Damned To Become Hamburger Helper: Thoughts on Black Past (1989)
Long Deprived Of Light
"See! Right-fuckin'-here!" He emphasizes the words by jumping up and down on kissing layers of autumns past. Hollow thudding accompanies the collision of his combat boots. For once in his life Roger-fuckin'-Kormick is right. Which means the tunnels are real. One town over there's a legend about a house that was abandoned on November first. A black candle had been left in a jack-o-lantern on the stoop, and there were tarry stains that had soaked deep into the mildewed shag carpeting. In the aftermath, rumors multiplied like maggots on bloated carrion. Some lived longer than they should...One being the story of the tunnels.
When they searched the backyard they found a trap door hidden beneath sod and moldering leaves. Beneath it were rough hewn stairs that lead down to crudely reinforced passages. This is where the threads begin to fray. Some say the officer who found the entrance went down, alone, before backup could arrive. He never returned, lost to time and to winding corridors that wept rot beneath sunny suburbia. Another version is that they sent a SWAT team down, mouths wet with the promise of discovering some kind of McMartin Pre-School cover up. The depths meant that radio comms were lost quickly, but eventually new sounds were picked up. A combination of guttural roars and chanting that evoked the communion of a perverted Baptist church. Jubilation infernal. The next morning a pyramid of skulls was found atop the trap door, the fresh blood on them smoking in the dawn chill. The tunnels were said to have gone for miles, descending until the soil that made up its walls was the color of pitch. If you pressed your ear to the walls you could hear things slithering through obsidian earth, creatures long deprived of light.
The backyard we stand in belongs to a home that sits just blocks from my own. Another home, in another town, that was abandoned years ago on November first. This time the black candle was found half-melted in the mailbox. Storms and seasons have stripped the paint and left a halo of shingles around its periphery. The windows though, remain unbroken. You don't puncture the eyes of a creature that can see you in other ways. On some level, even deviant teenagers know that.
After what may have happened in the backyard of the first home, authorities were conveniently less thorough in their exploration of the yard. Lucky us. The hinges scream when Roger opens the trap door and we are greeted with stone stairs descending down into a mystery that has spawned tendrils and become an abomination. Roger clicks on the mag light he stole from his cop stepfather and holds the beam beneath his chin, "Lets find some devilry."
-End of Part 1-
What if you looked into a mirror and found something unholy in the reflection? This is a question that has been built on for the purpose of horror cinema countless times. Its been done with class (Prince of Darkness) and marinated in camp till the schlock was tender (The Boogeyman, Mirror, Mirror). Where is the truly rancid take though? Where is the tale of a cursed mirror that turns glam-loving boys into thrash-loving men? Enter Black Past, grinning ear to ear and ready to spit in my mouth. Danke daddy.
Thommy is a young man in love. Surely nothing will stand in the way of youthful romance! Wrong, idiot. He finds a mirror in his attic, and with it a notebook detailing how said reflective surface drove its owner to brutally massacre his family. Words are just letters jumbled together and should be taken with a grain of salt. At least, that's what I have to assume this mulleted rube (Played by our humble director) thinks. Well he's also wrong. The mirror curses Thommy with horrific visions, gets his girlfriend creamed by a car, and culminates in a demonic possession that seals the fate of his entire family. We're eating good tonight.
In many ways, Black Past is a prototype for what would ultimately be Ittenbach's full-length opus, The Burning Moon (See previous review by brilliant scholar who is me). Scenes like Thommy's protracted torture in the hell hospital (Where sterility is definitely not a priority) would be refined into the bloodthirsty climax of Olaf's gruesome anthology. There's also the obligatory The Evil Dead worship blended to a puree until it tastes like a shock rock band's first demo being played on cassette.
Every moment that feels like a mundane slice of teenaged life is cut short by diabolical portrayals of bodily dismemberment, and voices distorted by vocoder into Satanic static. In the climax Thommy is transformed into a demon, unleashing hell on his unsuspecting family. Ittenbach throws everything against the wall, and it's all (Appropriately) very sticky. This includes a charming low-budget homage to the transformation scene in Demons, and a melt movie undoing when the demon is finally vanquished.
There's a quality to Black Past and to Ittenbach's work through Premutos that I find extremely compelling. It's transgressive, yet profoundly silly, a feeling I chase when it comes to finding my schlock of choice. It's the same feeling that I got the first time I saw the cover for Impaler's Rise of The Mutant's. Bill Lindsey crouched down holding a piece of bloodied meat and dressed like the lost member of Carnivore. The "P" in the title font stylized like a bleeding knife. Overblown, gruesome and nutritionally-bereft. Fucking tasty.
-Dr. Benny Graves
