Unholy Ground is a bizarre one. The merging of gory horror and pornography is nothing new. Anybody who has seen Porno Holocaust or Texas Vibrator Massacre can attest to that, but those films are nowhere near as dialogue heavy and while all three are sincere, Unholy Ground seems serious.
To be honest I missed the finer point of the plot. In an unnamed Austrian village the townsfolk are struck down by what appears to be the plague and some of the villagers summon the devil in a ritual.
The film is not sex heavy with not much other than a bit of topless nudity happening for 20 minutes. The sex on offer is hardcore with explicit oral sex, penetration and money shots. We've seen it all before in La Bête (1979) and the masturbating with a crucificx would be shocking if it wasn't done better in The Exorcist and the uncut version of The Devils.
The gore on offer is also very graphic with tongues being ripped out, skin peeling and heads being chopped off. Definitely wouldn't be out of place in the slew of straight to video horror put out in the last decade.
The acting is straight out of a LARPING or amateur dramatics society. Despite German not being my native language you can tell it is straight up bad for the most part; coupled with a dry script it makes the dialogue scenes a chore to sit through, but I suspect most viewers will fast forward them. This film would have been shocking about 40 years ago, but with mainstream films featuring explicit sex and a ton of much more disturbing and equally gory horror films like The Terriffier coming out this is a largely tedious, two hour endurance test.
I can't recommend it, but it is a strange curio and gains an extra point for a surprisingly dour ending.
