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

I have to admit that I like this film. At the same time, I don't know whether or not I can sit through it again. Jorg Buttgeireit proves himself as quite a revolutionary director in this field of film-making, and since has gone on to make even better films.

Nekromantik is actually not a very complicated story. Robert and Betty are in love. Robert and Betty have some sick fetish's. Robert works for a company that cleans up dead bodies, and one day Robert brings home a rather rotten cadaver pulled out from a swamp. When I say rotten, I mean disgustingly rotten. Well, after Robert and Betty have a rather disgusting threesome with there new found friend, Robert gets fired from his job. It is at this point that Betty leaves him and takes the rotten corpse with her. The rest of the movie is Robert trying to cope with his loss.

This movie has to be seen to believe. I wouldn't recommend this to just the average horror fan. You have to be wanting to look for something new. In my case, I had seen everything. My collection of horror films is in the hundreds. But I hadn't seen this. The second film is rather good also, and I am having a hard time deciding which movie had the sickest ending. I hope this comment helps. 8/10

For the uninitiated, Nekromantik is one of the most notorious horror movies ever made. It may actually be reviled more than it is admired, even in horror circles, but it's one of those few movies that's provocative, in the truest sense of the word. Nekromantik is the story of a nice young couple with unusual sexual proclivities. Specifically, in order to get off, they require congress with a human corpse -- or at least a nice selection of pickled organs. Fortunately for these two, the fella (Daktari Lorenz) has a good job on the clean-up crew that tidies up automobile accidents, and eventually winds up with a real find, a half-rotten carcass dragged out of a swamp. He brings it home, where he and Betty (Beatrice M.) give it a warm welcome in a distended love scene involving a striking optical-printing technique that leaves motion trails on the screen as someone (presumably Lorenz, who doubled as composer of the score) pounds out the lyrical love theme on a piano. It's not all hugs and corpses, however, and when Betty abandons Rob after a tiff, the corpse goes with her.

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.