Nekromantik

I have a penchant for applying my own little award system to genre pictures. "Salo" takes the most disturbing award; "Dead Alive" (aka Brain Dead) wins the goriest film award; "Caligula" runs away with the most over-sexed honor. Well, film lovers, here we have my vote for nastiest film ever. If you've seen it, you know why.

The story concerns a young couple with a predilection for all things dead. This works out well for them, as the boyfriend works for a crime scene clean-up crew. As luck would have it, one day he comes across a rather well preserved corpse ('rather well' as in it's a rotted, blue hunk of tissue) while on duty. He manages to sneak the body home, much to the delight of his lady-friend, and they go about having their dirty little way with it. It soon becomes clear that the girl is enjoying the company of the corpse more than her still breathing boyfriend and runs off with it. Needless to say, this does nothing healthy for his already deranged mental state (being dumped for another guy is bad, being dumped for a dead one is even worse).

Believe it or not, watching them have sex with the gooey body is NOT the nastiest thing you'll see here. All manners of assorted atrocities are committed for your viewing un-pleasure, most all of them rank in the 'so sick you can hardly watch' category. I will not spoil the best of them, just rest assured that gore-hounds will most certainly be pleased (if not disgusted).

For better or worse, the film is not very competently made. The corpse and gore effects are very good, but the film stock and technique are both pretty sub-standard. And with the script being so barren and the acting merely passable, the shock moments are all that will keep hardened viewers watching 'till the gruesome conclusion.

If you are looking for good story telling, look else where. If you're looking for a good sex flick, look else where. If you are looking for the ultimate stomach churner, you've found it.

6/10

The director said it himself: It was made to spite German censors. And that's exactly what you get. A few scenes are mildly entertaining, and the film is thankfully short.

Jorg Buttgereit's most famous movie. And just for the record, the combined cost of both, "Nekromantik" and "Nekromantik 2" was something like $45,000. Anyway, I happen to like this movie, or, to be exact, this necrophiliac love story. A good thing about it is that it's not some stupid exploitation flick, and its ultra low budget and cheap special effects fit well into the whole mode. I love this whole primitive, underground feel of it all. Buttgereit and the star Daktari Lorenz actually managed to make a likable character out of a necrophiliac. Poor Rob, he just couldn't get no satisfaction until his own unfortunate demise. And the "love" scenes were all consumed by these artsy blurs and twinkles. It's weird, but the most brutal scene in the movie seemed to be the documentary footage of a farmer skinning a rabbit. Finally, to top it off, the film's soundtrack was strangely compelling and evocative. "Nekromantik" is a pure underground cult classic, no doubt about it.

I didn't stumble on this film by accident; in fact, I purposefully sought it out, and I'm glad I did - but only because now I'm not searching any more. I feel like a bit of a hypocrite for criticising this film for being sick, given that many of my favourite movies can be described with the same adjective; but Nekromantik crosses a line, and it doesn't even do it in a way that's interesting. The movie features quite a few brutal and sickening scenes, but most of them have no relevance to the plot; and even the ones that do don't serve the film in the way that they should. Nekromantik looks like a trashy piece of crap, and make no mistake; that's exactly what it is. As if the title doesn't give it away, the plot handles the theme of necrophilia. We follow a sewage worker who brings home body parts for his twisted girlfriend. One day, he manages to lay his hands on a full corpse; and unlike most women, she is delighted with this present. We then get 'treated' to seeing the three of them (...) in bed together, etc etc and it's all very difficult to enjoy.

The film obviously wants to examine love; but it just continually fails. No points are made, even the fact that the girlfriend ends up choosing the corpse over her man isn't explored at all. It would seem that the sick pervert who wrote it had a great idea about making a film that handles two of life's most important elements; namely, love and death, but had no idea of exactly how he would go about doing it. The result is this film. Necrophilia is, undoubtedly, a perverse subject; but it's also one that automatically generates intrigue, yet this film also fails even in that respect. The whole plot line is just too silly to take seriously; and even if you look at the movie as a black comedy, it still fails because it's not funny. The necrophilia element isn't even the most shocking thing about this movie; the most shocking things are the animal violence (pointless), and the fact that some people actually like this film! If I really had to come up with positive things about Nekromantik, I would say that I liked the score; and the fact that it's not on for long is a very good thing. On the whole, this movie is a piece of garbage - don't waste your time! Wayward cinema has produced far more satisfying gore-porn flicks than this.

Obviously filmed on super8-format Jörg Buttgereit´s masterpiece "Nekromantik" looks much more professional and expensive than it´s actually is! Being banned in many countries the most people only see a depraved and disgusting horror movie in it, but to me it is a disturbing, but simultaneously beautiful film about a weird fetish! The whole film is surrounded by an almost apocalyptic poetry and the wonderful piano score emphazises the sinister death-is-everywhere atmosphere perfectly! Some may be offended by gross scenes like the suicide masturbation, the autopsy, the rabbit dissection, the beheading of an old cemetery gardener or the climax when Robert and Betty have sex with the corpse (A very esthetical scene by the way...), but exactly that´s the stuff which makes this movie so unique: the surreal combination of bizarre symbolic, gore and dream like mood! Watch it whenever wherever you can!