t some undisclosed time in the remote past, a tall blond man named Togaio (Hues) leads his disciples into the desert. They discover scores of bodies; a massacre has taken place. Flash forward a few millennia. Two 20-something gym rats, William (Carr) and Luke (Friedenberg), take a break as they travel through the American Southwest to chug beer, smoke pot and earnestly discuss the nature of genitalia (which they call "the moo-moo" and "the pee-pee").
Meanwhile, two gray-suited sadistic henchmen of some dark and awful supernatural agency go about killing innocent people in order to recruit them for the so-called Legion of the Dead: a satanic army that will do the bidding of the henchmen's infernal lord. Said infernal lord turns out to be Togaio, who sits in a white room and leers. In the midst of this, Geena (Liebe), a barmaid with a heart of gold, turns into a phallus-faced monster with big teeth in times of duress.
William and Luke are kidnapped by freakish serial killer Psycho Mike (Kriesa). They are rescued by Joe (Cook), a guy wearing Clint Eastwood-style cowboy gear. The two evil henchmen in gray suits kill more people; they lose the grey suits in favor of something brighter, and people laugh at them. All of our characters wind up in the bar where Geena works. There is a massive bar fight in which most of the patrons turn into monsters. Those patrons who do not turn into monsters all seem to have had special-forces training and just happen to be armed to the teeth. There is a siege of the bar in which the survivors of the fight, both monster and human, are given an ultimatum by Togaio: They must hand over Geena in two hours or face the wrath of the Legion of the Dead ...
A tale told by an Ittenbach
Le6ion of the Dead is an abomination made of staccato scenes barely related to each other. The gangrenous acting is of the high-school theater club level. Leads William and Luke have the comedic timing of things that grow in petrie dishes, and their scenes are the most painful to watch. True, movie stalwarts Christopher Kriesa and Matthias Hues are OK as Psycho Mike and Togaio, respectively. But for the most part, the cast makes Waiting for Guffman seem like the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Watching writer/director Olaf Ittenbach's film is akin to being locked in a closet with a Tourettic speed freak: Le6ion of the Dead screams, is hyperactive and disjointed and makes no sense. Ittenbach seems to think he's making a gloriously edgy and violent movie by stealing from scads of other edgy and violent movies. He pinches shamelessly from Quentin Tarantino's works, "siege-based" horror movies (from Night of the Living Dead to Demon Knight), Sergio Leone westerns and post-Die Hard action epics. However, the disparate elements of pastiche must be connected somehow for the pastiche to work. Nothing holds Le6ion of the Dead together; it fails even as a guilty pleasure, as Ittenbach is so obviously and insufferably convinced of his own cleverness. Despite the carnage, nothing happens in this film; the eponymous Legion stands around while Togaio cackles. Satan's mighty army looks no more apocalyptic than commuters waiting for a bus.
Very fine cinematography by Holger Diener, production design by Michael Poettinger and pretty good makeup effects supervised by Katharina Nädelin are wasted in this waste of time. Le6ion of the Dead doesn't even cut it in the Plan 9 category of "so bad it's good"; its coleslaw plot makes Robot Monster seem a masterpiece of narrative flow.
