Nekromantik
| Nekromantik | |
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Film poster
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| Directed by | Jörg Buttgereit |
| Produced by | Manfred Jelinski |
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| Cinematography | Uwe Bohrer |
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| Distributed by | Leisure Time Features (US) |
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Release date
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Running time
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75 minutes |
| Country | West Germany |
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Nekromantik (stylized as NEKRomantik) is a 1987 West German horror exploitation film co-written and directed by Jörg Buttgereit. It is known to be frequently controversial, banned in a number of countries, and has become a cult film over the years due to its transgressive subject matter (including necrophilia) and audacious imagery.
The film opens to a night-time scene. A woman urinates on the grass by the side of the road. She then pulls up her underwear and enters the nearby car, where her husband is waiting for her. Then they drive away. The couple have lost their way in the night, and subsequently run off the side of the road. The next scene occurs in daytime, and depicts their corpses. The man has lost an eyeball, but remains inside the vehicle. While the woman was thrown off the vehicle, and her body was cut in two pieces.
The film centers on Rob Schmadtke, the tragic hero, who works for "Joe's Cleaning Agency", a company that removes bodies from public areas. They clean up the mess after traffic collisions. Their emblem is the Totenkopf symbol (skull and crossbones variant) within a pentagram. This job leaves him the perfect opportunity to pursue his full-time hobby: necrophilia. He returns home from his job to his apartment and girlfriend, Betty. He plays with his assortment of preserved human remains and watches television while Betty takes a bath in blood-laden water. Their apartment is decorated with centerfolds featuring models, pictures of famed killers, and jars containing human parts, which are preserved in formaldehyde.
Rob watches a televised interview of a psychiatrist, speaking on the topic of arachnophobia and ways to overcome phobias. Rob then enters a daydream of a young lop rabbit being caught on a farm and graphically slaughtered. By implication, these are memories of his father killing "a beloved childhood pet". Followed by memories of a pathologist performing an autopsy on a human cadaver. The following scene is seemingly unrelated. A man drinks beer and practices with his rifle at the same time, while listening to an oom-pah rhythm. The character would not seem out of place in a Heimatfilm. He accidentally kills a nearby gardener, and then discards the corpse.
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Wikipedia