefcases full of cash and cocaine that belong to some very sadistic and unforgiving gangsters. Believing that Nathalie knows more about her husband's whereabouts than she is letting on, the bad guys proceed to torture her in a variety of nasty ways...

Of the five Ittenbach movies that I have seen thus far (the other four being Chain Reaction, Premutos, Beyond the Limits, and The Burning Moon), Dard Divorce is easily the most gruesome. It takes a good twenty minutes or so for the bloodletting to begin, but hang on in there and you'll be treated to some of the most repugnant scenes of violence that I have ever seen. The brutality starts with Nathalie being repeatedly punched in the face, and gradually escalates in ferocity and explicitness. By the time the credits roll, viewers will have witnessed numerous gory stabbings and shootings, a child being sawn in half, eyeball removal, crushed heads, disembowellments, hammer attacks, and much, much more revolting stuff than this addled brain of mine can recall at the moment.

No matter how hard I try to forget, however, one scene refuses to budge from my memory: the truly horrific moment when one of the bad guys gets buck nekkid in order to dismember a corpse in a bath-tub. As if seeing a dead body being mutilated in unflinching detail wasn't stomach churning enough, we have to put up with frequent shots of the sicko's butt and tallywhacker in the process. Yuck! With this movie, Olaf Ittenbach has once again proved beyond doubt that he know what he's doing when it comes to creating impressive gore set-pieces, but that he needs to polish up his writing and direction skills. Oh, and as others have noted, he should also hire someone who knows how to mix sound.

I wouldn't particularly recommend Dard Divorce to your casual horror fan-technically the film is quite poor- but those who love their splatter should have a whale of a time.

6.5 out of 10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb.

Eet Iss Nut Gut

[hbeeinc · 2/10 · 29 October 2014]

A German woman who's lived in the States for at least 15 years marries an American and has two children with thick German accents.

This is how the movie starts. Could it really get any better? The answer is no. No it cannot.

There's very little recommend this "movie". I believe it might be the only film that contains only male nudity. The movie got made and somebody saw it. That's about the only win here. It's also made the list of Most Violent Films Ever Made. And it probably deserves that.

With the caveats dispensed, the movie is Scheiße. There is not one believable performance. The script makes porn movies look intelligent. Every now and again, a glimmer of hope shines only to find the shadow of a miserable line, bad special effect or a ridiculous plot point snuff out its spark. People die from a shot to the shoulder. I don't mean bleeding to death. Apparently in this world your brain lives in your shoulder. Worse, the people who live in this world think getting shot in the shoulder means death. Which is odd, because after you've had your face smashed with a hammer a dozen times, the arteries in your arm severed and your limbs pumped with a local anesthetic and you can STILL manage to drag yourself up a flight of stairs and then walk across the floor, you'd THINK you'd have a better understanding of what the human body can take.

The biggest crime is the end. Don't worry, I'm not giving anything away because the score almost drowned out the actors so I'm not 100% sure what happened. This happened in a few places killing any chance of understand the "action". Did the filmmaker not watch his own movie? Was he so bored that he said "f*** it. I got paid and it's not like I'm making anything of value"?

2 stars because otherwise someone might stumble across it on the "worst" list and watch it by accidents.

No thanks

[Leofwine_draca · 2/10 · 16 October 2021]

So it turns out Olaf Ittenbach continued making his gore films straight through into the 21st century with DARD DIVORCE, an unashamed 'torture porn' story shot very cheaply on video and with bad English acting from the German cast. It's a small scale enterprise about a guy stealing a cocaine shipment and various criminals turning on his wife to find out where it went. Cheap and nasty throughout, this is merely an excuse for lots and lots of unconvincing and gratuitous bloodshed. No thanks!

The Absolute, most stupid and pathetic movie I have ever seen in my entire life!

[mafioso67 · 1/10 · 4 September 2009]

To start with, the only reason i have given this film a rating of 1 out of 10 is because 0 is not an option.

This film simply must be the worst i have ever seen. The acting (and i use the term loosely) is just ridiculously pathetic; it is almost as though they are not trying. The main character wanders around the entire film almost devoid of any form of emotion, and her accent (apart from being annoying) is just unnecessary. Worst of all, this deficiency is accentuated by a detective who over-acts everything, thinking he is Horatio from CSI: Miami (who annoyingly also tends to over-act his part).

Unfortunately, this is not the worst of it. Whoever wrote the story to this film ought to be shot; or at least banned from making films in the future. The story catapults itself from side to side, having characters draw unlikely and premature conclusions (e.g. the woman finds a note written in something red on the floor of her house, so she instantly calls 911 telling them it is a 'death threat', despite the note being written in a foreign language she doesn't understand). The writing is just lazy and amateurish, simply presenting the audience with facts about the characters as they are needed, rather than putting in the effort to actually establish a back-story. Furthermore, it does nothing to establish a steady flow or any level of individuality, simply treating the act of writing a screenplay as though you were baking a cake - monotonously, step by step. If you are so curious as to watch this abomination, pay particular attention to the opening scenes, where firstly, everything is told to the audience through narration, rather than spending the money to film some flashback scenes. Secondly, watch the introduction of characters - the two children enter perfectly one after another, so mechanically and unnatural (which reminds me of another point - why do the children not have accents? This just heightens the superfluity of the main character's). Finally, watch how the central concept of the divorce is introduced (through the narration)... listen... oh, all of a sudden she is a lawyer who uses all of her legal skill to keep her children... how convenient (and lazy, come on! Really? She's going through a legal battle so she just happens to be a lawyer?). Also, take note of the way it is introduced, you are just told - you don't see her in any way working as a lawyer; in fact for the first 20 mins you would swear she was nothing more than a house-wife (and to me the character appears as though she may struggle with the intellectuality of this alone, notwithstanding that of being a lawyer). This laziness on the writer's part just kills the entire story, for it makes it everything it attempts unbelievable.

The only thing you may be able to give this film any sort of credit for is the gore and violence. However it takes this, the only thing going for it too far, making it become unbelievable and appear overwhelmingly fake.

I must admit, I am actually left dumbfounded as to how such a film could have secured financing, and how the filmmakers could have picked themselves up off the floor from laughing so hard as to cut the final film together. This film ought to be studied in media courses around the world as an example of what not to do when making a film... Truly Pathetic!

SERIOUSLY????????

[camarossdriver · 1/10 · 13 August 2020]

Were the filmmakers TRYING to make CRAP???? It almost SEEMS like it. The acting is SO HORRIBLE AND HILARIOUS that it almost could've been played by mannequins with subtitles and it would not have made a BIT of difference! If you think I'm kidding...go watch it,and get back to me. I'm a TRUE GORE fan,but when you add acting like this to a splatterfest,it just turns out to be a comedy.This movie would be a GREAT candidate for MST3K...although the script and dialogue is funny enough WITHOUT help.So...if you want to be scared and watch a horror show...this movie ain't gonna do it for you.If you want to sit back with your friends and have a laugh RIOT...fire this one up!

God, this was terrible

[diddlydiddlydee · 1/10 · 5 August 2012]

This is the first time I have ever written a review on IMDb. The utter shambles that was Dard Divorce compelled me to do it. OK, firstly, the main 'actress' was perhaps the worst i've ever seen - can barely speak English, every word delivered in monotone and with absolutely no breadth of expression. They'd have done a better job with a sex-doll. In fact, pretty much every 'actor' and 'actress' were beyond bad, as though they'd all been drugged, or just picked up off the street. I can't really remember a single piece of dialogue that didn't sound stilted or contrived. As for the storyline, there really wasn't much of one - some drunk/lawyer girl (supposedly the director's wife) is going through a messy divorce. Her husband takes the kids away for a weekend, then stumbles in later and supposedly dies in front of her - cue numerous unnecessary gangster/bad guy characters who were completely unbelievable and torture scenes (which really weren't even that shocking)that were poorly filmed and dragged on way too long. I like gore but this was just bad, like something me and my friends might make. Even the unnecessarily long scene with the naked guy chopping up a body in the bath just didn't sit right. I'll not bother explaining what Dard means as it's just a complete non- event - it might as well have been called cabbage divorce or chair divorce for all it mattered. Worst of all was the sound. Not only were the songs the cheesiest shite I've ever heard, but the sound editor must've been on PCP. I've honestly never witnessed such bad sound mixing, particularly in the last scene, where the husband is explaining the plot for the whole film, and all we can see are his lips move whilst listening to some shoddy low-grade European electronica. The one redeeming feature of this movie was that the shots of the golden gate bridge made me think of Tommy Wiseau's The Room. In short - this was atrocious, avoid at all costs. It'll be 87 minutes of your life you'll never get back.

A hit and a miss.

[ElijahCSkuggs · 5/10 · 4 May 2008]

Having enjoyed Premutos for it's ridiculous gore and laugh out loud dubbing, I was pretty psyched to see another film by Ittenbach. So when Dard Divorce came strolling around, I immediately jumped at the chance. And what I got was that it sucked and was pretty good, all at the same damn time.

The story is about this alcoholic lawyer chick who is in the middle of some money scheme. Mix in some nice brutality, some mediocre acting, writing and direction, and you have Dard Divorce. Besides the scenes of violence, the majority of the film is pretty weak.

The lead character, the mother/lawyer/chick is awful at acting. She may even be Olaf's (the director) wife. Well, they're related in some way, since her last name is actually Ittenbach. Nevertheless, she sucked, almost to an extreme where "it's so bad, it's good." Maybe with a few beers in me I would have enjoyed her crap acting for kicks. Her German accent was sooo incredibly thick, but it wasn't her inability to say the words, but her whole delivery. She just couldn't act, it's that simple.

Speaking of Ittenbach, I'm surprised he still hasn't come very far as a film-maker. He's made a good amount of films. Even though he's a pretty seasoned director, this film still felt amateurish on a few levels. Maybe budget restraints and such have an affect.....whatever. At least he brought home the effects and violence. He's always good for that it seems.

Dard (Pain) Divorce isn't all bad, it has some pretty brutal scenes of torture which were pretty damn entertaining. The excessive punches to the face scene was the favorite for this guy. But with a forgettable story, awful acting by the lead and a truly cheesy ending, this movie is really just a passable film. Though if you do find bad acting funny and enjoy some brutal violence...and are a fan of Ittenbach, then by all means, enjoy Dard Divorce.

Not Half Bad

[chicagopoetry · 6/10 · 2 December 2008]

After reading some of the reviews here, I was actually scared to approach this movie. I thought I was in store for something in the lines of Irreversible, you know, that movie that disturbed the hell out of you—where the guy gets a fire extinguisher smashed into his face, and the girl gets brutally, and I mean brutally raped for ten minutes in a subway station, and all that jazz. Granted, there is a lot of violence in this film, but come on, they have been pulling innards from corpses since George Romero's Night of the Living Dead. Could be I watched an edited cut, could be. Yes, the weird accents of a lot of the players are annoying, but that kind of makes it even creepier, like in Suspiria creepy. I still don't understand how the daughter survived but I'm not going to watch it a second time to figure it out, it doesn't matter. What we have here is not exactly as obscene as the Hong Kong shocker Run and Kill (check that out for cruelty) and more in the lines of a twisted version of Trainspotting or something. I found this much more watchable than all those stupid Saw sequels. And there is even a bit of a twist at the ending, making it much less of the snuff film it has been reported as been.

A gore-galore, but that alone doesn't make a movie.

[johannes2000-1 · 1/10 · 28 June 2012]

I recently watched two Ittenbach-movies within one week, attracted by the stories on the cover: this one and "Beyond all limits". They are actually both in the same vein.

Maybe there's a certain audience for it, but I have to admit that it's not my cup of tea. That has nothing to do with a tender heart, I'm really a horror-addict and I can take about anything. But Ittenbach seems to forget that movie-making is about more than just punching people in the belly with a visual surplus of gore. There should also be something like a more or less coherent story to begin with, and a plot, and a decent script and at least one or two professional actors. What we get here lacks all of the afore-mentioned. You could as easily go to a butcher and watch him kill and dissect a cow for one and a half hour. This movie is supposed to be horror, but it's not: it's never in any way scary, with the ceaselessly mounting scenes of gruesome tortures it just gets more and more predictable, boring and at many times even preposterous.

The whole movie is full of wannabe provocative violence and gore: breaking toes, driving knives into eyes, stabbing children, beating-up a woman senseless; we see bowels pouring out off bellies, mutilated corpses, it endlessly goes on and on and on. Maybe one can admire the special effects - I admit, it all looks pretty convincing. But that's about it, there's nothing more. The actors that have to undergo all these horrors drone their lines with heavy German (or other weird) accents, maybe no-one cared for decent acting, since sooner or later (mostly sooner) every character gets killed in a horrifying way, so professional acting must have seemed like a waste of money.

As I said: there's probably a market for this kind of exploitation horror, and I realize that all that I've said here will sound to a specific kind of aficionado as music to their ears. But in my opinion it has nothing to do with movie-making. It's cheap, tasteless and tedious.

Only for Ittenbach Fans!

[davidmax-86392 · 8/10 · 18 May 2021]

I was searching for this movie for a very long time. It was super hard to get my hands on the uncut version but it was really worth it.

Some in the reviews acted like every damn film needs to be 100% perfect and flawless and I really don't understand it. Sure, there is flaws, bad dialogue and plenty of mediocre acting but considering that this was a weekend project filmed in Ittenbachs House it was fantastic.

I'm a big Olaf fan, I got most of his films uncut in my collection but even I will tell you that he is not the best filmmaker but he always pours his heart into his projects and that's obvious.

The sound editing is really a Problem, especially towards the end but not nearly as much as people write in their reviews.

The acting is of course just okay at best but you can tell everyone had a blast doing this.

The effects are the best in the game but that's known even to the haters on here

There is not much more to say. It was bloody fun and that's what I wanted and got. Sure you can act like this is a Hollywood flick and completely tear it apart but as a home video it was phenomenal and it should have a much better rating. The cinematography was top notch!

German gore

[trashgang · 4/10 · 24 February 2011]

Well, I've met Olaf once at a convention, he signed stuff for free, guess what a nice person he is. And you can see him in his own flick walking on street, bouncing his wife. So far so good. It's a gory f lick but you will have to take the really awful acting. That they talk English with German accent I can take but Olaf's wife just can't act. For the story, it's okay but doesn't deliver any suspense or creepy moments. The effects used for the bloody parts is well done. But it is also a slow starter, you will go for 30 minutes into talking and guessing before the gore comes in. Some scene's are not for the feint hearted. I can understand that some will gave difficulty with the fact that children are being chainsawed. And this is surely one for the girls, there is full frontal male nudity. The bath scene is probably the goriest part and well done but as I said, it lacks a bit of keeping you attracted.

Lots of gore but extremely poor

[stoob0t · 1/10 · 28 November 2021]

First things first, make no mistake, everything about this movie serves as nothing more than a vehicle for the gore and visual effects. The effects themselves are decent enough but nothing you haven't seen done better by Fulci or Argento 25 years before this film came out, or more recently in films like The Night Comes for Us.

The script and the acting are both as bad as each other. Every line of dialogue is completely unnatural, and almost all of the delivery is abysmal and unconvincing.

The sound mixing and sound effects are beyond atrocious. I'm pretty sure the overdub for punches was lifted from Street Fighter II. The volume imbalance is wild - effects for stabbing are louder than gunshots. Footsteps in the distance are louder than dialogue.

The music is largely stock audio and very crap stock band tracks. There are huge blocks of dialogue which are entirely drowned out by the soundtrack. Not sure why or how.

Overall, the film is barely watchable, and even then, that's only if you've got a particular interest in gore and low budget practical effects. The story, script and performances are agonising.

Not Sure Who is Tortured More -- The Characters or the Audience

[arfdawg-1 · 3/10 · 28 June 2023]

Wow. Bad.

Firtsly, some people have mentioned audio issued with this fim. I didnt experience them at all. But what I DID experience was a dumb story poorly directed and acting that is grossly sub-par.

Woman gets punched in the face maybe 25 times and keeps her eyes open the entire time -- obvously so she can see when to move her head witht he punches.

Later some soft spoken guy enter saying he's not a good guy but he's on her side. Maybe the worst actor yet.

They do make a mistake of having songs with sung lyrics playing under the action which is distracting.

On a positive note, the gore is top notch. Had they marketed this movie as a how to make a super violent gore movie, I'd have given it a better review. As a "drama" it sucks.