Nekromantik (1988)

Country of Origin/Production: Germany

 

 

 

 

 

 

No trailer, but here’s the whole flick (but DON’T watch it): 

*Spoilers Throughout*

What’s This About: A paramedic has a very quirky little fetish.

Here are some of my observations as I watched the film:

• A warning? Achtung! OK, German cinema, do your wurst!
• “What lives that does not live from the death of someone else?” V.L. Compton. So this z-grade gross-out horror movie made on a shoe-string budget on video is starting off with deep messaging. Sure why not?
• I can think of a few dozen deaths that the living can benefit from.
• First shot is some dude taking down his knickers and taking a piss in a field. Why he pulled down his underwear to his ankles is a question I already regret asking.
• That’s a very concerning weak leak there fella. You may have an UTI or even prostate issues.
• Wait. Huh. The pisser was a woman! But she was standing up! They can do that?!
• Ya know, I thought the panties were a little too flowery for a mans’ style but I don’t judge.
• The pissing lady and her husband are driving in the country and are kinda lost. The frustrated husband tries to check the map himself while driving, doesn’t see the warning in front of him and crashes the car. It’s unclear what they collided with. It was probably good taste and sensical filmmaking that they crashed into.
• It was a tree. And apparently he was driving so fast that his wife was torn in half when they hit that tree. Maybe the tree was wielding a chainsaw.
• These guys don’t look like paramedics! 
• I don’t know about German paramedics but in America we don’t use garbage bags as a body bag, mein Freunds.
• It’s been less than 8 minutes and already there’s two scenes of someone pissing.
• One of the paramedics likes to collect “trophies” from his work. Eyeball here, spleen there. He just has so many jars of formaldehyde lying around he needs to find purpose for them.
• His girlfriend seems to be bathing with something bloody in the tub. Heard Kristi Noem does the same thing.
• Nice ass.
• The dude has a photo of Charlie Manson hanging up in his room. Hey, at least it’s not Ronald Reagan.
• I hope this gets explained but while the guy watches a TV program about curing phobias, he’s lying on his bed that has metal chain-link fence as the headboard and footboard. It’s very DIY.
• Awww…Cute bunny….OH MY DEAR LORD IN HEAVEN!
• I’m assuming this paramedic guy is like Dr. Frankenstein with his self-taught surgical degree and his can-do attitude! 

• I really don’t need to see this other unknown guy skin the bunny and prepare it for soup.
• Not a lot of meat on those varmints is there?
• Oh that was all a dream fantasy sequence. Got it. I feel so much better.
• Outside someone’s house is some fella playing with his pistol while listening to music. Another fella opens a door and when he comes outside it’s revealed that he’s either twice the size of the door or that the door is incredibly small for humans.
• Do we really need to watch the tall man pick apples for 2 minutes?
• The other guy with the gun spots a bird flying, aims and misses a few times before he accidentally shoots the apple picking guy!
• The dude that shot the apple-picker seems rather calm for just killing an innocent man. He then loads the dead body onto a wheelbarrow and takes him somewhere.
• Someone is calling on the services of Joe’s Streetcleaning Agency. The JSA are the paramedics that we met earlier. Does Germany not have a proper EMT service? 
• I mean, they’re legit because they are working alongside the police. At least I think it’s police. Dreh’ dich nicht um, schau, schau, der Kommissar geht um! Er wird dich anschau’n und du weißt warum. Die Lebenslust bringt dich um. Alles klar, Herr Kommissar?
• Again with the garbage bags. Could they not afford proper body bags?!
• We are 25 minutes in a 71 minute flick and so far nothing interesting is happening. [I’ll regret complaining about this in about 5 minutes]
• The head JSA guy instructed Rob (our collector protagonist) to take care of the body. He just takes it home to show his weird girlfriend.
• That’s the background music? I thought that cacophony in the background was dying cats.
• They both are caressing this corpse in the “living” room.
• What are the fucking odds of two necrophiliacs finding each other and falling in love? Is this a Cold War era Germany thing? Did they both put out a classified ad?

• They cut down a slender metal pipe to about a foot long and the girlfriend is placing the pipe inside the body cavity of the corpse which is lying on the bed next to her. She is scantily clad and is now rolling a condom (a killer condom?!) onto the pipe. Question: why can’t they just use a simple dildo instead of this cold metal pipe?! Is this a steam-punk fetish on top off the necrophilia fetish?
• In case anyone out there wishes they could see a movie about people fucking corpses, here it is. This is the Casablanca of necrophilia flicks.
• I’m not even going to try to try to understand the fetish (or however one might categorize this) but the JSA just literally fished this half-decomposed corpse out of a river this morning. And Rob and his girlfriend are kissing and caressing it. Rob even sucked the eyeball out its socket. It’s not a clean, fresh corpse is what I’m gathering at.
• How does one even survive the diseases from this experience?
• This movie would make Ed Gein blush.
• Is there a PG-13 version of this flick I can possibly watch? Maybe a Marvel Comics film adaptation perhaps?
• This threesome is what I would assume Stephen Miller and his wife enjoy on hot summer nights after re-reading Mein Kampf.
• Is there anyway to wash your eyes? I need to sandblast them with lava!
• I mean, they just met this corpse. Shouldn’t they at least wine and dine him first? Is romance dead!?! (This is possibly my best joke on this site ever!)

• OK. This has been going on for far too long. We fucking get it and we fucking hate it. I don’t care how much you show the girlfriend’s naked bits.
• Cut to: a nice juicy steak. I hope that that’s just for dinner and not for the next sex scene.
• I’m not going to sugarcoat it: This is probably the grossest movie I’ve ever watched. And I’ve seen two of the Human Centipede flicks as well as The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants!
• While Rob’s getting yelled at by his superiors at work, his girlfriend is home and reading to the corpse. And also making it give her head. It’s the best decomposed jaw she’s ever had.
• This flick even has a sequel. But maybe it’s done as a self-parody like Army of Darkness or Gremlins 2.
• Poor Rob just got fired. Not sure for what other than just not fitting in. And possibly the stench of death on his dick.

• Rob goes home to tell his girlfriend and she reads him the riot act! Bitch, maybe you should shut up because all you do is lounge home everyday and fuck your rotting corpse boyfriend. Why doesn’t the deadbeat pull his weight around?!
• They already have one corpse, how many do they need?
• Oh, they are concerned at its decomposition and will need a new corpse soon. That’s the downside to corpse fuck buddies, decaying on you too soon.
• The next day Rob wakes up to a Dear John letter that his girlfriend left him (he only lost his job yesterday!) and took the corpse lover with her. Rob quickly turns around to finally notice that the corpse wasn’t hanging on the wall like usual. How’d he miss that?!
• Rob is so distraught that he lights some candles, plays with his cat and they feeds his cat one of the formaldehyde body parts. Then he burns a photo of his girlfriend while beating his cat that he trapped in a garbage bag. Typical Tuesday afternoon.
• Now he’s lying naked underwater in the bathtub while the dead cat hangs over him. Eat your heart out Salvador Dali!

• Guys. I don’t think the Germans fared too well post-war. Seems some heavy therapy was needed.
• Rob is literally bathing and rubbing himself with cat carcass. There’s hopefully a metaphor or allegory being conjured up with this visual. If anyone figures it out, please tell me. I’ll be cowering in the corner crying my eyes out.
• He asked for a beer at the cinema and he gets Becks?! Seriously? I’ve never been so offended by a film in my life! They crossed a line. I’m turning this shit off right now!

• This slasher flick within the flick looks more entertaining than the actual flick. At least it has purpose.
• When Rob bought the ticket, the Box Office girl said the film started 10 minutes ago. But when Rob sat down and is watching the slasher movie, it’s clearly at its finale with the final girl trying to evade the killer while she finds other dead victims in this house she’s in. 
• OK. The point is not going over my head. As the killer (in the slasher flick Rob and the audience are watching) is torturing the final girl by gently caressing her legs with his knife, some audience members that are couples are getting amorous. The point is, if it’s possible that sometimes we can get excited by violent, scary acts of horror on screen then is there a difference about necrophilia? Am I giving this depraved flick too much credit? Most likely.
• The killing on screen is just too much for Rob. Either that or the blood and guts remind him too much of the corpse his girlfriend ran away with.
• This movie would make Jeffrey Dahmer lose his appetite.
• Honestly, I think I heard Rob say maybe 20 words this whole flick so far.
• Rob’s dreaming of him being dead (half his face is decomposed skull) and a lady gifts him a severed decomposed head and both Rob and her are basically frolicking in the fields with it. 
• I think this film is a major contributor to the Berlin Wall coming down it’s so offensive. Eat your heart out Hasselhoff!

• I’m assuming that these ladies are hookers. But this is Cold War Germany so it’s always tough to call.
• Rob’s on the prowl for some living action. Something with a pulse perhaps?
• Rob and the hooker attempt to bone in a boneyard but Rob’s having performance issues (maybe it’s too much fog or the fact that the girl is actually warm) and she starts making fun of him. So naturally he strangles her to death. And then fucks her. It wasn’t the fog.

• Last 10 minutes. Hopefully there’s an extended chase scene through town as the cops chase Rob. And it would be awesome if they filmed it like the Falco Der Kommissar video of him green screened and running from the cops.
• Some poor groundskeeper finds Rob and the dead hooker lying in the cemetery and Rob takes the guy’s shovel and cuts the groundskeeper’s skull in half horizontally. Only the chin and lower half of the skull are intact. Rob’s incredibly strong it seems.

• I haven’t mentioned the music yet really other than the fuck scene with the horrible cat sounds but pretty much this whole film is scored by simple mediocre synthesizer music that would fit in with classic video games or at times it sounds like weird ambient music that only Kenneth Anger would reject even if it was Jimmy Page composing it. Most times the music doesn’t fit the scene and other times it’s distracting and irritating. I should rescore this flick with the free-licensed music by the German composers, Heinz Kiessling and Werner Tautz in every It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode.
• Rob’s not such a bad guy. Here he is enjoying the company of the caterpillar he found in the cemetery. Admiring nature, feeling at ease with the universe. Defiling the dead isn’t all he jones about.
• Back home, Rob is repairing a crucifix while he himself has on some sort of make-shift crown of thorns. This whole time I was watching Rob’s character arc, I was thinking he’s like a modern-day Jesus.
• But that too was a fantasy as he’s now still in the fields and running and skipping in joy. Too bad even this brash movie had to succumb to the typical happy Hollywood ending.
• I’m hoping this film gives us some sort of theme or point or parable soon. It still has 5 minutes.
• In the finale to outdo all finales, Rob lays on his bed, opens up his fly, gets an erection (now that’s a dildo!) and commits harakiri. And as he thrusts the blade into his gutty-guts, he climaxes and spurts cum all over himself. It was how he always wanted to go.
• This movie would make Aleister Crowley go to Catholic mass.
• We also get to see more of the bunny disembowlment from earlier but now in reverse! I just reverse vomited in my mouth.
• Are we done? Can we go? Please.
• Shot of Rob’s gravesite is interrupted by a woman in black pumps using a shovel to dig his grave before ominous music starts and it fades to white.
• Thanks Germany! How could you?! This is officially the wurst thing you’ve ever done.

Final Thoughts: Mein Gott! I knew we’d have a tough time finding schlocky German horror but Cold-War era Germany must’ve had a shit-ton of anxiety and a bleakness for life, that I can only assume we Americans might experience in the coming decade or two if you know what I mean. At least Killer Condom was more tongue-in-cheek and humorous but Nekromantik is on a whole other level of depravity cinema. And the same director made a sequel as well as another movie themed around death called the The Death King so he’s clearly an enthusiast. I mean, I have only myself to blame picking a movie called Nekromantik but I was hoping it was a tad more silly on purpose. I definitely didn’t think it would be done this graphically. Probably should’ve picked Schramm. Now if you don’t mind, I need a shower or three, several viewings of various Pixar flicks and attend mass to cleanse my soul.

How German 🇩🇪 is it: Other than the constant state of dread and despair, this isn’t much of a “German” movie. No Bratwurst, Lederhosen, Alpine hats or a single pretzel. Tariff rate: 10%

Score: 9 (as in NEIN!) (out of 10)