Love Like Blood: Jorg Buttgereit's Nekromantik 2

Every genre of film has its presets of expectations. If it's a Western film, you expect dusty landscapes and dirty cowboys. If it's a Horror film, you expect some amount of screaming, blood and at least one false scare. If it's a love story, then you expect romantic pathos and a boy and a girl to meet and fall in forever, soulmate-esque love in spite of a few dramatic interruptions. Etc etc. All of this is why I love it when a filmmaker can take these little category boxes of film, wield a boxcutter to a bunch of them and then with some duct tape, construct something actually quite fresh and different. With this build up, you may not expect that the film I am segueing to is Jorg Buttgereit's sequel to his underground dark comedy/horror film, Nekromantik, but segueing I am! (Of course if you actually read the title to this article, then you already knew where I was going with all of this. In that case, never mind.)

Sequels are generally a bit of a creative gamble. Is it a crude way to lure in the rubes? Sure, if the minds behind it are bankrupt. A truly good and worthy sequel is one that can use all of the right elements from the first film and utilize that as a template to build a better garden. With a brilliant and fun director like Buttgereit at the helm once again, Nekromantik 2 is a fascinating film intertwined with one of the strangest love stories ever told.

The quote of “I just want to master life & death, ” courtesy of Theodore R. Bundy, better known as Ted Bundy, one of the most infamous serial killers from the past forty years, begins the first frame, right before a flashback to Rob's (Daktari Lorenz) climactic (literally and metaphorically) hari kiri scene from the first film. Nekromantik 2 truly begins with a stylishly dressed and slightly nervous looking young woman walking around a cemetery near a bombed out looking building. The deeper she goes, the more lush the vegetation grows, until she ends up in a more secluded section where Rob is buried. In some perfect cosmic kismet, the first film's death-obsessed protagonist ends up being dug up by a lovely lady with similar post-living obsessions!

Digging him up, she's able to move his corpse into her extremely colorful and tidy apartment. The grotto-grunge of Rob's apartment from the first film is replaced by clean, sunny walls and modern, neat-looking furniture. Jars of assorted body parts/mementos from Rob's dayjob are now an assortment of skull centric paintings and medical x-rays used as art as décor. The red haired woman, Monika (Monika M.), lays his body out and kisses him wetly with some tentativeness and a lot of barely held back erotic charge, before she begins to undress him. Meanwhile, we also meet Mark (Mark Reeder), a lanky looking young man on his way to his dayjob of dubbing over rangy-looking porn.

The dreamy edging into psychedelic camerawork that marked all of the love scenes from the first Nekromantik starts to return as Monika attempts to make love to Rob's blackened-by-rot form, but coitus interruptus arises as she physically gets ill and cannot resume the lovemaking. In short, Monika has the heart and drive for sexually loving the dead, but not quite the stomach. There's something about Rob, though, that makes her clean up his body, with her red lacquered nails tenderly touching the imprint of his fatal gut wound and dress him in fresh clothes. As Mark tries to plan a film date with an eternally tardy friend of his, Monika poses with Rob for her Polaroid with a self-timer, grinning like a new girl smitten with amour.

But life's strange glory comes into play yet again, when Monika happens to walk by the Sputnik Theater where Mark is waiting for his date. Impatient, he chats her up and offers Monika the spare ticket. Going to watch some bizarro world version of “My Dinner with Andre,” entitled “Mon Dejeuner avec Vera” (aka “My Lunch with Vera”), that consists of a highly chatty man and a less chatty woman, completely naked and eating eggs, Monika and Mark quickly hit it off. Soon, Monika will face the weirdest case of being “torn between two lovers” ever, only to be outdone by one hilarious and volatile resolution.

"Nekromantik 2" is a an intriguing and worthy sequel to its infamous and well made progenitor. The fact that Buttgereit switched the focus from a heart-sick and head-sick young man in the form of Rob, to the love-sick and balanced-in-her-own-strange-way, Monika, is unexpected and really smart. The eroto-death factor is still there, but with Monika, her own flesh won't allow her to do what her heart wants to. Even more intriguing is when she tries to dispose of Rob as she and Mark start to get more serious, Monika grows emotional and keeps Rob's head and genitals. (The latter comes into play with some great twisted humor, as she puts it on a plate, wraps it in plastic and places the severed member in her fridge like well-loved leftovers. Which is pretty fitting, now that I think of it!)

Monika is an unusually complex character, especially for being a woman. In the cinematic landscape, whether we're talking mainstream pap or underground DIY, women are more of than not, relegated to ether bitch, sex/brain starved nymphet-nympho, frumpy friend or Holly Sunshine: Pretty Girl Worthy of Love. So to see a female lead chase her heart and desires that play far outside the boundaries of what is “normal” (or legal for that matter), is pretty great. Especially as her relationship with Mark starts to show more cracks, with him unable to give her any sort of climax, Monika is forced to feed her need. Granted, I'm not saying “Ladies, start digging up your soulmate!” or anything, but there is an undercurrent of affection and respect for this character that is refreshing. Monika M. is likable as the lovely and chic girl with the strangest desires of profound morbidity. There is an understatedness to her performance that works quite well and helps keep the film anchored in an even keel. 

 

The filmmaking quotient is even better here, with Nekromantik 2 featuring more of budget with the former's 8mm format being replaced with a more glossy looking 16mm print. That may sound like a sell-out to a less-slackful underground film fan, but given that the plot is more of a love story, a fact even mentioned by Buttgereit himself in the intro to the lovely Cult Epics blu-ray release, it makes more sense for it visually to look bright and crisp. The first film was more of a tonally extreme film, so the 8mm format was perfect for it. The camerawork and editing are even tighter, with some especially great use of movement in the “hunt for Rob” cemetery sequence near the beginning. One big link between the two films is the amazing soundtrack, featuring more stellar work courtesy of Herman Kopp and “John Boy Walton,” both returning from the first film. The fact that such beautifully composed music is intertwined with a film about necrophilia is all sorts of subversive sweetness.

Speaking of great music, one of my personal favorite scenes is the musical number that seemingly pops out of nowhere with Monika singing “Squelette Délicieux” like a post-modern Zarah Leander. The fact that the title loosely translates to, “Delicious Skeleton,” makes me love this scene all the more. Beatrice M.'s cameo (Betty from the original Nekromantik) is also a hoot.

It's that combination of humor, heart and a willingness to explore transgressive imagery and taboo topics that sear Nekromantik 2 into the minds of any viewer worth his or her salt. There's still a bit of the requisite gore and animal death, though neither are quite as heightened as they were in the first. (A warning to the squeamish, the animal footage involves Monika and her lady-gang of death-loving friends watching footage of a dead seal getting dissected. It's really gross but given that the animal was already dead and the video in question looks clinical in nature, it is still a far cry from the cruelty-tango of the Italian cannibal films of the 70's.)

It is inconceivable to think that out of the two Nekromantik films, this was the one that was quickly seized by German authorities, just a mere 12 days after its initial release. To the extent that they even attempted, and mercifully failed, to find and destroy that actual negative. The reasoning? It allegedly “glorified violence.” Never mind that the first one had more violence or even worse, the numerous Hollywood action films that were more inherently immoral in their revery of death and maiming. Especially coming off the heels of the 80's, where people were consistently being used as pure blow-up fodder for the beefy, gun wielding hero du jour. Case in point: Which film has a higher body count? Nekromantik 2 or any of the Rambo films? Exactly.

Luckily for us, Nekromantik 2 is still here and is out via another gorgeous blu ray release from Cult Epics. If there's a supplement you would want, this film has it, from director commentary to a behind-the-scenes-featurette to trailers and even a moment of silence via a home video peek into Jorg and friends' road trip to Ed Gein's gravesite. This whole release is a fitting tribute to a great film and director.

Nekromantik 2 is further proof that out of the unholy hordes of indie filmmakers that emerged out of the 1980's, few are true auteurs like Buttgereit. There was and is no director out in the cinematic landscape quite like him. Even if 8,000 foolhards tried to imitate him, they would fail because a real artist has their own unique fingerprint and that is Jorg Buttgereit all the way. 

Copyright 2015 Heather Drain 

I Love the Dead: Jorg Buttgereit's NEKROMANTIK

It takes a hardy artistic soul to explore cultural taboos with a flat-out bare-knuckles, wild Turk type of approach. But it takes an even hardier (and often, beautifully mad!) artistic soul to incorporate comedy with said culturally taboo exploration. Ladies and gents, let me pull back the curtain and introduce you to Jorg Buttgereit's 1988 underground classic, NEKROMANTIK. It's not the first film to delve into the topic of romancing the dead, since an earlier example of that would be the Lyle Waggoner wonder LOVE ME DEADLY from 1973, but it is truly unlike anything made past, present and future. Necrophilia or not.

Looking like a cross between a scratchy handwritten note and bathroom graffiti, the film opens with, “Warning! Some of this film may be seen as 'grossly' offensive & should not be shown to minors!!!” That kind of lurid hullabaloo can only mean that you are either in for a fun smear-on-your-soul kind of dark ride or a just bad carnival ride. Mercifully, it is the former. After that, the actual opening begins with a woman peeing by the side of the road at night. As she is relieving herself, her flowery panties splayed, her male companion starts yelling at her from the driver's side to hurry up. Getting back in the car, they almost get hit by one car and then as he starts to bitch more about her small bladder, it's time to cue up the Bloodrock since they get in a nasty and very fatal car wreck.

The beginning credits roll over the highly gruesome crash site, including the woman being not so neatly bisected and her partner's eye dangling from his newly empty socket. Soon the J.S.A. (Joe's Streetcleaning Agency) show up to tidy up the accident scene. The newest member of the crew, Robert (Daktari Lorenz), despite constantly irritating his team's leader, quietly enjoys his job. To the extent of bringing home little mementos---this time around being the driver's now completely severed eyeball. In a beautifully composed sequence, we get to see Robert, in his Ed Gein-meets-junkie-esque pit apartment, meticulously prepare a jar of (presumably) embalming fluid for him to place his newest acquisition in. There's a great shot of some of his previous souvenirs, including a hand, some organ meat and what looks like a fetus. (Hey, it beats the hell out of Precious Moments figurines.)

He's greeted by his girlfriend, Bettie (Beatrice M.) who shares Robert's enthusiasm for the dead and their assorted bits. Later on, she takes a bath in some especially ruddy looking water while the sounds of an academic discussion involving fear, desensitization and even, briefly, the video nasties, plays in the background. The sound is emanating from Robert's television. As fear and the confrontation of it continues on, it triggers a particular troubling flashback for him, inter-cutting footage of a live rabbit being killed and promptly skinned with Robert performing an autopsy of sorts on a corpse and removing some lard-type gunk out of the incision. Adding to the no fun ambiance is the quite brilliant white noise soundtrack. The whole sequence is hard to watch but so well put together that it puts you through a seesaw effect of compelling and wanting to look away from your screen.

An interstitial sequence involving apple picking and the dangers of doing so near a drunken German redneck who is listening to military-style music and trying to kill innocent birds plays out. (Here's a hint. It doesn't end too well for our intrepid apple picker.) The J.S.A. are called on an unrelated case, this time involving removing a long decomposed body out of a pond. (One of Robert's teammates remarks, “Picked a good day to go swimming!”) Everyone goes home and Robert's boss tells him to take over the wheel, leaving him alone with the husked out, waterlogged corpse. Faster than you can throw on Alice Cooper's “Cold Ethyl,” Robert brings the body home, to a very delighted Bettie. It has been said that necessity is the mother of all invention and as Robert saws off part of a pipe, the truth of this old saying has never been brighter. Attaching the metal form of a luscious apparatus to their new “friend,” Bettie makes sure to sheath it with a condom before one of the strangest menage-a-trois' ever to be committed to film occurs. It is, despite all of its tawdry eyeball licking and rot-goo glory, strangely arty and as tasteful as a three-way with a drowned corpse is going to be. Also, I absolutely dare you not to get what I am going to call “Love Theme from Nekromantik” out of your head. It's a strangely sweet tune that is more befitting of a chaste lovers holding hands in a field than rubbing your naughty bits up on a putrefied body. 

The afterglow is nice but things soon deteriorate when Robert loses his job and Bettie, worried about where they will find the next one, ends up leaving him. Everyone has a breaking point and for Robert, Bettie's terse departure is it. His path of self-destruction leads him from drinking to killing a cat (in a mercifully faked scene) and inevitably, murder. There's also a hilarious dream sequence involving a lovely maiden in white and playing a game of hot potato with a severed head. All of this leads him to one fluid and anguished climax, which I dare not spoil here. You just really need to see this for yourself, not to mention the sweet little twist ending.

For being only 75 minutes, NEKROMANTIK packs a lot into its fairly short running time. Having first read about it back when I was in junior high and managed to find an issue of the long defunct magazine, Film Threat Video, I thought I knew what kind of ride I would be in for. The associated still, a shot of Beatrice M. cuddling up to her long dead amour, flanked by a picture of Charles Manson on the wall, backed my assumption up. But NEKROMANTIK is more than just an extreme tale of the love that is hopefully outlawed in your home country. Sure, it has plenty of inventive uses of gore, ooze, goo and outre imagery to horrify your family and delight your more hardy friends. But if NEKROMANTIK was simply just another gross-out gore film, it would not have the level of notoriety that it does today.

For starters, despite its extremely DIY origins, complete with being originally shot on Super 8mm and taking around two years to complete, the film is incredibly well made. There is some great camera work that is utilized with a keen eye on composition, especially during the sequence when Robert finds out Bettie has left him. Another visually remarkable scene is when Robert and Bettie sit down to eat dinner. As they smile and eat quietly in the bright primary red room, the film keeps cutting back to the squalid gray of where their lover is hanging on the wall. It's a truly rich juxtaposition. Equaling the cinematography is the editing, which is tight and rhythmic when it needs to be. There's some especially great editing during Robert's meltdown, where the film is cut back and forth between him murdering the stray cat and burning a picture of Bettie. Then there's the soundtrack, which is terrific and ranges from schmaltzy love tones to industrial white noise. The fact that one of the composers is credited as “John Boy Walton” makes it all the better. The acting is fun with both Daktari Lorenz (who is also credited as one of the composers) and Beatrice M. being especially good as the young, attractive and damaged necrophiliacs in love. There could not have been better casting. Also, keep an eye out for director Buttgereit as one of Robert's co-workers at the J.S.A.

Director Jorg Buttgereit with the film's love interest.

Buttgereit, who had made a number of film shorts (including HOT LOVE, whose poster you can see in the film when Robert goes to a local movie theater) before his feature film debut with NEKROMANTIK, manages to do the near-impossible and deftly include both a fabulously twisted sense of humor as well as genuine horror. Merging the worlds of comedy and horror can be tricky, which is why most films that have tried are usually terrible. (There are exceptions, but that is a different article!) Buttgereit handles it like a director twice his age and three times as experienced. (He was only in his early 20's when he started shooting NEKROMANTIK.) The fact that you have this humor juxtaposed with gruesome imagery and a subject matter that is automatically going to put a lot of viewers in an extremely uncomfortable head space is borderline Artaud-like. It is a queasy but needed combination. It's healthy. After all, art can only hurt you if you let it.

Formerly available via Film Threat Video and Barrel Entertainment, NEKROMANTIK has found a new home in the US via Cult Epics. Thanks to them, the film is now available in a definitive edition of the film and on Blu Ray to boot! This release includes both a HD transfer of the original Super 8mm negative, as well as the “Grindhouse” version that was taken from the film's sole 35mm print. The former features the film looking as crisp as Super 8mm footage shot in the mid-80's is ever going to look and the latter features the film looking especially gritty and murky. Interestingly enough, one of the disc's extras includes Buttgereit introducing this version at a film festival and noting that it was his favorite since it looked more “dirty.” Which is pretty apt. In addition to these two versions, there is also a director's commentary, a “Making Of” featurette, the aforementioned HOT LOVE short and the gem itself, the film's soundtrack. It's a beautiful release of a still very much controversial and striking film.

One of the most inspirational lessons that one can take from NEKROMANTIK (and there's a sentence I have always wanted to type out) is that it is proof that you can be a film school reject with limited resources and finances and still make something that is potent enough for people to still be shocked, repulsed and entertained by twenty plus years down the road. With the right vision, tenacity and attention to technical film details that you don't need a lot of money for, like good editing, framing and music, you can create something unforgettable too. Even better is that Buttgereit is still working on film to this day, including a segment on the upcoming anthology film GERMAN ANGST. Like any true fringe film, it's not for everyone but if it was, where would the fun be in that? Let other people watch the latest codified, bloated boring-as-beige Hollywood epic. Thanks to film distributors like Cult Epics and artists like Buttgereit, we have better alternatives.

Copyright 2014 Heather Drain