NEKRomantik

As I was watching Jörg Buttgereit's NEKromantik, I questioned to myself how people come to a decision to make a film regarding necrophilia, featuring a pitiable loser who collects body parts, fantacizing about the skinning of a rabbit. I can't just dismiss it as grotesque folly, because the example of Ed Gein changed the very way we looked at depraved behavior and morbid activity, in regards to the desecration of the dead.

I can't say I enjoyed a single moment of NEKromantik for if I had found anything within the plot entertaining I'd probably seek out serious counseling. I guess it could be looked at as a dark comedy for the very thought of someone making it with a rotted corpse, using a sawed off pipe(..with rubber on the end)as it's member, is hard to look at in a serious way. I'm sure there were quite a few really dark moments in Ed Gein's private live with his dug up bodies, bones, skulls, skin, organs, the works, spread across his less-than-humble abode as a warped kind of decor.

Perhaps, the film is a parable of one incapable of existing in the real world for it's cruel towards him(..he's often mistreated and ridiculed)and how his only true satisfaction is his obsessions with all things dead.

The film focuses on a deeply disturbed soul, Robert Schmadtke(Daktari Lorenz)who has started working for a "clean up crew" who remove dead bodies from areas when called upon. He hides certain remains for his home collection where he stores eyeballs, hearts, and other organs in jars of fluid. We are startled to find that he has a lover, Betty(Beartice Manowski)who embraces his sickening hobby.

Jörg Buttgereit sets up a devious scenario showing a man picking apples from his backyard tree, shot in the throat by a drunken neighbor who was firing off at birds in the sky. The neighbor, panic-stricken, buries the body in a pond, and the corpse will be chosen by Robert as a sexual play toy for Betty(..and himself, Yechhh!). The corpse is oozing slime and the face has practically rotted away, revealing the teeth and one remaining eyeball(..which Robert actually sloshes around in his mouth, for heaven sakes!). When they are through with it, for the time being, the corpse is put up against a wall, bowls nearby to hold the blood and fluid which dribble from it. While Robert is away at work, Betty reads books naked to it, and, I assume, fucks it. When Robert's supervisor advises his employer to get rid of him, these circumstances don't go over well with Betty, who leaves him..with the corpse in tow! The scene is quite a memorable one for Robert looks over and sees the corpse's stain on the wall where they would leave it when not molesting it.

The rest of the movie follows Robert as he attempts to find some sort of gratification, lonely and lost without Betty. He goes to a slasher flick which doesn't satisfy, strangles a prostitute(..she laughs at his inability to get a hard-on for which he reacts violently), achieves an erection with the dead body of the whore he just murdered, and decides to end his miserable existence in quite a shocking finale.

I felt the film is built to repulse with it's taboo-shattering subject matter and acts of repellant sexual deviancy. Robert is presented as pathetic, goalless, and strange, barely uttering a word the entire running time, looking down at his feet, with an inability, it seems, to function with other people in a normal way. He seems unable to fit into society and his abnormal conduct makes him relatively unappealing to the outside world. Interesting, how Robert seems so similar to Ed Gein, now that I think about it.

Jörg Buttgereit's film retains a haunting quality due to it's low budget photography and low-key direction. The material, as unpleasant as it is, is presented in a matter-of-fact fashion, with Robert's activities not judged or frowned upon.

I wouldn't recommend this to anybody..I'd be afraid the mob would come after me for NEKromantik is the kind of movie that would certainly classify as entertainment for the truly demented, a one-of-a-kind experience few, I imagine, would wish to have again. Animal lovers BEWARE for there's some truly revolting violence towards a rabbit and cat. The scenes featuring body clean up(..and Robert's fantasy working over a dead body as it correlates with the rabbit being skinned)are pretty strong stuff. I've seen my share of deranged shit, but nothing as perverse as NEKromantik. If ever a film deserved to be included on the notorious Video Nasty list, this one does, because it delivers the nasty goods that warrants such a distinction.