By Keri O’Shea
Nekromantik must be one of the most often-discussed, yet least-seen pieces of shock cinema which ever came lurching out of the 80s – that is, seen in its entirety at least. Here in the UK you could get hold of it, as you could most things, but not in any legitimate form – and many people will have seen the most controversial moments of the film (i.e. the necrophilia) without seeing much more of it. Certainly, it seems strange, twenty-six years or so after the initial furore surrounding Buttgereit’s gonzo spin on life, sex and death, to be sitting down to an above-board copy – much less a copy which has recently sailed straight past the BBFC without any incident. You could almost swear our film censors had finally got the distinction between fantasy and reality, had they not recently effectively banned a whole host of sex acts, almost as if to remind us that they can still make things interesting for everyone. Now, in 2014, we have the bizarre situation where corpse fucking is acceptable, yet female ejaculation doesn’t exist. But, I digress…and at least in the case of Nekromantik, thanks to the good folk at Arrow, we can all now see for ourselves what the tremendous fuss has been all about.
Well, any conventional sense of plot is rather low in the mix here, but such as it is, we follow the short and brutish story of an everyday German citizen called Rob Schmadtke. Rob works for a cleansing crew, whose role is essentially to bag up any body parts which ill fortune should see fit to scatter over the German roadsides (and this happens a fair amount). He doesn’t seem to fit in very well with the rest of the guys, and this may or may not be why he so often decides to take his work home with him to his dilapidated apartment and his girlfriend Betty, who seems not only fine with his collection of preserved body parts, but positively enthusiastic – especially when he carts home a badly-decomposed drowning victim for her to play with. Still, the course of true love never did run smooth. It seems like our Rob has lots of repressed issues, and when he finally loses his job, Betty decides to leave, taking her cadaver with her – though how this pastime will go down with the rich man she hopes to find is less than clear at this stage…
Now alone, Rob’s sense of abandonment and rage spills over into acts of sexual violence (or at least, violence motivated by sex), and that sexual violence is soon directed inward too, in the most literal way. All of this, mind, is refracted through a hazy mix of hallucinations, repressed memory, bizarre asides and even a film-within-a-film. Neat and linear, this ain’t.
First things first, cards on the table and other clichés; I don’t think Nekromantik is a good film. Or, rather, for me, it barely functions as a film at all – which would seem to tie in with what the director himself thinks. I think there’s always a danger of Emperor’s New Clothes when a film has built up such a hefty reputation as this one has, but in terms of my engagement with this film, there’s little to be had. The characterisation is so minimal, the key players seem only to be there to loosely link various amateurish, unpleasant tableaux together, and a lot of the inclusions here are by turns ridiculous and deeply, deeply crude. In its efforts to demonstrate the links between life and death, the conflation between each is about as subtle as, well, a spade to the head. I never want to see animals being killed on screen. The film as a whole has an almost childish obsession with body parts and bodily fluids, and an unholy triumvirate of blood-cum-piss punctuates the film throughout, leading up to a dippy conclusion worthy only of GWAR (or maybe Rammstein?) So, Nekromantik is squalid, it’s disjointed and it’s often baffling. It’s not a good film, and I don’t find it enjoyable.
However, for all its zero subtlety, it’s still an unsettling film, and that is what makes it remain worthwhile. I felt that, despite my growing intolerance for its barrage of have-a-go gore (which has a great deal in common with 1987’s Bad Taste) and the deliberate shock value of, say, having a pretty lady affixing a length of piping to a corpse’s crotch just so she can ride it (with the addition of a condom probably not making the sex all that much safer) the film still has a mesmerising effect all of its own. There’s real atmosphere here, whether you like said atmosphere or not. The grainy, gritty film quality (which hasn’t been dressed up at all for Generation Blu-ray); the overpowering, almost-constant soundtrack; the relentless montage of challenging visuals and subject matter; you can’t argue with the disturbing and memorable qualities which Nekromantik has to offer, and even if you may prefer some of its descendants – the Goroticas and Thanatomorphoses of this world, maybe – seeing the film in this format, with Herr Buttgereit’s blessing, is something else.
Arrow Film’s upcoming release is, and I’m sorry to sound like a broken record whenever I mention Arrow, surely the definitive version of this film, with a huge raft of extra features which help to contextualise and flesh out (!) the film’s legacy as part arthouse project, part cathartic censor-bait. Look out for a tonne of commentaries, an original interview with the director, a different, ‘Grindhouse’ version of the film, short films and music videos by Buttgereit and a range of visual goodies – to name but a few, and rather than have me paraphrase more of them, I strongly suggest you go and see what’s on offer. The whole package looks superb with original artwork too, of course.
Maybe there’s never going to be any real consensus on whether Nekromantik is experimental claptrap or genius gung-ho indie cinema, but I’d strongly advise you check out the whole deal yourselves: if nothing else, it’s certainly one that will stay with you, and the more and more films there are out there, the less and less I seem to find myself saying that.
Nekromantik will be released on Blu-ray by Arrow Films & Video on December 15th 2014.