Violent Shit is a 1987 micro-budget German horror film written, directed and produced by Andreas Schnaas. The film was shot on a budget of $2,000 with a rented camcorder over the course of four weekends, with a cast of amateur actors consisting mostly of acquaintances of Schnaas. It was released on VHS in 1989 in West Germany. Although the country’s first direct-to-video film, Violent Shit was immediately banned by German authorities for its explicit violence and soon became an underground cult hit.
Two sequels, Violent Shit II: Mother Hold My Hand and Violent Shit III, were released 1992 and 1999, respectively. A fourth film, Karl the Butcher vs. Axe, was released 2010, with Andreas Schnaas co-directing with Timo Rose.
Plot synopsis:
A young boy named Karl murders his mother with a meat cleaver, after she reprimands him for returning home late.
Twenty years later, in the mid-1970s, the imprisoned Karl is being transported to an unspecified location by the police, but manages to kill his captors and escape into the wilderness, somehow acquiring a cleaver in the process.
Over the course of several days, Karl commits a series of murders across the countryside, mutilating and occasionally cannibalizing his victims. After one double homicide, Karl faints and has a flashback to the day he murdered his mother, revealing he had been coerced into killing her by a demon (which a line of dialogue indicates may be his father) he had encountered in the cellar after she had locked him in it.
At one point, Karl also encounters an apparition of Jesus crucified in the forest, which he hacks open, and crawls inside. After this encounter, Karl commits an additional dual murder outside a church, then collapses in a field, where his skin (which had been inexplicably decaying throughout the film) rots off, and he dies ripping himself open, revealing a baby covered in blood…
