Gorehounds Unite!

NEKROMANTIK Overview:

Director Buttgereit's notorious 80's underground film was banned from public display in several countries. It tells the terribly dark tale of Rob, a professional "street cleaner" in Berlin who cleans up the sites of grisly accidents. His chosen profession has allowed him to amass an impressive collection of human body parts he keeps in jars at home. When he brings home an entire corpse for his wife Betty and him to enjoy, he is shocked to discover that his wife prefers the "company" of the dead man. Be warned--though the film unrated, it is very disturbing, with sex and violence on display which are of an extreme--and extremely adult-- nature.

 This was a movie I have been waiting years to watch again to find out if it was as disturbing as I remembered it as a kid. See when I was about 10 years old I managed to get my hands on a VHS copy of Nekromantik because the guy at our local mom and pop video store would rent me any horror title I wanted (bonus!). Well as I said before I grabbed this title based on the fact that I had heard that they used real corpses (which even at that age I knew it wasnt true) and the cover art was simply amazing and the movie was strictly off limits to anyone my age! Of course as anyone who has seen this movie knows, there was no way for me to be prepared for the onslaught of taboo subjects I was about to succumb to. I remember feeling numb after seeing this and actually sick to my stomach, I still to this day remember the disgust I had at what I had seen. I waited till now to go back and revist it and even now I cant say I was too excited by the notion of watching this again.......but of course my curiosity got the better of me and I had to find out if it was just because of my age or if it really was as depravd and sick of a movie as I had remembered. Youll have to read on to find out that answer!

 My answer to above is a resounding and absolute YES! This is possibly one of the sickest and most vile pieces of film I have ever seen! Suprisingly the things that bothered me as a kid werent as bad this go around but I can tell you if you want to be sick this is the film for you. I will warn all that there is some real animal killings on this film (rabbit skinned) so if that really bothers you skip the scene or just the film itself (theres a fake scene with a cat that may upset some as well). I will give the filmmakers this, thye did what they set out to do and that was explore the lines a film can walk and go as far over as possible.

 The film basically is centered on a man and his girlfriend, hes a street cleaner on the freeways of germany which means he picks up all the bodies and human tissue after accidents. Only this dude actually saves pieces of the people he cleans up and saves he pieces in jars around his house. He shows up on scene one day to find a bloated corpse floating in a swamp and manages to somehow get the corpse home and give it to his girlfriend as some sort of fucked up gift. This is where the movie begins its depravity.....the couple actually start to have sex with the corpse and it involves the use of a steel pipe in his groin as a substitute for a penis........(this is where I learned alot more than I needed to about the making of from the special features, come to find out the eyes in the corpse were real 3-4 week old pig eyeballs! They actually suck on the eyeballs in the film!). The guy comes home one day to find out his girlfriend has left them and took the corpse with her as a parting gift! I wont go any further but the films ending is a doozy....you have to see it to believe it! Just dont say I didnt warn you! This is for Hardcore horror fans only...........

 

Rating:

4 out of 5 severed heads

SPECIAL FEATURES:

Audio Commentary: commentary with director Jorg Buttgereit and co-author Franz Rodenkirchen.

Horror Heaven: an early Buttgereit super 8 short.

Nekromantik Featurette: featuring outtakes and interviews with the director and producer.

The Making Of Documentary: featuring very informational behind the scenes footage.

Still Gallery: over 100 stills from the directors own collection!

Theatrical Trailers: Trailers for Nekromantik, Nekromantil 2, and schramm

 And actually alot more throughout the disc.

SPECIAL FEATURE RATING:

5 out of 5 severed heads