Nekromantik

Not a good movie for rabbit lovers.

Jörg Buttgereit’s first feature film, Nekromantik is not an easy movie to find on DVD – and when you do, it can be rather pricey.  So imagine my amazement when my Boo handed me the most perfect Christmas gift I could have hoped for… a new, unopened copy of the coveted 1987 West German horror film.  He knows what I like!  I’d heard a lot of things about this offensive film.   A production masterpiece by no means, Nekromantik has been said to have poor camera work and inferior acting.  Still, with the amounts of gore and grotesque sex scenes, Nekromantik was obviously set out to become 
a cult classic.

Rob Schmadtke (Bernd Daktari Lorenz) works for “Joe’s Cleaning Agency” – a company that is hired out to clean up horrendous road accidents and dead bodies.  Good thing too, cause our main character and his girlfriend Betty (Beatrice Manowski) have a sick little hobby that his employment helps facilitate… including bathing in blood and a collection of body parts in formaldehyde.  If the word necrophilia is popping up in your head, you would be correct.  One day while on the job, Rob is presented with a new infatuation, the rotting corpse of a man who apparently drowned in a pond.  He brings home the surprise, and our pair promptly begin one of the most repulsive sex scenes I have ever witnessed.  While Betty bestrides a steel pipe attached to the carcass, Rob focuses his attention on the corpse’s eyeball… which is even more vile once you learn the prop is actually the real eyeball of a butcherhouse pig.  Things begin to take a sour turn when Rob loses his job under petty circumstances.  Betty, realizing that her lover is no longer able to aid her morbid fetish, decides that she does not want to waste the best years of her life and takes off with the corpse.  Grief stricken Rob eases his pain in an explosive finale that is too crazy to reveal in this blog.  You must see for yourself.  

Nekromantik is banned in Singapore, Malaysia, Norway, Iceland, and parts of Canada.  And rightfully so.  The film falls under the term transgressive art – which essentially means, art that is created to violate traditional customs and create outrage.  I mean, even my poor boo had to shield his eyes during practically half of the graphic threesome.  I was more distressed by another scene, which I had previously not read or even heard anything about.  During a flashback, it’s revealed why Rob became so psychologically scarred as a child.  Playing Rob’s father, a real life rabbit breeder is shown slaughtering and then skinning a live rabbit - as though it were Rob’s beloved pet.  If you’re like me, and can watch any kind of gore, except gore dealing with animals… then definitely avoid this scene.  

But even with said slaughter - I very much respect the hard work and creativeness that went into this film.  With basically no budget, production still managed to make all the blood and guts look authentic.  As cited before, real eyeballs and intestines were used from butchered animals, as well as other low-cost special effects.  Jörg Buttgereit truly dreamt up a concept on the connection between intimacy, infatuation and fatality – a topic that not everyone is brave enough to confront.  

Cult Epics is releasing Nekromantik on Blu-Ray DVD this coming October!  You can pre-order here!