Eyeball-licking fun! And that last scene–holy shit!–I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard at a horror movie moment.
In case you’re wondering, you don’t need to understand a single word in the film to understand the film itself. I purchased the dvd version of Nekromantik off eBay because I couldn’t find it streaming anywhere. It’s a German movie, but the eBay ad claimed the dvd had English subtitles. It does not. It has Greek subtitles, and my understanding of Greek is even worse than my understanding of German. Nevertheless, Petal and I decided to watch Nekromantik and see if we could follow along despite not understanding dialogue. We could, more or less.
The story follows a guy named Rob (Bernd Daktari Lorenz) who works for a company whose mission is apparently to dispose of dead bodies, like from car accidents and such. Rob likes to take home souvenirs from work. He has jars of body parts all along one wall. There are skeletal remains in various locations throughout the house. And his girlfriend Betty (Beatrice Manowski) is perhaps even crazier. She bathes in blood and falls in love with a complete corpse Rob brings home from work. The threesome Rob and Betty have with the corpse is one of the most disgusting scenes I’ve ever seen on film. The corpse is not newly dead. It looks like something from a Romero zombie flick–slimy and rotten and falling apart, and we assume smelling as bad as it looks. That doesn’t stop our heroes from sucking on its jelly-like eyes, groping its gooey body parts and innards, and–oh yeah–attaching a wooden cock to its nether regions and riding it like a mechanical bull.
I figured the corpse-threesome was Nekromantik’s peak. I was wrong.
Rob loses his job (Petal and I assume he was fired for stealing the corpse, but without understanding the dialogue we couldn’t be sure), then Betty gets pissed and leaves Rob, taking the corpse with her. Rob ends up killing a couple of folks and bathing in cat blood in his pursuit of pleasure. But it’s not enough, it seems. I’m not going to give away the climax (hint-hint); it needs to catch you off-guard like it did me. It’s so shockingly absurd that I literally laughed until there were tears welling in my eyes. If you’re watching Nekromantik, there will probably be times when you’re wanting to turn it off and watch something a little more wholesome (which is pretty much anything) or a little more well-produced (also pretty much anything). But, I’m telling you, stick it out to the end. You won’t regret it.
PC3’s Horror and Exploitation Movie Scale of Awesomeness
Gore – 7
Special Effects – 7
Nudity/Sexuality – 7
Wow Factor – 10
Acting – 5
Fear Factor – 2
Story/Plot/Originality – 4
Cinematography/Atmosphere – 4
Sound/Music – 3
Fun Factor – 7
Nekromantik scores a respectable 56 on the PHEMSA. The Wow Factor alone is reason enough to see it. It’s only 75 minutes long and it’s sure to be one of the grossest and most of absurd things you’ve ever seen. How can anyone say no to that?