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What better way to open a classy flick like Jorg Buttgereit’s NEKROMANTIK than with a quote by some guy named V.L. Compton who no one seems to have ever heard of. “What Lives that does not live from the death of someone else?” Very heavy. While weighing all of the existential ramifications that come with this quote I tried not to get get too distracted by the opening scene of a lady micturating a stream of cola colored piss on the side of a road while arguing with her gent waiting in his car. She shakes off, pulls up her brightly colored german underwear and hops back into the car where the couple continue to yack to each other until they get into an accident, such is love isn’t it folks! Eventually the wrecked car is happened upon by a truck belonging to Joe’s Street Cleaning; a business that is like a coroner mixed with a crime scene cleanup. The group of street cleaners round up the split in half corpse of the lady and place her remains into a body bag- in Germany this must translate to garbage bag because thats about the extent of dignity these corpses get. One of the street cleaners slyly pulls out the deceased man’s bulging eye and slips it into his pocket before the rest of the crew saw off the door and pull the man out of the mangled wreckage. The crew make haste with lifting the bags of people parts like none of them give a shit about their spinal health, load the truck and off they go.
Ordinarily if I saw a guy slip an eye or finger into his pocket at a crime scene I wouldn’t think too much of it, maybe they needed it more than the dead person did. But in the case of Rob the Street Cleaner, there is a little more to his being than meets the eye. See Rob and his lady Betty live in an apartment that is the german equivalent to Leatherface’s house. They have jars of eyes, hearts, fetus’, bone adornments all over their bed, and all sorts of other wacky shit that would make that apartment probably reek like a pile of used condoms and tampons put in a microwave. At home the couple are just like you and me though: they take baths in blood, listen to the radio, watch television, fantasize about eviscerating people, and think about farmers bleeding a rabbit to death then ripping it’s fur off.
While this seems all well and fine, across town some kooky redneck is fucking around with a gun in his backyard and accidentally kills his gay neighbor who was minding his own business picking green apples. Just like the rednecks in Mississippi, this one thinks fast and gets a wheel barrel to cart off the dead neighbor into a swamp where he rots until Joe’s Street Cleaning arrives to retrieve the body. By the time the crew arrive on scene the gay apple picker exhibits advanced signs of decomposition, like being a gray, half skeletal soupy mess. This time though the rest of the crew task Rob with taking the body back to the business because they got shit to do. And now friends, the fun starts.
Rob gets home and alerts his honey to his sack of soupy man. Like they’ve done it before, the couple saw a pipe in half, jam it into the pelvis of the corpse, roll a condom on and off they go.....like clockwork. For as much fun as this would seem, visually it comes across a lot like the threeways I’ve had: the lady is really into it but I’m stuck trying to encourage the boring old corpse into being a little more enthusiastic and put forth a fuckin’ effort. Afterwards the couple hang the corpse on the wall next to a picture of a chick spreading her baby tunnel and Rob prepares a giant slab of meat for he and Betty to eat.
Unfortunately as recording artist Nelly Furtado has warned us through mind numbingly stupid music, all good things must come to an end. Rob is fired from his job and Betty looses her mind over the fact they have lost the source of steady body parts to put in jars AND new sexual partners. Like most heartbroken assholes, Rob buys a cat as a peace offering only to find a note left by Betty reading she took the corpse and split. Time to turn on Motorhead, get drunk as hell, and call all the old flames and ex-girlfriends-no wait that’s what I do when I get dumped. Rob goes to watch a skin flick where a girl gets her tit stabbed 85 times then trolls the streets for hookers. THAT A BOY! After settling for the 6th most attractive hooker they go to the cemetery to have a bit of the “in and out” but for Rob it’s just not the same and he needs a little something extra! So he kills the chick and lands one of the best erections in his life. Talk about NIGHT OF GIVING IT TO THE DEAD ay fellas? (P.S. Night of Giving it to the Dead is copyrighted by me jerks!)
Rob is one of those romantic-types though, and leading a life of killing hookers to get a boner doesn’t seem all that it’s cracked up to be. In truth he misses his german honey bunny and can’t see it worthwhile to live without her. After spending sometime watching a hairy caterpillar crawl on his arm, which would usually inspire whimsical thought and youthful magic, he goes home to stab himself in the stomach multiple times and ejaculate long, thick strands of bloody semen. I imagine the people who found Rob’s corpse had enough jokes to last a lifetime or are in therapy forever. Rob’s final action might have been the right move to reunite him with Betty though because the closing scene in NEKROMANTIK has a high heel jamming a shovel into the mound of dirt that lazy grave diggers couldn’t bother to flatten out.
NEKROMANTIK is a fun watch and aesthetically it looks as grimy as the subject matter. It could be written off as “a movie about fucking corpses” and if it was treated that way by the filmmaker I don’t think anyone would give two shits about it after 25 years, but people do and that is a testament to the unique vision presented by the writer/director Jorg Buttgereit. There are many layers to the movie to mull over and Rob’s character and all of his wacky problems are portrayed well - not corny. There are a few things that stand out to me as unrealistic to the point of being annoying though. The first being the body removal team and their work ethic and methods are very impractical and unrealistic. No gloves, slinging corpse parts into thin garbage bags, and lifting people with their backs not their legs are just a few examples. Also the corpse lover himself would never have maintained his structural integrity like he did, that shell of rotted meat would have been human stew being taken away in numerous heavy duty disaster bags. On the plus side though for me at least these details detract enough away from reality to make the movie not very realistic and maybe that is why it doesn’t bother me to watch and enjoy it.
On a side note, this is the greatest movie poster in history.
Blake and Jimmy’s Extreme-O-Gauge!
Violence/Gore: 3 out of 5, a little unrealistic but fun none-the-less.
Rape: 0 out of 0, can’t rape the dead.
Animal Death: 3 out of 5, the scene of a bunny being bled to death and having it’s fur ripped off is sad.
Necrophilia: 5 out of 5, c’mon, this is like Led Zeppelin IV of necrophiliac movies folks!
Torture: 2 out of 5, although Rob had a mega boner, stabbing himself repeatedly didn’t look fun.
Overall Movie: 4 out of 5, good watch and highly recommended.
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