Schramm (Jörg Buttgereit, 1994)

If this is what I have endure in order to see Monika M. lounge about in black hold-up stockings, black stockings held up with the aide of suspenders attached to a garter belt, black knee-high socks, and black pantyhose in a motion picture, than so be it. Whatever do you mean? Well, let me tell you. If I want to see Monika M., the sullen slice of genteel gorgeousness from Nekromantik 2, wear the aforementioned articles of clothing, I'm afraid I'm also going to have to watch a hairy German man hammer three nails through his weather-beaten foreskin. Why, that doesn't sound so bad. What are you nuts? Hold on. Did you just make a genital-based pun? Maybe. What have I told you? I will not tolerate that kind of lameness to sully this corner of the matrix. Fine, but stop avoiding the question. No, I'm not, nuts...er, I mean, meshugana, that is. Were Monika M.'s shapely gams encased in the items I just listed? Yes, they were. And did writer-directer Jörg Buttgereit (Nekromantik) and producer-editor-cinematographer Manfred O. Jelinski manage to capture their mouth-watering essence in a way that pleased you from an erotic and aesthetic point-of-view? I guess. Okay, so what are you complaining about? Haven't you been listening? A hairy German man hammers nails through his crumpled foreskin. And not only that, he's haunted by a vagina monster with teeth. All right, I can't comment on the vagina monster at this juncture. But as for the do-it-yourself foreskin perforation, all I can is, get over it, man. I mean, for starters, his penis looks nothing like yours. Think about it, you don't even have what he's hammering nails into. True, his penis was a tad on the strange side. That being said, it still must have hurt like one of them motherfucker thingies.  Oh, I'm sure it did. You just got to remember that for one to enjoy the sexier aspects of Schramm: Into the Mind of a Serial Killer  (i.e. the sight of the lovely Monika M. in various types of black legwear), you're going to have to suffer through the fair amount of ghastliness.
 

 

Call me misguided and sad, but I thought the dichotomy between hosiery and heinousness was expertly balanced. You don't often get that in most horror movies. But then again, I've noticed that Jörg Buttgereit doesn't seem like he's interested in making your typical horror film. Brimming with well-executed gore, off-kilter titillation, and a flurry of art-house pretensions, Schramm presents itself as a meditation on the life of Lothar Schramm (Florian Koerner von Gustorf - now that's a fucking name), a character we quickly find out has been dubbed "the lipstick killer" by the German press. Of course, as we reflect on his life, he's not the lipstick killer, he's just a cab driver who enjoys jogging and watching out for Marianne (Monika M.), his attractive next-door neighbour.
 

 

Lying motionless in a pool of white paint, it would seem that Herr Schramm (who is wearing nothing but a pair of undignified Bermuda shorts) will be doing no more killing, as it appears as if he's met his match. No, not by a cop on the edge or a plucky F.B.I. agent, but a wobbly step ladder. Yeah, that's right, the infamous lipstick killer was done in by a step ladder. Of course, the wobbly step ladder doesn't deserve all the credit. In fact, most of credit should go to the blood that used to flow through the bodies of a couple of door-to-door religious fanatics (Micha Brendel and Carolina Harnisch) who decide to show up at Herr Schramm's apartment one fateful afternoon.
 

 

Think about it, if he didn't slit the male zealot's throat with a knife or bashed the female zealot in the head with a hammer, he wouldn't have had to paint his bloodstained walls (the arterial spray from the male zealot was particularly intense). While I'm sure he could have just cleaned the blood off with a soapy rag, he felt to need to paint over the blood. Hey, I'm not one to question the domestic habits of serial killers. I mean, if he wants to paint, let him paint. Anyway, we soon learn why he is called "the lipstick killer," as the bodies of the zealots are covered with lipstick (they're also placed in lewd positions for good measure).
 

 

On the floor of his cramped flat, blood trickling from his nose and mouth, we enter Herr Schramm's subconscious as he slowly expires. What would a serial killer think about moments before he died? Flowers, maybe? Yeah, there were flowers. How about jogging? Sure, there was some jogging; that Herr Schramm loved to jog. However, since no-one, at least no-one I know, wants to watch a serial killer film about a serial killer who thinks about flowers, we get a scene where Herr Schramm wakes up to find that his right leg has been severed. Or, as they would say in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, "Woke up just now... one sock too many." Poking at the bloody stump with an uncomfortable brand of familiarity, Herr Schramm has just had the first of many disturbing dreams to come.
 

 

Shush! Stop talking about bloody stumps, Monika M. is about to appear onscreen. Hasn't she appeared onscreen a couple of times already? Yeah, but this a full body shot. What? Don't judge me. Now, where was I? Oh yeah, Monika M., who is wearing black nylons (probably pantyhose given the shortness of her dress), can be seen talking to two older-looking gentlemen about business. And, in case you haven't figured it out yet, Monika M.'s business is prostitution.
 

 

As he's taking a shower after a long jog, Herr Schramm hears a knock at the door. It's Monika M.! And she needs Herr Schramm's help (for minute there I thought it was going to be more pamphlet pushers). As he towels off, Monika M. (her character's name, like I said, is "Marianne" but I prefer to call her Monika M.) asks him if he would accompany her while she makes a housecall (she's nervous about taking her whoring services on the road - she prefers to work out of her apartment).
 

 

The camera pans across to where Monika M. is sitting, and as its doing so, her robe falls open to reveal a pair of crossed legs sheathed in black stockings. Did this leggy revelation have any bearing on his decision to drive Monika M.? Probably not. But, nevertheless, I'm sure it didn't hurt. In meantime, Herr Schramm masturbates to the sound of Monika M. moaning  in her flat with a blow-up sex doll torso. The sight of Herr Schramm washing his blow-up sex doll torso in the tub after successfully penetrating it with his penis was one of the saddest things I have ever seen.
 

 

While waiting in his cab outside a large mansion as Monika M. conducts her business inside, Herr Schramm suddenly spots her in the doorway wearing a black knee-high socks, tan shorts, suspenders, a white short sleeve shirt, a pair of black men's shoes, a black tie, and a black belt. Why is she in this get-up, you ask? I have no idea. But obviously that's what her clients want her to wear. I don't know how Herr Schramm is supposed to look for Monika M. when he can't see inside, but I guess she feels better knowing he's out there.
 

 

In case you're curious as to what Herr Schramm does while waiting for Monika M. to finish, he listens to the radio and imagines himself at the dentist where he not only gets a tooth removed, his right eye taken out as well. Okay, let's see. So far he's imagined that his leg has been amputated, and now his eye. Could this be a metaphor for Herr Schramm's breakdown as  human being? Interesting.
 

 

A steady diet of weirdness (arty weirdness), blurry images, stockings, lumpy flesh, sit ups, a drawer full of lipstick, droplets of cum landing on the faces of fashion models, all set to this throbbing music, are what greet us over the next few minutes. Some might wonder if the film has accidentally morphed into a SWANS video. Most, however, will not wonder this, and just see it as arty weirdness.
 

 

After applying lipstick to his penis, Herr Schramm hammers three nails into his foreskin. And, of course, we're shown this self-abuse in graphic detail. This sequence is the perfect segue to Herr Schramm and Monika M.'s dinner date at a restaurant with "abstract" portions, as nothing makes me hungrier than watching a hairy German man hammer nails through his just as German penis. 
 

 

Take note of the way Herr Schramm eyeballs the wad cash in Monika M.'s hand when she goes to pay the bill. He stares at it intensely and starts to imagine how she got the money. Which leads to a flashback scene where Monika M. can be seen making her bed after servicing a client. In this scene, Monika M. is wearing her red hair in a beehive, a pair of shiny thigh-high boots (okay, they're not quite "thigh-high," they go just slightly above the knee), black stockings (which are attached to a grey and black girdle-like garter belt), and a diaphanous black top.
 

 

Spiked cognac, black pantyhose, and Polaroids are what dominate the nightcap sequence, as the action moves back Herr Schramm's apartment. You don't think he's going to kill Monika M., do you? If he does, I'm going to lose a fair amount of my shit. Stroke her pantyhose adorned legs as much as you want, but don't you dare hurt her. Besides, she's depending on you to protect her. And not only that, she's one of the only things in your life that isn't sick and twisted.
 

 

When vagina monsters begin to appear around your apartment at random, that's a good sign you have gone off the deep end. In fact, the deep end is nowhere in sight. I'm afraid you have gone beyond the realm of regular crazy, and into one that is...well, populated by vagina monsters. Mercifully short, Schramm: Into the Mind of a Serial Killer is art-house horror at its vilest. The perfect date movie for those who hate dating.

video uploaded by homoheide

Nekromantik 2 (Jörg Buttgereit, 1991)

Desperately seeking an attractive German women who like to wear black stockings, enjoys long walks in the cemetery, and has a thing for poorly produced animal dissection videos. If you fit this description, please hesitate to contact me, as I don't want my head to be forcibly removed mid-coitus and replaced with the head of a man who has been dead for at least three months. In case you haven't figured it out yet, it's time for Nekromantik 2, the long awaited second chapter in the grisly yet strangely romantic series of horrific love stories written and directed by Jörg Buttgereit (Nekromantik), a man who melds whimsy and butchery so effortlessly, that it will make your entrails spin. Actually, I shouldn't call this chapter, "long awaited," as I pretty much watched it immediately after the first one had finished. Not because I wanted to, but because I'm contractually obligated to do so under the city-wide ordinance that states: If someone named Jörg makes a sequel to his unexpectedly popular movie about German babes who fornicate with dead dudes, you must watch it within twenty-four hours of viewing the first film. Obligated or not, my excitement to see what happens next in the corpse violating saga was surprisingly genuine. The most compelling girl digs up dead boy, living boy meets girl, girl dismembers dead boy, living boy loses girl, girl reattaches head of dismembered dead boy to the torso of living boy tale ever to splatter violently against the wall of human suffering, the follow up not only amps up the unpleasantness (shriveled penis, anyone?), it also cranks up the artiness. Seriously, take away the necrophilia, and what you're left with is a heartwarming story of two kooky kids who meet outside a movie theatre in Berlin. Sure, she's seeing a rotting cadaver on the side, but at least she's trying to date sentient lifeforms.     
 

 

Just when I thought that I had erased the image of a man ejaculating blood while performing seppuku on a bed with chunks of chainlink fence as its headboard, Nekromantik 2 is here to remind me that not only did it occur, that there is no way I will be able to un-see what transpires at the end of the first movie (the television I watched it on, by the way, is still not speaking to me). In fact, I was so traumatized by the sight of blood spewing out of his penis, that I haven't been able to operate my genitals with the comfort that I'm accustomed to. And if you recall (please tell me you recall), that's the same exact thing that happened to me after watching Dandy Dust, the movie about cyber-dykes languishing inside a giant neon bladder.
 

 

You could say that the film had a profound effect on me. In other words, it's better than a film that had no impact whatsoever (fuck you, Sucker Punch). But still, I would really like to play with my penis again.
 

 

If you thought the first movie had too much dialogue, Nekromantik 2 is just what the doctor ordered. Featuring no chit chat whatsoever for the first twenty or so minutes, Jörg Buttgereit quietly introduces us to Monika (Monika M.), a woman who seems to appear out of nowhere. If the surroundings look familiar, that's because she's walking through the cemetery from the first film. Yeah, that's right. She's looking for the grave of  Robert Schmadtke, the man who killed himself so memorably in part one. Wearing black stockings, a red blazer over top of black shirt covered in white polka dots, and a determined look on her face, Monika searches the cemetery for her putrid prize. When she does eventually find what she's looking for, she positions her slender, unpretentious legs in a manner that is conducive to manual labour (she also plants her heels into the dirt), and starts digging Robert's grave.
 

 

Snails, lizards, and baby birds do what those things usually do, and creepy music fills the air, as Monika swings her pickaxe with a lofty brand of horniness. Horny what? Make no mistake, she wants to have sex with Robert's corpse. I know this, you know this, we all know this. Meaning, let's stop beating around the bush, shall we?
 

 

Taking a break mid-desecration, Monika shows off her mouth-watering stems while resting against a tombstone. Flash those shapely gams, you sexy corpse fucker!
 

 

Removing what's left of his bloated carcass from the hole she just dug, Monika brings it home to her apartment, which we get a quick tour of thanks to a panoramic camera move; which it spins around the room to reveal a woman who clearly loves death-based interior design. Placing him in front of the couch, Monika plants her first kiss on his fetid lips. Which, of course, is accompanied by inappropriately lush-sounding piano music.

  

 

Since it's time for someone to actually say something (have fun waiting for Monika and Robert's corpse to start shooting the proverbial shit), we're introduced to Mark (Mark Reeder), a nondescript fella who dubs porno films and hates it when people are late.
 

 

Meanwhile, back at Monika's apartment. The courtship of Robert's corpse has gone into overdrive, as Monika is already naked and sitting on top of him. Gyrating against his, oh, let's say, decaying mound, Monika stops mid-hump to vomit in the bathroom. I'm no expert when it comes to relationships with the dead, but reverse cowgirl on the first date, even if one of the parties happens to be deceased, is not something you should rush into. Baby steps, people.
 

 

As Monika is cleaning her new boyfriend (don't forget to wash his shriveled taint), his ex-girlfriend is standing over his empty burial plot, shovel in hand. Letting out a frustrated sigh followed by "oh damn," Betty (Beatrice Manowski), who is rocking her trademark black stockings with red heels look (there's nothing hotter than thirtyish German women who wear black pencil skirts in cemeteries), stares at Robert's recently robbed grave with a mix of sadness and anger. Sadness, because she won't be making sweet love to Robert's corpse tonight. Anger, because some bint (probably wearing a black pencil skirt just like the one she's wearing) got there before she did. While Betty is cursing her bad luck, Monika is at home drinking a glass of milk while standing on red carpet; a motif which I thought perfectly captured the film's overall blood and cum theme.
 

 

Waiting outside the movie theatre for his date to arrive, an increasingly agitated (remember, he hates tardiness) Mark is starting to grow impatient. Giving up after waiting a few more minutes, Mark decides to ask some random woman if he'd like to watch the movie with him (he's already paid for the tickets). As the they enter theatre it becomes apparent that the woman Mark gives his date's ticket to is none other than Monika. First of all, I had no idea Monika consorted with the living. And secondly, run, Mark, run! Anyway, like in the first film, Nekromantik 2  mocks popular cinema by having its characters attend the screening of a film within a film. In part one, Robert watches a horror film called "Vera," and in part two, Mark and Monika watch a ridiculous movie called "mon dejeuner avec vera," an arty endeavour that features a naked man and woman sitting on a roof eating eggs and talking about birds; well, the man does most of the talking.
 

 

It's clear that they like each other (they make goo goo eyes at one another during the bird movie), and end up spending the day at an amusement park/zoo. While riding the park's "observation wheel" (who calls it that? what a pretentious fuck; I'm talking about myself, by the way) Mark and Monika kiss. Yay! I thought, to myself, as they kissed. In your face necrophilia! Normalcy wins! The end. What do you mean it's not over? Mark and Monika are perfect together. He dubs sex films, she's a nurse. In other words, a match made in heaven. Yeah, but what about Robert? Oh yeah, him.
 

 

Well, it seems that Monika is about to confront that situation. Busting out the rubber gloves, Monika grabs a saw and starts to dismember Robert in the bathtub. Starting with his left hand, Monika is clearly having trouble going through this. After giving herself a mental pep talk, Monika plants a final kiss on his still fetid lips, and proceeds to remove his head. Eventually ending up with three bags of Robert, Monika is about to return him to the cemetery, when she decides to retrieve his head and his penis (the latter is placed on a plate, covered in plastic wrap, and put in the fridge).   

 

 

Even though she continues to date Mark (she has sexual intercourse with him - she wears black hold-up stockings, he wears white sock garters), Robert's head and crumpled genitals are never far from our memories. We know that Monika can't let go of her desire to copulate with the dead, and, in the end, that spells nothing but trouble for their burgeoning relationship.
 

 

As Robert did when he was alive, Monika has strange dreams. My favourite being the one where she sings "Scelette Delicieux" while a man blonde man with a ponytail (John Boy Walton) plays the piano and a floating skull spins around and around. It not only proves that Nekromantik 2 is a true work of  transgressive art, but that the film has a sly sense of humour (the piano player mugs menacingly for the camera at one point during Monika's number). Sure, the scene where Mark gets a drunk at a bar, and the one where Monika contemplates her decision regarding Mark and Robert's head/genitals do go on longer than they should (whereas part one was a spry seventy-five minutes, part two clocks in at one hundred and four), but the film is sickening in all the right places. Oh, and to quote Echo, the troubled one, from Party Doll A Go-Go!, "Ride that stranger like a rocket 88!" Don't ask me why I'm quoting that line at this particular point in time, but if you have seen the end of Nekromantik 2, you'll probably agree that's it's quite apt.

uploaded by 410n5o

Nekromantik (Jörg Buttgereit, 1987)

Unclean, unclean! My skin is itchy, but I'm afraid to scratch it. Don't look now, but a colony of flaky, dead skin has set up camp behind my right ear and there's nothing I can do about it. Someone help me! Okay, now that I got that out of the way, let's begin to explore the decayed world of Nekromantik in a calm and rational manner, shall we? Is it romantic? Yep. Is it disgusting? You better believe it is; a man ejaculates blood from his penis while stabbing himself in the stomach. Is it beautiful? Oddly, yes. Even though there are times when it mirrors several chapters in my inexplicably unpublished guide on how to be a Skinny Puppy fan in the late 1980s, it does feature moments of that were surprisingly beautiful. Take, for instance, the opening scene where a woman (Simone Spörl) pulls down her floral panties by the side of the road and begins to urinate. At first I thought: nice way to kick off a movie; as in, this is gross. But the longer I stared at her piss as it slowly began to form small pools in the uncut grass around her ankles, the more the image started to appeal to me. I don't know, there was something strangely alluring about the way the moonlight caused her steaming droplets of pee to sparkle like diamonds as it slowly evaporated in the dark. Now that I think about it, you could approach each scene using that mindset. At the beginning, you're horrified by what's transpiring in front of you. But as the horrifying scene in question continues, you gradually become desensitized by its awfulness. Sure, you might not be tempted to plunge your hand down your trousers while watching what the sick twists get up to in this film, but you'll find yourself empathizing with them more than you expected. Which is the point writer-director Jörg Buttgereit was probably trying to make with this ghastly tale of unorthodox love. It doesn't matter what kind of objectionable material we're exposed to, we all end up developing an immunity to it the longer we stare at it.  
 

 

In order to make my next point, I'd like to quote the principal from Heathers, as I think it sums up how I feel about the film's taboo subject matter perfectly: "I've seen a lot of bullshit... angel dust, switchblades, sexually perverse photography involving tennis rackets..." But as for necrophilia? I'm afraid I'm gonna have to plead ignorance on this one. Don't get me wrong, I find sex with corpses to be abhorrent, but I can sort of see the appeal. Excuse me, but my lawyer has just informed me not to finish that thought, as it might jeopardize my standing within the non-corpse fucking community. And while I dig the whole iconoclast thing I got going on, the non-corpse fucking community is a community I can't afford to alienate, especially if I expect to be the next President of the United States, or hell, even elected to Guelph City Council.
 

 

Instead of dancing around the subject of necrophilia, why don't you type some words pertaining to the film's plot? Excellent idea, as it will give the time I need to rehearse my fake outrage.
 

 

After the woman is finished peeing by the side of the road, she gets back in the car she was riding in with her male companion. Suddenly, the driver looses control of the vehicle and a loud crashing sound is heard. As night gives way to day, the next image we see is smouldering wreckage strewn across a clearing in the woods. And judging by the way the bloodstained rear view mirror dangled helplessly from the shattered windshield, the chances that anyone survived the accident are pretty slim. As the camera slowly inches its way through the scene, the damage is revealed; the peeing woman is missing her low half (there will be no more urinating in public for this gal), and her male companion is pined to the back seat.
 

 

I know what you're thinking: That sounds like one hell of a mess. Well, never fear, Joe's Streetcleaning Agency is here to save the day. A van full of highly trained men in hazmat suits are on their way to collect and bag any body parts you don't want littering the area. Oh, you don't want *any* body parts littering the area. Got it. Anyway, even though I was disturbed by the fact that none of them wore gloves while handling the body parts, the scene is clear of human remains in no time.
 

 

You would think that after spending all day knee deep in other people's intestines, the last thing anyone who works for J.S.A. would want to do is to go home and play with their body part collection. But that's exactly what Robert Schmadtke (Bernd Daktari Lorenz) likes to do in his spare time. Nowadays, someone like this would have his own reality show. However, back in the late 1980s, people who licked eyeballs for kicks were shunned by society.
 

 

Luckily, this oddball-shunning society is nowhere to be found in Nekromantik, as the world is pretty much reduced to his dilapidated apartment and the various crime and accident scenes where the bodies lie. Behind every deranged eccentric lies a beautiful woman, and in Robert's case, he has the gorgeous Betty (Beatrice Manowski) to share in his morbid lifestyle. I was gonna call it his "morbid hobby," but I think it's safe to say that Robert and Betty have gone way beyond the hobby realm.
 

 

Immersing themselves in the viscera of others is the only thing they care about it. Don't believe me? Just ask Betty. Oh, I'm sorry. You can't right now. You wanna know why? She's bathing in blood. Lifting her left leg every so often in order to admire its shape and to watch the bloody water drip off her calves, Betty bathes like she's in a soap commercial (the world's darkest, most upsetting soap commercial). As while Betty is killing the Calgon mystique (no one is taking Betty anywhere), Robert is watching television on the bed described in the lyrics of Fad Gadeget's "Collapsing New People." Okay, maybe it's not a bed made out of nails, but it's got a headboard made of chainlink fencing.
 

 

Which reminds me: Does your belligerent fifteen year-old son like industrial music? Well then, why not show him that you really love him and buy him a bed made entirely out of chainlink fencing.
 

 

It would seem that he isn't really watching television (a stuffy panel show about phobias), as we soon enter his mind and witness a bunny being skinned (don't worry, its throat was cut first), while Robert performs an autopsy in a different location all together. After the bunny's innards have been removed, the action moves to a sunny suburban backyard where we find a man playing with an air rifle. I don't think we are inside Robert's head anymore. Either way, the man with the air rifle accidentally shoots a man picking apples next-door in the neck. Falling awkwardly on a garden tool, the apple picker dies.
 

 

The air rifle guy's decision to dump the apple picker's body in a ravine turns out to be the defining event of Robert's life. Well, actually, Robert's decision to take the apple picker's body home with him was the decision that did most of the life defining. But let's not quibble over minor details.  At any rate, instead of hauling the apple picker's rotting corpse to the morgue, Robert takes it home with him, much to Betty's delight. Opening him like a present (he's wrapped in plastic), Robert and Betty molest the apple picker's putrid flesh set to creepy music.
 

 

You can tell Betty's hardcore just by looking at the runs in his stockings. I mean, she hasn't even attached the apple picker's makeshift penis (a modest chunk of metal) to his cesspool of a crotch and her stockings already showing signs of wear and tear.
 

 

As their unorthodox threeway moves to the bed, it comes to my attention that the music in this film is utterly amazing. Composed by Hermann Kopp, Bernd Daktari Lorenz, and John Boy Walton, the Nekromantik score is tuneful, and, dare I say, surprisingly beautiful at times. The so-called "Theme from Nekromantik" in particular, as it confuses the hell out of the viewer. What I mean is, the serene-sounding music doesn't quite match the repugnancy of the visuals. While your ears are being bathed in a soft piano melody, your eyes are watching two living Germans have sex with a dead German; and not a recently deceased one, either. 
 

 

The domestic bliss the wacky trio (the dead apple picker is hanging on the wall next to a vulva-exposing centrefold) are currently experiencing is soon turned on its head after Robert gets fired from J.S.A. (that Bruno has had in for him since day one). Realizing that he won't be able to bring any more corpses home now he's not working for J.S.A., Betty decides to leave Robert, and, to add insult to injury, takes the dead apple picker's body with her. One minute their happily eating dinner together (the apple picker's corpse is leaking fluids in the other room), and the next, it's all over. It just goes to show that even the most stable relationships can fall apart at any given moment.
 

 

Leaving him corpseless in Seattle (and by "Seattle," I mean, Berlin), Robert tries to fill the emptiness by bringing home a cat. But that doesn't quite work out, as he ultimately ends up bathing in its entrails (don't worry, unlike the bunny, the real cat wasn't harmed, at least I hope it wasn't). In desperate need of satisfaction, Robert attempts to fill the void left by Betty and the apple picker's departure by going to see "Vera," a horror movie playing at the local multiplex (cool, man, they serve beer). Even though the movie, a low budget slasher flick starring Suza Kohlstedt as "Vera," failed to engage the wily necrophiliac, I liked how the film within the film was actually pretty entertaining (a blonde in white fishnet stockings runs from a killer wearing pantyhose on his head), and judging by the grin on his face, the film critic taking notes in the back seemed to think so as well.
 

 

Since the depths of his despair can't be lulled by pills and booze, Robert dreams of being a corpse. Stuffed in a plastic bag, Robert breaks out it and finds himself sitting in a field. Suddenly, a woman appears (Christiane Baumgarten) carrying a box. Now, I don't want to say what's in the box. But let's just say, the scene ends with Robert swinging entrails over his head like a giddy lunatic.
 

 

If the dream was any indication, you would think that Robert would have figured out what he needs to do next. But he gives normalcy one last shot when he visits hooker row. Choosing a prostitute in all white (Heike Surban), Robert takes her to the local cemetery. As the tantalizing largeness of glorious behind grips the cold concrete of the tombstone he has selected, it's obvious that Robert won't be able to perform in the manner in which he is accustomed.  
 

 

Ghastly in all the right places, Nekromantik is the type of movie that revolts as it illuminates. Or, I should say, that it illuminates as it revolts. Unconventional, in that it fails to kowtow to the conventions put in place by the horror genre, it's obvious that Jörg Buttgereit is an artist. Sure, he's wallowing in a subject matter that is considered vile to most people, but he doesn't let that distract him from making an unflinching masterwork. And that's exactly what this film is once you put aside your hang-ups and prejudices.

uploaded by SurrealGoryfication