Nekromantik (1988)

When one moves outside of Italy and Spain it turns out that a lot of mainland European horror films have some sort of subtext.  France, with some exceptions, is the worst, often seeming embarrassed when making any type of genre film.  It just can't be scary; it has to have real meaning and say something about the human condition or make the plot secondary to a commentary on genre cinema itself.  Alexandre Aja and other modern French directors bucked that trend, but for their efforts ended up making Hollywood films at some point.

Germany pretty much helped invent the modern horror film with their expressionist movies in the late teens and early 1920s.  Though artfully done they were typically made for two reasons, which was to scare the audience and make money.  The Germans, famous for numerous architectural, artistic, musical and literary movements still know how to entertain.  Unfortunately, a certain little Austrian decided to come along, ruin box moustaches and an international symbol of peace as well as ban horror films, events that were understandably overshadowed by other antics he and his cronies got up to.  

Once the goosestepping morons were dealt with the new regime of what would, for the next 40+ years, be the Federal Republic of Germany decided they had seen enough real horror that they banned depictions of violence in media.  As video tapes and VCRs became commonplace the situation became similar to that of the UK where banned films were smuggled in and passed around among fans.  However, that was not enough for Jörg Buttgereit.  Again, Germans are responsible for many different artistic movements, and the isolation of West Berlin helped fuel a sense of rebellion, and Buttgereit set about to make his own horror film to show in venues where he and his friends also played music and presented other forms of art.

Robert (Bernd Daktari Lorenz) is employed with a street sweeping company whose main job is to clean up dead bodies from accidents, crime scenes and the like.  He often takes parts of the bodies home, using them as decorations or to stimulate a fetishization of death that exists between him and his girlfriend Betty (Beatrice Manowski).  One day at work he is given the task of disposing of a severely waterlogged corpse and brings it home to spice up their sex life.

This works until he loses his job, resulting in Betty leaving him to go looking for greener pastures.  Unemployed, with no girlfriend and no body to love, he goes seeking pleasure elsewhere.  He soon finds it, but it fails to fulfill him the same way it used to.

Nekromantik exists for one reason only.  Buttgereit not only wanted to make a horror film but also to anger the German film board.  Since this wasn't distributed in cinemas it initially flew under their radar, although other countries banned it and, though it achieved a small cult following in the United States, it was never officially distributed to video stores and thus had to be found on bootleg VHS.  The movie itself was made on Super 8, a film format usually used for home movies, so that resulted in pretty much not being able to see what was going on and also limiting theatrical distribution.  Current prints have restored the movie to about as good as it could ever be.  

Because it was made to provoke this really had no subtext to it other than a scene where Robert watches a bland slasher film with a bunch of other bored moviegoers.  Buttgereit thought that slashers were lazy and desensitized the audience to violence, thus undercutting the reason for having violence in a film to begin with.  Beyond this, though some of the sex scenes remind me a bit of Zabriskie Point, Buttgereit is out to make his audience throw up and, unexpectedly, laugh out loud.

The last thing I had expected Nekromantik to be was a comedy but, at heart, that's what it is.  The scenes of necrophilia don't hold back, there are animal killings (one real, taken from documentary footage) and plenty of stuff to get people up in arms.  On the other hand, there is Betty leaving and taking the corpse with her, a dream sequence involving playing catch with a head and frolicking in a field with entrails and the ending, which had to have had more than a little influence on GWAR.  

That doesn't mean this movie is that good.  It is better than one would think given budget, how it was filmed and subject matter.  It is nice that it is short, as Buttgereit needed to get it out of the way and get to other things happening when presenting it, but it still feels rather aimless.  It seems that he and cowriter Franz Rodenkirch just bounced ideas off of each other that they thought would be most extreme and figured how to fit them in with no real thought to narrative structure.  

This is still better than the other major film about this subject, the 1996 film Kissed, in which the writer and director made it clear there was feminist and societal context, although it is not too dissimilar from Nekromantik.  It is hard to compare as necrophilia is something that, unless it's implied, used as a joke or added for shock value in something like Street Trash is understandably avoided in mainstream cinema.  There isn't much one can do with it than those and, once the shock or the joke is over, there is not much of a movie left.

Nekromantik (1988)

Time: 71 minutes

Starring: Bernd Daktari Lorenz, Beatrice Manowski

Director: Jörg Buttgereit