Nekromantik: the extreme nightmare of the German underground in 2K

When it comes to extreme European cinema, Nekromantik still holds an almost unrepeatable position today. Not only for its shocking content or the scandalous reputation that has accompanied it for almost forty years, but because Jörg Buttgereit's film represents one of the purest cases of underground horror conceived as artistic and cultural provocation. A work born on the fringes, shot on 8mm film with minimal means, yet it became a symbol of extreme German cinema.

The plot follows Robert, an employee of a team responsible for cleaning up sites where bodies and accidents are found. A job that fuels his obsession with death and necrophilia, shared with his partner Betty. When Robert brings a whole corpse home, their relationship seems to find a new perverse balance, at least until everyday reality begins to crumble. Job loss, emotional isolation, and alienation transform the protagonist into a tragic figure, suspended between disgust, melancholy, and irreversible madness.

A punk gesture against censorship and conformism

To reduce Nekromantik to mere exploitation, however, would be a mistake. Buttgereit constructs a film that is deliberately dirty, unpleasant, and anarchic, but permeated by a surprising satirical vein. Amidst scenes of explicit necrophilia, entrails, mutilations, and deliberately gruesome moments, sudden flashes of almost surreal black humor emerge. Some sequences even seem to mock the viewer themselves, ridiculing both moralism and the voyeurism typical of horror consumption.

The director's goal was to frontally attack German censorship and the cultural rigidity of West Germany in the 1980s. After decades of restrictions related to the representation of violence, Nekromantik became a kind of cinematic punk gesture, a work created to be rejected, banned, and discussed. It is no coincidence that the film was seized in several countries and circulated for years through pirated videotapes, fueling its cursed aura.

The dirt of 8mm transformed into language

From a technical point of view, the film is extremely raw. The 8mm cinematography delivers dirty, grainy, and claustrophobic images, accentuating the sense of urban decay and physical deterioration. Instead of penalizing the film, this production poverty strengthens its underground identity. Nekromantik truly seems to come from a Berlin basement impregnated with smoke, industrial noise, and youthful anger.

With a fragmented and often improvised narrative structure, Buttgereit and Franz Rodenkirch seem to assemble a series of extreme ideas rather than construct a traditional story. Yet it is precisely this anarchic nature that makes the film something different from classic narrative horror. Nekromantik doesn't really try to scare: it wants to disgust, destabilize, and provoke a physical reaction in the viewer.

Even today, it remains a borderline experience, difficult to recommend to a general audience. But for anyone interested in the history of European underground cinema, taboo movies, and the most radical derivations of 1980s horror, Nekromantik remains a fundamental viewing. An imperfect, disturbing, and often grotesque film, but capable of embodying the rebellious spirit of the German underground like few others.

Edition for collectors of extreme cinema

The 8mm footage (Beaulieu 6008 S) was subsequently expanded to 16mm for screenings, and considering the extreme poverty of the production, the material remains interesting. Full HD viewing (1920 x 1080/23.97p), original 1.33:1 aspect ratio, AVC/MPEG-4 encoding on a single-layer BD-25 for a result that even feels capable of surpassing the theatrical viewings of the time. The organicity of the film, scratches and speckles are an integral part of the work from beginning to end, amidst colorimetric instabilities, blurriness, fluctuating blacks, and “drowned” night visions.

The product of a very poor production, the film transforms every technical limitation into material for an authentic sick hallucination. DTS-HD MA 2.0 dual mono (16 bit) original German with Italian and English subtitles, a more than decent listening experience considering the condition of the source material, with sufficiently clear dialogues, credible ambiences, and music with a hinted presence on the low frequencies.

Nekromantik (Deluxe Book + Postcards)

57,99

Nekromantik - The extras

The BD-25 with the film includes extras: a 12-minute making-of, an interview with a young Jörg Buttgereit (12'), the 1988 Berlin premiere with fragments of the screening and event (3', not subtitled), and the latest in-depth analysis by Federico Frusciante (13'). Trailer gallery for Nekromantik, Nekromantik 2, Schram, Todesking. A DVD-5 is included with the same content + a CD with the soundtrack. Inside the digibook are: a photobook with production images, an envelope with: 2x double-sided postcards, a reproduction of the premiere ticket in Berlin, 3x Polaroid-like photos with iconic shots from the film, a Rustblade sticker.