Friday, November 02, 2007

Insano Steve's Review of the Day: Der Todesking

Insano Steve wanted to chime in on the Buttgereit week festivities so we conclude Jorg Buttgereit week with his review of Der Todesking.

Der Todesking
Der Todesking (1990)

Der Todesking (the Death King) is Jorg's more ambitious artsy suicide movie.

Does Jorg pull it off? Is he skilled enough?

Um, no. You gotta admire the effort though. Movie is broken up into 7 days/episodes (which you know he got the idea from another movie from a better director). In between the days, there's imagery of a corpse slowly decomposing. You can just picture Jorg yelling at his videographer (uh, himself), "More death! More art! Perfect!". Let's see what a typical week in Germany's like:

Monday

A man comes home, phones his boss to resign from his job, writes mysterious letters, cleans his apartment and swallows poison in his bathtub. His death is simultaneous with the death of his fish, the only being that was close to him.

Yeah, this is like a typical Monday for me too. Except I don't have any fish. And I usually take my poison while watching TV. Germany is a miserable country.

Tuesday

A man rents a film in a video store, a movie in which Nazi soldiers are torturing a prisoner in a concentration camp, castrating him and painting a swastika on his breast. When the young man's girlfriend comes home, she yells at him until he kills her with a gun. This whole episode is being shown on a TV screen in a room where somebody has been hanged.

Alright, some Nazi death footage! Are all Germans Nazis in 2007? Who knows. But, I watch movies to reinforce my stereotypes (and maybe make some new ones), thank you. Jorg's vision for Tuesday: "Man watching video of man watching video. Everybody dies".

Wednesday

A man and a girl meet in a park in the pouring rain. The man tells the girl about his disastrous sex life with his wife which led to him killing her. The girl pulls out a gun to kill him, but the man takes it from her and blows his brains out.

Yeah, Wednesdays do tend to suck. Top death of the week. Bullet in the brain. Jorg can still bring it strong when he wants to.

Thursday

A motorway bridge somewhere in Germany, superimposed by the names, ages and occupations of the people who have jumped from it.

Jorg got kinda lazy here. No action. Just names of people who jumped off some bridge in Germany. Is there a message here? Jorg? You there? Are you sure you're good enough to make stuff like this? Show some poor bastards jumping off the bridge next time.

Friday

A woman, alone in her apartment, is observing a young, seemingly happy couple in the neighbourhood. She spies on them and finds a chain letter in front of her door, urging her to kill herself. Obviously everybody in the house got the letter. She ignores it, eats chocolates and falls asleep, dreaming of surprising her parents when they make love. The camera shows the young couple, dead on their bed.

This was probably the weakest day (at least Thursday was short). Kinda like one of those Japanese WTF horror movies. You keep waiting for something to happen. I remember thinking "Yo, Jorg, it's been 10 minutes, nobody's dead yet, let's go". Then the couple's dead w/o a death scene. Girl eats chocolate. What the fuck???.

Saturday

A young woman, equipped with a camera and a gun, kills several people in the audience of a rock concert and records it on film, until someone kills her.

Saturday night out in Germany. This was on the trailer for the movie, and what made this a must-rental. Some girl completely shoots up a Euro-trash rock club. Jorg puts the camera in POV of the girl. No reason is given for the killing spree. Random German extras getting shot dead. Some of Jorg's best work. Even funnier than it sounds.

Sunday

A man, alone on his bed, is crying and banging his head over and over violently against the wall until he dies.

Just like my Sundays watching the New York Jets play.


Rating:

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Thursday, November 01, 2007

It's Jorg Buttgereit Week! Schramm (Review)

Schramm
Schramm (1993)

Directed by Jorg Buttgereit

If Buttgereit were still making movies today, horror sites would be clamoring for Jorg to make a serial killer movie. Well, we're glad he did. Way back in 93. And oh my, it's one hell of a sick movie.

The thing about Buttgereit is that to understand the madness of his films is to dig deep into the psychosis of insanity itself.

Wow that sounds all Freudian. But alas after watching Schramm, you'll know why they don't make horror movies like they use to.

It's nitty, it's gritty and the violence and splatter are all top notch.

Enter the psyche that is Lothar Schramm (who looks like a German George Costanza) . The movie begins with his death and through a series of flashbacks, we see that he went all serial killy before he kicked the bucket.

I can't exactly remember everything that happened in this movie but the only scene that keeps popping into my head is "NAIL IN PENIS".

Yup. Schramm hammers a nail into his penis. After seeing that for the first time, I actually said to myself: "I've never seen somebody hammer nails into his penis".

I'm shivering just thinking about it.

So let's discuss the plot-o-rama shall we? As we travel back into the mind of our serial killer, we discover Schramm is a cab driver who is totally mental. Shockingly, he makes serial killing not as cool as Dexter makes it out to be. After meeting some religious missionaries, Schramm shows us his killing ways.

See Schramm kill! (with extra spanish punk rock soundtrack)




I particularly like the ocular trauma. So graphic, so realistic. Kudos Jorg!

Schramm slowly devolves into a black whole of depravity. He meets a hooker (Monika M from Nekro 2) named Marianne who he has an attraction to. Schramm accompanies Marianne on a few of her "jobs" but as Schramm slowly realizes she's indifferent to him and his feelings. To combat this he fucks an inflatable doll and later then drugs her and masturbates on her corpse..oops...err I mean unconcious body.

Alas this is the life of Schramm. He is sick, crazy and totally depraved. Jorg obviously is reminding us that the mind of a serial killer is not easy to understand. Schramm dabbles in normaly but is a millenia away from it at the same time. Schramm is so brutally realistic, so shamelessly wicked, it's the pinnacle of all serial killer movies (with Henry: Portait of a Serial Killer being the other).

Buttgereit's visuals are all random but edgy and jam packed with disturbing gooeyness. Various Scrammy dreams contain his leg being severed in leg splitting beauty, leg braces, dentist ocular trauma, a homeless man committing gun suicide with a bullet to the brain and a VAGINA WITH YELLOW TEETH. Yes, my jaded viewers, a hairy VAGINA WITH SMOKER'S TEETH. Though all this added up to a movie that went way beyond my expectations, it's three words that can never be erased from my memory.

NAIL IN PENIS.

Thanks alot Jorg.

The Trailer:






Rating:


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Wednesday, October 31, 2007

It's Jorg Buttgereit Week! Nekromantik 2 (Review)

Nekromantik 2
Nekromantik 2 (1991)

Directed by Jorg Buttgereit

The inevitable sequel is always determined if its better than the original. In the case of Nekromantik, it kinda is.

Buttgereit (still in classic art house mode) wiggles in David Lynchian imagery, classical music and corpse fucking.

And he does it so damn well.

The movie begins with the ending of the 1st movie in all its climactic, volcano glory.




The story (or lack therof) introduces Monika, a Rob loving necro herself who digs up poor Rob (our sick and depraved hero from part 1) and lets it be known that all Germans are into this sort of stuff.

Mind you, you'd think that riggo mortus would be an issue but logistics be damned!

Monika (played by Monika M. how original!) takes a bath with Rob (sorta like Bert and Ernie in those rub a dub tub scenes and only if Ernie was a rotting corpse and we all know Bert is evil)

She cuts off Rob's penis and stuffs it into the fridge (you make the joke).

Then Monika meets Mark (who voices pornos) and he discovers Monika's hobbies are little offbeat. But Monika is determined to make things work in her twisted world and in the shocking ending, we see her devious plan come to fruition.

The ending alone is by far the most clever yet perverted sickest shit I've ever seen. And as you may or may not want to know, let's spoil it for you nevertheless.

How do you solve your corpse fucking problem and your love of alivey flesh?

Well...


As Monika's ruse unfolds, she and Mark get down and dirty but alas poor Mark has no idea what's in store. Monika hacksaws his head most grusomely and replaces it with Rob.

What better way to get best of both worlds. Alas her dilemma is solved and for the audience, gore and sexhounds rejoice.

Nekromantik 2 goes on a whole new direction this time. Buttgereit doesn't go for shock value (well yeah he does but in its in his nature you know?). This time around, Jorg goes for what the title is all about. NEKRO + ROMANTIK. Get it?

Monika's love for both the stiff corpse that is Rob and the satisfaction of sexual desire is perfectly molded into one during the climatic final scene.

So let's just get this straight here. It's one fucked up movie. Buttgereit dresses part 2 in his sick blood spurting, seal dissecting package but at the end of the day, its still a movie about fucking a corpse.

The FX are still top notch (for its day) and Rob's sickly, greenish vomit inducing corpse is the star. Buttgereit giddyups into territory nobody else goes to and his sequel delivers the goods.

Nekromantik 2 is splatter-necro-core at its best. And for Buttgereit, the fact that he single handidly created a new sub sub genre, deserves around a round of decomposing applause.




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Tuesday, October 30, 2007

It's Jorg Buttgereit Week! Der Todesking (Review)


Der Todesking

Der Todesking (1990)

Directed by Jorg Buttgereit

Jorg Buttgereit week continues. In this installment, we bring you the review of Der Todesing (aka The Death King).

IMDB Plot Vault:

Seven episodes, each taking place on a different day of the week, on the theme of suicide and violent death.

Yup. Suicide and death. That's it in a nutshell.

This is one of the better Jorg movies as it done so cleanly and though filled with violent imagery and sick and twisted scenes of suicide, it's slickly metaphoric about the graphic subject matter it's showing.

As mentioned, each day of the week shows a suicide and death and the precursor or aftermath of each. Let's go through each of them shall we?

Courtesy of Wikipedia.

Monday

A man comes home, phones his boss to resign from his job, writes mysterious letters, cleans his apartment and swallows poison in his bathtub. His death is simultaneous with the death of his fish, the only being that was close to him.

Clip from Monday episode:





Tuesday

A man rents a film in a video store, a movie in which Nazi soldiers are torturing a prisoner in a concentration camp, castrating him and painting a swastika on his breast. When the young man's girlfriend comes home, she yells at him until he kills her with a gun. This whole episode is being shown on a TV screen in a room where somebody has been hanged.

Wednesday

A man and a girl meet in a park in the pouring rain. The man tells the girl about his disastrous sex life with his wife which led to him killing her. The girl pulls out a gun to kill him, but the man takes it from her and blows his brains out.

Thursday

A motorway bridge somewhere in Germany, superimposed by the names, ages and occupations of the people who have jumped from it.

Friday

A woman, alone in her apartment, is observing a young, seemingly happy couple in the neighbourhood. She spies on them and finds a chain letter in front of her door, urging her to kill herself. Obviously everybody in the house got the letter. She ignores it, eats chocolates and falls asleep, dreaming of surprising her parents when they make love. The camera shows the young couple, dead on their bed.

Saturday

A young woman, equipped with a camera and a gun, kills several people in the audience of a rock concert (the front man is played by Die Ärzte-drummer Bela B.) and records it on film, until someone kills her.

Sunday

A man, alone on his bed, is crying and banging his head over and over violently against the wall until he dies.

The episodes are interspaced with sequences showing a corpse in the cumulative state of decay.

This time around Jorg shows us suicide in all its graphic yet docu-style glory.

Monday is the typical suicide, depressed man nothing to live for. His fish is his only friend.

Tuesday's is the anger suicide, with a twist I didn't see coming. (look for Jorg's other movies in the video store scene)

Wednesday's is the revenge suicide. (total sick slo-mo bullet in the brain)

Thursday is the mass suicide. (crazy theatre style executions)

Friday's is the unknown suicide.

Saturday is the public suicide and Sunday is the crazy suicide.

Got all that?

Buttgereit's facets on death are eerily striking. The scenes are graphic and unrelenting. Jorg shows us death in it's natural state. He does not tell us why these indivuduals have commited suicide or murder. Motives are not known. Der Todesking is about the natural act of commiting suicide. The taboo of suicide is never discused in film. At times its romanticized and made Hollywood-ish in subject mater. Buttgereit's days of the week approach to story telling as a rotting corpse decomposes is metaphoric of time's arrow of death.

Each suicide is an example of reasons unknown, of death in its most purest state and taking the bird eye's perspective.

Der Todesking is a hard movie to watch as compared to hmmm let's say Nekromantik? But it's impact is so mersmerizing that after watching it, you'll feel a little part of you has died.

Rating:

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Monday, October 29, 2007

It's Jorg Buttgereit Week! Nekromantik (Review)

Nekromantik
Nekromantik (1987)

Directed by Jorg Buttgereit

**Warning: Some of this film may be seen as grossly offensive and should not be shown to minors!!!**

-from the trailer of "Nekromantik"

"DEATH IS JUST THE BEGINNING"

I remember vividly when my friend and I decided to irrevocably change the way we watch horror movies. As we were super splatter-philes already, we decided to take the plunge into the world of sick and twisted underground horror.

We knew what the movie was about. Sick, perverted necrophilia. But it's reputation was undisputed. It was banned in many countries, even it's own. It's director was German and was being arrested for indecent content for showing it in various German film festivals.

So in the late 90's, after many months of hype among the both of us we went to a seemingly innocent Queens video store and there lay Nekromantik. It's box cover slightly deterioriated. The images in the back of the box very disturbing. The plot summary vague and overhyped. We quickly brought the box to the counter and rented the damn thing. In it's VHS glory (not rewound) it was ready for viewing.

Holy fuckin shit.

Plot summary: (from your IMDB super store)

A street sweeper who cleans up after grisly accidents brings home a full corpse for him and his wife to enjoy sexually, but is dismayed to see that his wife prefers the corpse over him

Yeah. If you can call that a plot. The thing about Nekoromantik is that it's filmed so grainy and staticky (thank's to Jorg's Super 8) you swear you were watching this at one of the old grindhouses in Times Square. And that's why this was the #1 bootlegged film of all time (according to various sources I made up).

The opening scene catapults you into glorious splatter as our man Rob, cleans up after a grisly car accident between some oversexed Germans. He brings the eyes of the corpse home to his wife Betty and we get to enjoy their lovely oh so lovely necrophilia fetish (that's fucking dead bodies). It seems Rob loves collecting body parts (I mean who doesn't?)

Later, some dude who is picking apples (?) is killed and his body is dumped in a lake which leads to Joe's Streetcleaning Agency picking up the corpse. Rob decides that a whole corpse is just what's needed for his entire collection.

The pinnacle scene involves Rob, Betty and Mr. Corpse enjoying the most twisted threeway you've ever seen.


Jorg films this all artsy farsty avante garde Fellini-ish cinema. He intertwines random styilized shots, then shows us some sick perverted corpse fucking. The piano music is all mellow, classical and somewhat mesmerizing. You fall into a trance while watching Betty prop up a a broom handle where the corpse's johnson was and then put a condom on it.

Yeah I know. I can't believe I just wrote that too.

It's as sick as advertised. Later, Rob loses his job and Betty leaves him and takes the corpse with her. Rob's psychosis and depression leads to murder, which leads to rape, which then leads to...well you get the picture.

The final scene finds Rob, totally distraught and looking to fulfill the void left by his wife and his need that is corpse fucking. The climax (pun sooooooo intentionally intended) is outright shocking.

So wtf, see it below.







If you somehow got through that, mucho kudos. Nekromantik is by far Jorg's best movie. He's got themes in it (some critics even say its about the AIDS epidemic), but you really shouldn't be trying to concern yourself with that, I mean seriously.

After viewing it for the first time back then, it did what it intended to do. Shock and Awe. 80 minutes of sick, disturbed imagery and the subject matter nobody dares talk about.

Added listlessly are scenes of a rabbit being skinned (for real!), decapitations, blood soaked baths, wrist cutting and lack of dialogue.

It's to be seen to be believed.

Jorg Buttgereit's Nekromantik is the apex of where all movies about necrophilia splatter flicks are judged (I mean the only other movie in this category is its freakin sequel)

It's so sick and twisted you feel ashamed to have watched it. But never has a movie made me spew out (pun again sooooo totally intended) such vile and happiness. The fact that it warranted a sequel says it all.

The Trailer:






Rating:


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