Bela Kiss: Prologue (2013)

Best movie ever!

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

"Bela Kiss: Prologue" is a German movie that is also mostly in the German language. It is the only full feature film work by writer and director Lucien Förstner so far and as this one is a 2013 movie, it will have its 5th anniversary next year. It runs for slightly over 100 minutes and combines the genres crime, thriller and horror in one movie. Bela Kiss was a serial killer early in the 20th century whose victims were predominantly women. This film here works with the premise that many many decades later Kiss may still be alive and that may be due to vampirism keeping him relatively young and fresh. So yes, it is a fictionalized film for sure and honestly, the entire Kiss reference works not at all in the film's favor. He sure is an interesting character that deserves his own movie, but this is not it. Maybe a documentary would even be more accurate as, eventually, we know very little about him, not even his exact time of death. As a consequence, this is a pretty generic thriller movie that turns more and more into horror the longer it goes. The Kiss reference in the title was probably just an attempt by the filmmaker to make this film sound more relevant and important than all the other horror films that disappear as quickly into oblivion as they appear on the radar. He was maybe even successful with this approach, but I cannot support it. The most known cast members may be Rudolf Martin ("NCIS") and Collien Fernandes, but the latter really only has a brief cameo. So all in all, this one is just for the very biggest vampire horror film fans. Everybody else will be mostly disappointed and underwhelmed. Here and there, we get a decent scene like the murder witnessed by the woman and hos she wants to check the hotel room despite the resistance of the owner, but it's just not enough for 100 minutes. Not even close. I would say the IMDb rating here is pretty accurate for a change. it just wasn't a good watch and I give it a thumbs-down. The acting is sometimes pretty embarrassing as well and I am not surprised at all that Förstner's career has not skyrocketed since then. I hope he has stepped up his game when he returns to making movies, even if his direction certainly wasn't the main problem in here, more like the mix of script and performances. The title also doesn't make much sense as this takes place way way later than Kiss' most prolific killing phase, so epilogue would be more accurate, and I hope it's not meant that there will be more films like this.

Bela Kiss - Prologue is a very atmospheric low budget horror-thing from Germany. It is a strange movie, but worth a look. It's got great atmosphere, a bizarre story line, excellent editing and cinematography plus some decent horror and suspense. The serial killer Bela Kiss is very charismatic (Rudolf Martin fits great). At times I wondered exactly what kind of movie I was watching - it has a sort of art house feel to it in places, and at other times devolves to an all-out slasher. It's an odd style, but captivating for an hour and a half. The movies sums up the plot somewhat, but opens new doorways at the end. I'll probably watch the sequel, whenever it comes out. Looks like a decent story in the making. 6 points from me.

Bela Kiss is theoretically based on a true story about a notorious serial killer whose crimes were discovered as WW1 was gearing up when the military attempted to confiscate barrels of gasoline and discovered mutilated bodies inside.The soldiers that made the discovery are supposed to be so horrified that they immediately run off vomiting (apparently they weren't familiar with the horrors of trench warfare yet). Flash forward to the present and we have a van with five young people that just pulled a robbery and go to hide out in a no-tell motel for a while to avoid the cops. The place is elegant but very creepy, run by a crew of weirdos and filled with secret passages.Once inside, we are told the not so interesting story of Bela Kiss, played Rudolf Martin, an actor perhaps best known for having played Dracula twice in both an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and a TV movie called Prince of Darkness. Bela's back-story is dull, and perhaps in an attempt to make it seem more interesting, it is filmed in a visually lush, audacious style that reminded me of the film adaptation of Perfume A Love Story.The move plods along bouncing from the uninteresting story of Bela Kiss to the uninteresting story of the young thieves, who pulled the robbery for some mysterious "boss" and are now turning on each other because of some soap opera style bickering between the leader and another guy over one of the girls (Kristina Klebe of Chillerama and Zombie's Halloween remake).Basically, the only reasons I watched this movie were vague comparisons to Hostel and the presence of actress Kristina Klebe. Neither justified sitting through this dull, self serious mess. It's neither entertaining nor scary, there's a lot of blood but most violence occurs just barely off screen, and the plot contortions in the third act are just stupid.Put simply, Bela Kiss is the prologue to a story that I have absolutely no interest in seeing completed.

For some reason five really, really clever bank robbers who look like models decide to hide away from the police in a hotel.First price for the dumbest bank robbers (or the dumbest movie script) goes to...Perhaps they should have rather stuck to modelling - robbing banks and hiding from the police surely is too much of a mental effort for them.Well I could go on that there is a serial killer in this hotel who has lived there for 30 years or so and all those acting school rejects get killed...But hey you say, haven't I seen that a gzillion times before? Yes you have - but mostly even these were movies made by people with a gzillion times more talent than anyone involved in this epic fail.With the decreased cost of digitally producing a movie every zero-talent wanna-bee puts out a stupid horror movie these days.And no, the reason these movies suck isn't lack of money - it's the total lack of any kind of imagination, story telling skills or the even the slightest amount of talent.