Nekromantik (1988) User Reviews

One heck of a moist movie.

[Ky-D · 6/10 · 6 April 2005]

I have a penchant for applying my own little award system to genre pictures. "Salo" takes the most disturbing award; "Dead Alive" (aka Brain Dead) wins the goriest film award; "Caligula" runs away with the most over-sexed honor. Well, film lovers, here we have my vote for nastiest film ever. If you've seen it, you know why.

The story concerns a young couple with a predilection for all things dead. This works out well for them, as the boyfriend works for a crime scene clean-up crew. As luck would have it, one day he comes across a rather well preserved corpse ('rather well' as in it's a rotted, blue hunk of tissue) while on duty. He manages to sneak the body home, much to the delight of his lady-friend, and they go about having their dirty little way with it. It soon becomes clear that the girl is enjoying the company of the corpse more than her still breathing boyfriend and runs off with it. Needless to say, this does nothing healthy for his already deranged mental state (being dumped for another guy is bad, being dumped for a dead one is even worse).

Believe it or not, watching them have sex with the gooey body is NOT the nastiest thing you'll see here. All manners of assorted atrocities are committed for your viewing un-pleasure, most all of them rank in the 'so sick you can hardly watch' category. I will not spoil the best of them, just rest assured that gore-hounds will most certainly be pleased (if not disgusted).

For better or worse, the film is not very competently made. The corpse and gore effects are very good, but the film stock and technique are both pretty sub-standard. And with the script being so barren and the acting merely passable, the shock moments are all that will keep hardened viewers watching 'till the gruesome conclusion.

If you are looking for good story telling, look else where. If you're looking for a good sex flick, look else where. If you are looking for the ultimate stomach churner, you've found it.

6/10

shocking movie..!!

[lokhandes · 6/10 · 9 June 2018]

After watching salo and serbian film i thought nothing could be worse than this... but nekromantik is step forward than other sick movies. the story is so simple easy to understand but representation is so shocking and yuck..!! it is based on 'necrophilia'. this is not the movie that i can watch again in my life. hats off to actors (i don't know how did they sign such role). overall it's good to watch once in life (not for weak heart people).

Love and death and gruesomeness.

[Hey_Sweden · 6/10 · 13 December 2014]

Robert Schmadtke (Bernd Daktari Lorenz) is a young man working for a street cleaning business. Therefore, he's able to pursue his fetish of fooling around with dead bodies and dead body parts. He takes prizes home to his willing girlfriend Betty (Beatrice Manowski), who shares his passion. However, things start to head South when he brings home an entire corpse that was fished out of a swamp. Soon after, he is fired, and the fed-up Betty decides to leave him - taking the corpse with her. Robert deals with this problem the only way that he knows how.

Co-writer / director Jorg Buttgereit - who actually wore a number of hats on this show - deserves at least some respect for committing himself so thoroughly to portraying absolute filth and nastiness on screen. This may be one of the wettest, grossest films that trash fans are likely to see. The filmmaking is crude, and the makeup effects are tacky, but this adds to the admittedly arresting experience. The rather beautiful music makes for the perfect counterpoint to everything happening on screen. Lorenz and Manowski deliver sincere performances, and Buttgereit creates an overwhelmingly sordid atmosphere.

Some viewers will be advised to stay FAR away. However, if one dares to immerse themselves in a very oddly romantic and poetic ode to the wonders of necrophilia, they may find the proceedings to their liking.

NOT recommended for cat and rabbit lovers.

Six out of 10.

The art of horror

[DJ Inferno · 5 March 2002]

Obviously filmed on super8-format Jörg Buttgereit´s masterpiece "Nekromantik" looks much more professional and expensive than it´s actually is! Being banned in many countries the most people only see a depraved and disgusting horror movie in it, but to me it is a disturbing, but simultaneously beautiful film about a weird fetish! The whole film is surrounded by an almost apocalyptic poetry and the wonderful piano score emphazises the sinister death-is-everywhere atmosphere perfectly! Some may be offended by gross scenes like the suicide masturbation, the autopsy, the rabbit dissection, the beheading of an old cemetery gardener or the climax when Robert and Betty have sex with the corpse (A very esthetical scene by the way...), but exactly that´s the stuff which makes this movie so unique: the surreal combination of bizarre symbolic, gore and dream like mood! Watch it whenever wherever you can!

A cult classic perhaps, but that doesn't mean it is a good movie...

[paul_haakonsen · 2/10 · 1 January 2019]

I finally got around to watching "Nekromantik", despite it being a cult movie in the genre. I just never had the time, nor the chance to get to watch it. I finally managed to get my cold, dead hands - hint, hint - on a DVD copy and got to watch it.

So was it all it was cranked up to be? No. Not even by a longshot. Sure, there were some rather unsettling moments in the movie, I had never seen this kind of necrophilia in a movie, and it was rather graphic (just as a word of warning to those not having seen the movie yet). But of course, this is a movie that you watch solely for the shock effects, because there is nothing even resembling an interesting storyline here, and the movie is just full of flaws.

As for the acting, well let's just say bless them for trying. You shouldn't go expecting award winning acting performances here. You know what you are getting yourself into with a movie such as "Nekromantik" and sure enough, you will not be disappointed.

The music in the movie was horrible, and it was unfathomably unfitting for the movie. It was way too upbeat and energetic. It just would have served the movie so much better with dark, somber music instead.

"Nekromantik" does, of course, also have a totally unnecessary amount of nudity in it, which doesn't really serve any purpose and doesn't really help to further whatever little of a storyline there actually was present. Just felt like an excuse to throw in the showing of naked people as well. And within the first 5 minutes of the movie, you have seen someone peeing twice... Again, to what purpose? None!

The effects in the movie were adequate. Not great, mind you, but they served their purpose well enough. The corpse was actually fairly nicely made and it was the main attraction of the movie - in more ways than just one.

I didn't understand why the staff working at JSA didn't wear protective masks and gloves while handling the deceased. It just made absolutely no sense. Using bare hands, and then seen several times throughout the movie with their hands at the faces, scratching their eyes, etc. They should be so sick from the exposure to the decaying corpses, as should the girlfriend whom made love to the corpse.

But of course, the movie is all about shock effect and shock value. And yes, there is something to that. I haven't seen necrophilia this explicit before, so that was a new for me, and it was somewhat gross. Somewhat. Takes a lot to throw off a seasoned horror veteran like me. But seeing the rabbit being killed on screen was a bit too visual for me, I didn't like watching that. One thing is seeing staged necrophilia with a prosthetic corpse, another thing is seeing a real, live animal killed.

All in all, not a very noteworthy movie. I have seen it now, and will never see it again, so I can tick it off of my watched-movie-list now.

Sick! Disturbing! Gory! ...but what a piece of garbage

[The_Void · 4/10 · 11 January 2006]

I didn't stumble on this film by accident; in fact, I purposefully sought it out, and I'm glad I did - but only because now I'm not searching any more. I feel like a bit of a hypocrite for criticising this film for being sick, given that many of my favourite movies can be described with the same adjective; but Nekromantik crosses a line, and it doesn't even do it in a way that's interesting. The movie features quite a few brutal and sickening scenes, but most of them have no relevance to the plot; and even the ones that do don't serve the film in the way that they should. Nekromantik looks like a trashy piece of crap, and make no mistake; that's exactly what it is. As if the title doesn't give it away, the plot handles the theme of necrophilia. We follow a sewage worker who brings home body parts for his twisted girlfriend. One day, he manages to lay his hands on a full corpse; and unlike most women, she is delighted with this present. We then get 'treated' to seeing the three of them (...) in bed together, etc etc and it's all very difficult to enjoy.

The film obviously wants to examine love; but it just continually fails. No points are made, even the fact that the girlfriend ends up choosing the corpse over her man isn't explored at all. It would seem that the sick pervert who wrote it had a great idea about making a film that handles two of life's most important elements; namely, love and death, but had no idea of exactly how he would go about doing it. The result is this film. Necrophilia is, undoubtedly, a perverse subject; but it's also one that automatically generates intrigue, yet this film also fails even in that respect. The whole plot line is just too silly to take seriously; and even if you look at the movie as a black comedy, it still fails because it's not funny. The necrophilia element isn't even the most shocking thing about this movie; the most shocking things are the animal violence (pointless), and the fact that some people actually like this film! If I really had to come up with positive things about Nekromantik, I would say that I liked the score; and the fact that it's not on for long is a very good thing. On the whole, this movie is a piece of garbage - don't waste your time! Wayward cinema has produced far more satisfying gore-porn flicks than this.

Truly awful.

[gridoon · 2/10 · 27 March 2002]

Alternately disgustingly gory and terminally boring, this is clearly a film that tries to coast along on sheer shock value, because it has nothing else of merit to recommend. Technically, it's about as bad as any movie you're ever likely to see (aside from the fairly good gore effects), and the director appears to be a man sick beyond comprehension. (0)

Sick gore fest not for many people

[czar-10 · 7/10 · 15 October 2000]

For the uninitiated, Nekromantik is one of the most notorious horror movies ever made. It may actually be reviled more than it is admired, even in horror circles, but it's one of those few movies that's provocative, in the truest sense of the word. Nekromantik is the story of a nice young couple with unusual sexual proclivities. Specifically, in order to get off, they require congress with a human corpse -- or at least a nice selection of pickled organs. Fortunately for these two, the fella (Daktari Lorenz) has a good job on the clean-up crew that tidies up automobile accidents, and eventually winds up with a real find, a half-rotten carcass dragged out of a swamp. He brings it home, where he and Betty (Beatrice M.) give it a warm welcome in a distended love scene involving a striking optical-printing technique that leaves motion trails on the screen as someone (presumably Lorenz, who doubled as composer of the score) pounds out the lyrical love theme on a piano. It's not all hugs and corpses, however, and when Betty abandons Rob after a tiff, the corpse goes with her.

The best way to totally waste your time

[ard_cd_8x · 1/10 · 23 December 2007]

It is with great difficulty that I can find words to describe this movie, and I am being generous calling it a movie. If you give a 5 year old a camera he will record a better movie than this. There is no story line, no action, ...no movie. The first impression is that they didn't give you the right movie, but I can honestly say that this is the worst movie ever. I can appreciate any genre but this "thing" cannot be called a movie. All that the producers tried to do is shock with the graphic scenes, and they miserably fail even at this simple task. I cannot imagine what could be appreciated at this movie, the soundtrack is absent, and there is no logic in the script, a simple look at the scenes will surface a lot of abnormalities that one would never encounter in the daily routine. In conclusion, don't waste your time, read a newspaper or look outside your window, you will be left with much more that after watching this movie.

Politically incendiary filmmaking ...

[cafm · 7/10 · 13 January 2015]

Buttgereit has proved himself to be first and foremost a filmmaker concerned with Germany's political and social past and present. That past of course includes the unfathomable horror of concentration camps and the deliberate execution of over nine million people who did not conform to the values and aspirations of the Third Reich. How does one represent this particularly dark moment in not only Germany's past, but in human history? What other horrors are humans capable of? Contemporary Germany remains unresolved to this part of its history and filmmakers like Buttgereit have set themselves the task of thrusting it in their faces. Watched literally, his Nekromantik films are buffoonish meaningless projects concerned with exploiting taboo topics and turning even the hardiest of stomachs. Indeed, regardless of how one approaches Buttgereit's film, it is hard to watch, but that is his point. What other describe as the film's "poor" production values and "bad" performances are all conceived to contribute to the overall pessimism and rage that underscores the film. Buttgereit deliberately embraces a trash aesthetic as it fits in with his intentions to disturb, repulse and offend.

Gross.... Pure Gross

[lthseldy1 · 4/10 · 21 December 2003]

This movie is the sickest movie that I have ever seen. One good thing about the movie is that it did have a decent plot during the movie enough for me to go by. I couldn't believe some of the scenes that I was watching and I had to even close my eyes during the scenes of animal mutilation. This one is a good one to churn your stomach a little, or a lot. I would definitely recommend this one to anyone into some real gross stuff, give this one a look.

Hard To Say...

[CMRKeyboadist · 8/10 · 22 May 2006]

I have to admit that I like this film. At the same time, I don't know whether or not I can sit through it again. Jorg Buttgeireit proves himself as quite a revolutionary director in this field of film-making, and since has gone on to make even better films.

Nekromantik is actually not a very complicated story. Robert and Betty are in love. Robert and Betty have some sick fetish's. Robert works for a company that cleans up dead bodies, and one day Robert brings home a rather rotten cadaver pulled out from a swamp. When I say rotten, I mean disgustingly rotten. Well, after Robert and Betty have a rather disgusting threesome with there new found friend, Robert gets fired from his job. It is at this point that Betty leaves him and takes the rotten corpse with her. The rest of the movie is Robert trying to cope with his loss.

This movie has to be seen to believe. I wouldn't recommend this to just the average horror fan. You have to be wanting to look for something new. In my case, I had seen everything. My collection of horror films is in the hundreds. But I hadn't seen this. The second film is rather good also, and I am having a hard time deciding which movie had the sickest ending. I hope this comment helps. 8/10

A strong, sickening gross-out cult film from Germany.

[capkronos · 7/10 · 14 July 2003]

Rob (Daktari Lorenz) works days cleaning dead bodies up from fatal car crashes on the Autobahn, develops a sick fascination with death and collects body parts and internal organs which he stores in mason jars back at his cramped apartment. In order to spice up a rocky relationship with his equally disturbed necro girlfriend (Beatrice M), he brings home a rotted corpse for a ménage-a-troix, which backfires when she decides she prefers the stiff to him!

The grainy, low-budget feel adds extra oomph to the shock value, not to mention some gritty atmosphere, and there is certainly enough depraved sickness to go around, including one of the most twisted and memorable endings in horror history. In addition to all the simulated gore, a real rabbit is killed and skinned, there are some hilariously misplaced "artistic" touches and loads of full (often unappealing) nudity. Film Threat offers a subtitled and unrated (would be X) version, and its 1989 sequel, NEKROMANTIK 2: RETURN OF THE LOVING DEAD.

uneven

[naughty69 · 5/10 · 5 April 2005]

Lots of gore and shocking moments, but no psychological momentum at all. The characters are not developed and you couldn't care less about them. They just act like puppets of the director doing disgusting thins to offend.

I give the movie credit for not been squeamish about its subject matter. But in the end the lack of real interest becomes obvious and it takes over the initial shock, leaving us with a soulless, amateur-looking movie with scenes that you probably wont forget on a visceral level, but that wont resonate in your brain.

So, is it recommended? Yes, if you are into mindless gore. But if you look for a strong story with compelling characters, look somewhere else.

Oh man this is bad

[timhayes-1 · 1/10 · 16 January 2007]

After years of hearing about how shocking and disgusting this film was I finally sat down to view it. What a monumental waste of my time. I can't recall a film that I have viewed recently that was so utterly without merit. It just reeked of cheapness. From horrid cinematography to cheap effects there isn't much here. Even the scenes supposed to shock you are really that shocking. Maybe because its hard to tell what's going on since the director filmed in soft focus and constantly layered the edits to give a hallucinogenic effect. I found it all kind of dull and pointless. Sorry, screwing a corpse just isn't my idea of a good time.

View at your own risk! This is some of the nastiest stuff I've ever seen. Yet it strangely fascinated me at times as well.

[callanvass · 5/10 · 23 August 2013]

With a title like Nekromantik, you should know what you're getting into. As I was watching this movie; there are plenty of times where I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I have seen many controversial films over the years, and I can honestly say this is in my top 10. I'm gonna do my best not to spoil things too much, but here are some examples. Our necrophilia addict is a guy named Robert. He can't get an erection unless a woman is dead, so he starts murdering people and having sex with them after. He also brings home a corpse for him and his wife to enjoy… That's not all though. He kills animal and bathes with their body parts. When it's not busy trying to be explicitly offensive, it's busy doing plenty of padding. There are some scenes that were pointless. There is an ongoing scene in the film that repeats itself. It's a skinning of a rabbit (which managed to make my stomach churn) but there are also many scenes of Robert walking around and doing nothing of note. I get the feeling there wasn't enough stuff for a full length feature, so the director resorted to padding. I won't reveal the ending, but it is what one of the most messed up scenes I have ever seen in my life. You wanna know why this is banned in places? The ending most likely has plenty to do with it. I guarantee you that you'll have trouble getting aroused for a day after or so. I know I did

Final thoughts: This won't be for everyone, that's an understatement. I got some strange satisfaction from it, but it's not something I'm ever going to watch again. It was downright horrifying, and did what it set out to do. Believe the hype… it's something else

5.5/10

Bored out of my meal

[p-stepien · 1/10 · 16 October 2010]

You know something is wrong with a movie, when you watch fast forward it out of pure boredom. Especially if it's only a measly 75 minutes long. This ode - or whatever - to grossness in cinema is pseudo-art-house horror with a bit of necroporn put in for good measure. Some pretend that this movie is intelligent and has second layers, but I was too disinterested with the flick to really have an opinion. As far as I'm concerned some people are just trying too hard to pin a cult status to this movie.

There is no real plot to the movie. A guy, who works as a cleaner in a mortuary, has a common craze for corpses with his girl. One day he steals a corpse for their pleasure, they copulate with it and than... well who cares. A couple of animal murder scenes, bad gore and bloody ejaculation later the movie thankfully comes to a close... With a lot of pointless overlenghty scenes for good measure.

By the way - did I mention the acting is terrible? Even for a horror movie.

Interesting Arthouse Film of Counter-Culture

[Reviews_of_the_Dead · 7/10 · 5 December 2019]

This film is one that I never heard about until getting into podcasts. I actually heard one of my favorite shows to listen to cover this as well as other films from the director, Jörg Buttgereit. It definitely was one that made me nervous to check out, but also excited me. This was actually the midnight movie on Friday at the Nightmares Film Festival, so my first viewing was on the big screen. The synopsis is a street sweeper who cleans up after grisly accidents brings home a full corpse for him and his girlfriend to enjoy sexually, but he realizes that she might like the corpse more than him.

We start this off with a woman that is urinating outside. She gets back into the car with her husband and the two of them end up getting into an accident, with both being killed. Through this we meet our main character who is a street sweeper for a company called 'Joe's Cleaning Agency'. Our main character is Rob (Bernd Daktari Lorenz). He doesn't really get along that well with his co-workers, but when he returns home, we see that this is the perfect job for him. He steals body parts and keeps them in jars. He also lives with his girlfriend, Betty (Beatrice Manowski), who also shares the same interests.

The film then goes a bit artsy here where we see an interview on television of a psychiatrist on how people can overcome their fears as well as seeing a man killing a rabbit. He then skins it. The next images are of a man who is hunting and accidentally kills a gardener. The body is discarded in a pond nearby.

This brings Rob and his crew to clean this up. He gets the idea to bring the body home for him and his girlfriend to have fun with. A steel pipe is added and the two of them have an interesting encounter with the corpse. Things take a turn for the worse though. Rob's co-workers don't like him and he didn't wash his work jumpsuit. He's taken to the boss where he's fired. He tries to find solace with his girlfriend, but she is upset he lost his job. Rob tries to pull it together, but the nightmare has just begun.

Now I had to go a little bit lighter on the recap here since there's not a lot to the story. We get some long, interesting takes of things that are pretty horrific if I'm completely honest. I won't kink shame someone for being into necrophilia though. It was pretty gross to watch if I'm going to be honest. I'll parlay this into the effects, since they're really good. I could tell that the body was fake, the thing though is they make it so gooey that I lost myself there. It didn't necessarily sit well with me, but I'm weirdly glad I got to see it. There are other things that were done practically and don't necessarily look real, but the movie has such an arthouse feel that it works. I do think that it is shot very artistic and despite what we're seeing, it looks great.

To shift back to the story though, I didn't catch on until I read up a little bit about this film that the killing of the rabbit was supposed to be Rob's father and seeing his beloved pet murdered. We later see this sequence shown in reverse. My take on this, was that peeling the skin from the rabbit and returning it was Rob taking off his inhabitation to explore his sexuality and then when his life falls apart, returning his protection to the depressing ending. Betty left because he can't stand up for himself and we also see that when he's bullied at the theater in the film as well.

I'm going to move this into the pacing of the movie. It only runs at 75 minutes and to be honest, that's a perfect length. The story is quite basic, but it is all about the visuals here, which I don't recommend for everyone to check out. It is odd though, because of how beautiful the images are actually shot, despite their nature, and coupling that with the music. The lovemaking scene has such a song that would fit for a normal sexual encounter, it is almost sensual. What is really being shown is quite the opposite, but it definitely works. This one has an extremely bleak and depressing ending, but it really works for what the film is giving to us.

The last thing to cover would be the acting. It is quite amateurish, but I'm forgiving of that when you're dealing with an arthouse film. It isn't about the performances. It is about the images that we are seeing. I do think that Lorenz fits the role of Rob very well. It is interesting that bringing home this corpse makes his world fall apart and the depressing nature of him really did fit. Manowski and the rest of the cast really don't have big roles, but definitely fit in the downfall of our main character for sure.

Now with that said, I need to re-iterate that this film isn't going to be for everyone. It has some really taboo subject matter and the arthouse take on it makes it grotesque while still being beautiful. There's a gritty look to it that makes it feel even more real as well. I think that the effects, even if they don't necessarily look real, there's just a surreal feel and it made me question if what we're seeing. I have to give credit for that. The soundtrack doesn't necessarily fit in the general idea, but oddly it does in this artsy type way. There's not a lot to the story, but it doesn't really need too much to get by what the film wants to convey. Personally I have to say that I enjoyed this in a non-traditional sense and overall this is an above average film.

7/10

Disgusting and beautiful at the same time

[kneiss1 · 5/10 · 29 July 2010]

This is a movie about, as the title indicates, the love to the dead. A sort of perverted theme. And yes, it is a film with a lot of gore and a lot of disgusting dead meat. The weird thing about this movie is, that all this nastiness is filmed in a beautiful way – with beautiful music. This makes this film unusual and definitely needs an open mind to be watched. I personally liked the cheap synth-music the best. It suited the bad quality of the movie (which was filmed with a hi8 camera) perfectly. Combined this created a great and unusual atmosphere.

Sadly the movie is very exhausting to watch. And sometimes you get the idea, that the movie is all about living out a perversion. But then again, the movie asks interesting questions about humanity and life itself. One of many reasons why I consider this movie art and believe it's worth to watch – despite all the perversion and gore.

more then meets the eye

[gunslinger861 · 7/10 · 9 July 2010]

I first stumbled upon this film ten years ago. To say this film affected me is a real gross understatement, no pun intended. Traumatised would be the best adjective for me to use. I read a review and followed a link to watch the trailer. I was frightened, disgusted,disturbed, you name it. I even went as far as to show my friend and lost a little of his respect.

To be serious though it took me ten years to actually watch this film. Not necessarily for the above mentioned reasons,but more or less availability issues. Because lets face it, this film will never get put on the shelves on your local blockbuster. Apoun watching i was very strangely surprised and oddly enough challenged on more then just a level of endurance.

the film centers around rob. A complete loser played with great sympathy by doktary Lorenz. Rob seems like a fairly normal man, only rob has a horrible fetish. Namley he's a necrophiliac. His job both fortune and unfortunately fuels and inhibits his compulsions. Rob works for Joe's street cleaning service. Witch cleans body parts off of the road and has provides rob with access to body parts that he has culminated into a a very morbid collection.

Rob comes home every day to his girlfriend Betty. played by the very beautiful actress Monika.m. Betty is just as sick as rob in that she shares the very same compulsion's as rob, perhaps more so then rob. One day rob finds a bloated nasty 60% decomposed corpse in a swamp. He takes off with it and brings it home to Betty. Betty of course is thrilled and what we are now subjected to is the most disgusting and vile three way scene i have ever had the displeasure of seeing.

once the after glow is done rob is unfortunately fired. Once the news is brought Bettie's attention,she rebukes and puts him down not do much for loosing his job but rather that he did not stand up for himself. the next day rob comes home with a gift of a cat only to find a deer john letter. i must note that of all dear john letters i have seen i have never read " I'm leaving and i took the corpse". Taking the kids is one thing but the corpse is another. That in itself is and example of some of the black humor in this film that many will fail to see.

This leads rob down a spiral of self destruction. He goes on to kill his cat, a hooker and and a Shepperd who later finds rob and the dead prostitute. Rob ultimately finds his solace through suicide by disemboweling himself. Although those familiar with nekromantik 2 know that his troubles are far from over.

what intrigued me about this film is that under all the disgust and sickness,there were real themes. Alienation, self destructive behavior,madness,codependent relationships and above all sexual deviancy. What intrigued me more was the irony behind the purpose of this film. Jorge buttgeriet and Manfred jelensky were aiming to make a black comedy. I've seen so many horror films that try so hard to be frightening,but end up being so silly and stupid that one cant help but laugh. This film however was intended to be a comedy and turned out to be one of most disturbing film ever made. john waters quoted as "groundbreakingly gruesome".

i will give credit where credit is due however. The director of this film really made something with nothing more then super 8 millimeter film and his friends. To make a low budget film that is not only just stands the test of time, but is just as effective as it was 23 years ago is an achievement in this reviewers opinion. I really must mention the score witch really makes this film what it is. It is nothing more then a simple minimalistic piano score.

The main theme especially has a very upbeat tempo and pace That gives this film such a sense of perversion. If the film were set to anything else,it wouldn't have the same effect.

It really pulls no punches from the very beginning. even when we see a woman urinating in the grass we know that this will be uncomfortable at best. what i think is extremely unsettling is the fact that there is no redemption in this film what so ever. With that lack of hope, or solution, or redemption,Whatever you want to call it. There is a bleakness and a bit of a sadness that permeates throughout this entire film. That also is what drives the entire film home.

NEKRomantik: A recap of the film's best scenes. (spoiler heavy)

[Systematicer · 4/10 · 24 April 2008]

It's a film about death, but like the writing in the beginning tells us, there is no life that doesn't feed off of somebody else's death. But I don't want to go too much into detail with this boring symbolic stuff. Instead let's look at the things that make this movie a worthwhile watch.

I love the opening scene of the woman pissing into the grass in close-up. It immediately tells you what is about to come. We will get to see parts of people's lives that usually are hidden to us. Stuff we usually don't even get to see in movies.

The second pissing scene (5 minutes later) is even better. It has it all. Full pissing action in all its banal glory. A man taking a penis out of his pants - holding the penis and waiting for the urine to leave his bladder - a sniff - the urine uncontrollably shoots out of the penis' glans - urine running into the black nothing of the urinal - urinedrops dripping from the uncircumcised foreskin that hinders the urine from flowing in one perfect unity - the urine slowly coming to an halt until the spring is dried up - the man shakes it off a few times, which looks like jacking off a mini penis - he brings the fella back home.

A bunny being slaughtered. First a hit over the head while its ears are being hold and then a knife slits its throat. It slowly bleeds dry, jerks and quirks and obviously still is very much conscious. After this process the bunny's fur is being peeled off like banana peel, although you don't need a knife to peel a banana, of course. After that the bunny's eyes are cut off like buttons on a shirt. Its belly gets opened up and the bowels are being taken out. The dead bunny, which hangs upside down during this whole process receives a cut to the crouch and the testicles are being removed.

But all of this only plays in the protagonist's imagination. He longs for death, in a playful kind of way.

Apples are being taken off a tree. A different form of death. The man picking the apples accidentally gets shot into the neck. He dies at the scene. Death the way we know it.

A suitcase is being opened. It has a book and papers in it. It's raining hard. The stuff must get wet. Death in disguise.

A necrophiliac couple (the girl is a real honey) gets a decayed body to play with. The body basically is a very wet and juicy skeleton covered with crap and stuff. It's got a juicy eye, though. The girl (she's got a nice ass too) is visibly excited about her husband's gift and they go feel up the body real good.

They saw off a chair's wooden leg and the honey rams it into the body's crotch. It gets her all hot and bothered. She rolls a condom over the chair leg... pardon me... over the body's newly gained huge and super hard erection. Mrs. Honey drops her black saucy lingerie and sits on the erection. She kisses the corpse - her husband feels her up from behind - her breasts touch the corpse's chest - her tongue goes all over the dead man's face - then the man kisses its face and takes its eye into his mouth.

They sit up Mr. Dead and the girl's penetration continues. The eye falls out of Mr. Dead's skull and Mrs. Honey tries to catch it with her mouth. We get to see this sequence in slow motion so we don't run risk to miss it. Their intercourse almost looks like a dance but all this time Mr. Dead appears to be awfully stiff and apathetic.

The man gets a prostitute and they fornicate on a cemetery. The whore sits on a gravestone. He can't get it up because she is too much alive and moving and such. So he does what every man would do in this situation. He strangles the life out of her. Then the sex works for him real smooth. He goes off better than the average teenage boy goes off masturbating to Internet porn of fake celebrities.

The man nails a Jesus miniature onto a crucifix real hardcore style with a hammer.

The man takes a knife and rams it into his own belly. He lays on the bed and takes the erect penis out of his pants. As he rams the knife deeper into his torso the white stuff (spermatozoon) shoots out of the penis. One huge white fountain after another. The scene is intercut with the rabbit footage played in reverse. The bunny jerks and quirks back to life. The man pokes around in his bowels like a kid would poke around in a plate of broccoli hoping somebody would finally tell him that it doesn't have to eat it. The white stuff turns into red stuff (blood) and the fountains get even bigger. He didn't survive it.

The End

The film's most original idea seems to be that one way to overcome a phobia is desensitization by confronting ones fear. This method, for example, can cure somebody's fear of spiders. So the idea or the film's thesis is that you can do the same with the fear of dead bodies. After a short talk-show skit of a man talking about this the film doesn't explore this idea any further, though.

But you could argue that desensitization happens to us while watching the film. Maybe it will take some viewers' fear to ram a chair leg into a decayed body to have sexual intercourse with it. I'm not sure it worked on me but maybe it worked on you. Well, did it?

Still possesses the power to shock.

[BA_Harrison · 8/10 · 14 January 2016]

Rob Schmadtke (Daktari Lorenz) is part of a clean-up team that removes dead bodies from public areas. Mixing work with play, Rob, a necrophiliac, occasionally manages to pocket random body parts, which he takes home to share with his equally twisted girlfriend Betty (Beatrice Manowski). When given the responsibility of disposing of a whole, decomposing corpse, Rob seizes the opportunity of a lifetime, taking the body home to use as a sexual plaything.

It's been over 25 years since I first saw Nekromantik—a dodgy nth generation bootleg VHS with no subs given to me by a friend with the same dubious taste in film—but even though I've seen a lot of extreme cinema since, Jörg Buttgereit's transgressive classick of German underground horror has lost none of its power to shock.

Dealing with the extremely iffy subject of necrophilia, with all the yucky, oozing, slime and bodily fluids that go with it, Buttgereit's film is still difficult to stomach despite a streak of dark humour running through proceedings. As if the nauseating sight of someone getting busy with a putrefying corpse isn't bad enough, the film also throws in a spot of animal death (both fake and real), full frontal male nudity, some random urination, the murder and rape of a prostitute (in that order!), a wonderfully bloody decapitation by shovel, and a final scene that has to rank as one of the most unforgettably repulsive acts ever committed to film.

Technically speaking, Buttgereit's film is a little rough around the edges, but he tells his tale with confidence, even experimenting with some artsy-fartsy visual effects during a love scene between Betty and the body, and throwing in a hilarious dream sequence that is reminiscent of avant-garde French cinema, albeit with a severed head and gut slinging. Nekromantik also benefits immensely from a surprisingly good score by Daktari Lorenz, Hermann Kopp and John Boy Walton which lends certain scenes a strange sense of beauty despite the repugnant visuals.

Needless to say, this isn't a film to share with the whole family (unless your family happens to have furniture made from human bones and an extra large freezer out back, in which case, share away); on the other hand, fans of low budget German splatter, extreme horror, or transgressive cinema in general should consider the film essential viewing.

i liked it for all the wrong reasons

[KillPopStars · 6/10 · 16 April 2008]

pretty much i liked it for all the horrifyingly wrong things in this film. sure there is a lot of wrong stuff on here. but all i can say is... it's not a horror movie by much. but a very screwed up romance movie. it's an interesting film. but with the wrong genre title tagged on it. also this film is not for anyone who likes everything to be well... ALIVE. plus there are some uncomfortable scenes that may make people throw up (like the beginning warnings before the movie starts).

personally i liked it (as another way of a guilty pleasure). but i can't really see a mob of devoted fans raving about this movie. there are even stuff on this film that would obviously be CONTRIVERSIAL or ILLEAGAL, and most importantly ATROCIOUSLY DISGUSTING!

An Attempt at art, gone wrong.

[grimacinglummox · 1/10 · 2 February 2009]

I was like many here, who read about this movie and was dying to see it. I'm just glad that I got it at no expense whatsoever to myself. I am not going to write some long winded review about this obviously twisted attempt at some kind of art.

What it ends up being is an exploitation film of the worst possible caliber. I wonder what was going on in the mind of the director as he was making this film. I use the term "film", very loosely, when writing about this.

Waste of celluloid.

I am still wondering how I managed to sit through the entire viewing. I suppose I wanted to prove to myself, that I could withstand it.

If you're up for very bad cinema. This one is for you... Oh... By the way... DO NOT WATCH IT WITH A DATE!!!