Nekromantik

• Year: 1987
• Country: Germany
• Director: Jörg Buttgereit
• Starring: Bernd Daktari Lorenz, Beatrice Manowski

The first of four films from Jörg Buttgereit I’ll be reviewing this month as part of Buttgereit’s “Sex Murder Art” Blu Ray box set. The “story” is about a street cleaner who collects body parts and brings a disintegrating corpse back home for him and his girlfriend to, uh, enjoy (you’ve never quite seen a threesome like this in a movie before). Unfortunately, he gets fired from his job and his girlfriend leaves him but takes the corpse with her, plunging him into a very messed up downward spiral. It’s been said that the reason this film was made was to rebel against the German film rating system, and if that’s the case, one can see this as a successful statement: it’s totally disgusting and gratuitous and everything looks real (and so low budget, it was shot on 8mm, which only adds to how genuine the almost documentary-like film is). You’ll see it all: necrophilia, an animal getting skinned, urination – and the list goes on. Listen, I’m always interested in someone trying to push the proverbial envelope when it comes to art, but I can’t say that as a “movie” this is very good: the story wears itself thin very quickly and you’ll likely be relieved when it’s over, even at 71 minutes long. But that was probably exactly what the director wanted! Banned in several countries.