User reviews

I have a penchant for applying my own little award system to genre pictures. "Salo" takes the most disturbing award; "Dead Alive" (aka Brain Dead) wins the goriest film award; "Caligula" runs away with the most over-sexed honor. Well, film lovers, here we have my vote for nastiest film ever. If you've seen it, you know why.

The story concerns a young couple with a predilection for all things dead. This works out well for them, as the boyfriend works for a crime scene clean-up crew. As luck would have it, one day he comes across a rather well preserved corpse ('rather well' as in it's a rotted, blue hunk of tissue) while on duty. He manages to sneak the body home, much to the delight of his lady-friend, and they go about having their dirty little way with it. It soon becomes clear that the girl is enjoying the company of the corpse more than her still breathing boyfriend and runs off with it. Needless to say, this does nothing healthy for his already deranged mental state (being dumped for another guy is bad, being dumped for a dead one is even worse).

Believe it or not, watching them have sex with the gooey body is NOT the nastiest thing you'll see here. All manners of assorted atrocities are committed for your viewing un-pleasure, most all of them rank in the 'so sick you can hardly watch' category. I will not spoil the best of them, just rest assured that gore-hounds will most certainly be pleased (if not disgusted).

For better or worse, the film is not very competently made. The corpse and gore effects are very good, but the film stock and technique are both pretty sub-standard. And with the script being so barren and the acting merely passable, the shock moments are all that will keep hardened viewers watching 'till the gruesome conclusion.

If you are looking for good story telling, look else where. If you're looking for a good sex flick, look else where. If you are looking for the ultimate stomach churner, you've found it.

6/10

After watching salo and serbian film i thought nothing could be worse than this... but nekromantik is step forward than other sick movies. the story is so simple easy to understand but representation is so shocking and yuck..!! it is based on 'necrophilia'. this is not the movie that i can watch again in my life. hats off to actors (i don't know how did they sign such role). overall it's good to watch once in life (not for weak heart people).

Robert Schmadtke (Bernd Daktari Lorenz) is a young man working for a street cleaning business. Therefore, he's able to pursue his fetish of fooling around with dead bodies and dead body parts. He takes prizes home to his willing girlfriend Betty (Beatrice Manowski), who shares his passion. However, things start to head South when he brings home an entire corpse that was fished out of a swamp. Soon after, he is fired, and the fed-up Betty decides to leave him - taking the corpse with her. Robert deals with this problem the only way that he knows how.

Co-writer / director Jorg Buttgereit - who actually wore a number of hats on this show - deserves at least some respect for committing himself so thoroughly to portraying absolute filth and nastiness on screen. This may be one of the wettest, grossest films that trash fans are likely to see. The filmmaking is crude, and the makeup effects are tacky, but this adds to the admittedly arresting experience. The rather beautiful music makes for the perfect counterpoint to everything happening on screen. Lorenz and Manowski deliver sincere performances, and Buttgereit creates an overwhelmingly sordid atmosphere.

Some viewers will be advised to stay FAR away. However, if one dares to immerse themselves in a very oddly romantic and poetic ode to the wonders of necrophilia, they may find the proceedings to their liking.

NOT recommended for cat and rabbit lovers.

Six out of 10.

I finally got around to watching "Nekromantik", despite it being a cult movie in the genre. I just never had the time, nor the chance to get to watch it. I finally managed to get my cold, dead hands - hint, hint - on a DVD copy and got to watch it.

So was it all it was cranked up to be? No. Not even by a longshot. Sure, there were some rather unsettling moments in the movie, I had never seen this kind of necrophilia in a movie, and it was rather graphic (just as a word of warning to those not having seen the movie yet). But of course, this is a movie that you watch solely for the shock effects, because there is nothing even resembling an interesting storyline here, and the movie is just full of flaws.

As for the acting, well let's just say bless them for trying. You shouldn't go expecting award winning acting performances here. You know what you are getting yourself into with a movie such as "Nekromantik" and sure enough, you will not be disappointed.

The music in the movie was horrible, and it was unfathomably unfitting for the movie. It was way too upbeat and energetic. It just would have served the movie so much better with dark, somber music instead.

"Nekromantik" does, of course, also have a totally unnecessary amount of nudity in it, which doesn't really serve any purpose and doesn't really help to further whatever little of a storyline there actually was present. Just felt like an excuse to throw in the showing of naked people as well. And within the first 5 minutes of the movie, you have seen someone peeing twice... Again, to what purpose? None!

The effects in the movie were adequate. Not great, mind you, but they served their purpose well enough. The corpse was actually fairly nicely made and it was the main attraction of the movie - in more ways than just one.

I didn't understand why the staff working at JSA didn't wear protective masks and gloves while handling the deceased. It just made absolutely no sense. Using bare hands, and then seen several times throughout the movie with their hands at the faces, scratching their eyes, etc. They should be so sick from the exposure to the decaying corpses, as should the girlfriend whom made love to the corpse.

But of course, the movie is all about shock effect and shock value. And yes, there is something to that. I haven't seen necrophilia this explicit before, so that was a new for me, and it was somewhat gross. Somewhat. Takes a lot to throw off a seasoned horror veteran like me. But seeing the rabbit being killed on screen was a bit too visual for me, I didn't like watching that. One thing is seeing staged necrophilia with a prosthetic corpse, another thing is seeing a real, live animal killed.

All in all, not a very noteworthy movie. I have seen it now, and will never see it again, so I can tick it off of my watched-movie-list now.

Obviously filmed on super8-format Jörg Buttgereit´s masterpiece "Nekromantik" looks much more professional and expensive than it´s actually is! Being banned in many countries the most people only see a depraved and disgusting horror movie in it, but to me it is a disturbing, but simultaneously beautiful film about a weird fetish! The whole film is surrounded by an almost apocalyptic poetry and the wonderful piano score emphazises the sinister death-is-everywhere atmosphere perfectly! Some may be offended by gross scenes like the suicide masturbation, the autopsy, the rabbit dissection, the beheading of an old cemetery gardener or the climax when Robert and Betty have sex with the corpse (A very esthetical scene by the way...), but exactly that´s the stuff which makes this movie so unique: the surreal combination of bizarre symbolic, gore and dream like mood! Watch it whenever wherever you can!

I didn't stumble on this film by accident; in fact, I purposefully sought it out, and I'm glad I did - but only because now I'm not searching any more. I feel like a bit of a hypocrite for criticising this film for being sick, given that many of my favourite movies can be described with the same adjective; but Nekromantik crosses a line, and it doesn't even do it in a way that's interesting. The movie features quite a few brutal and sickening scenes, but most of them have no relevance to the plot; and even the ones that do don't serve the film in the way that they should. Nekromantik looks like a trashy piece of crap, and make no mistake; that's exactly what it is. As if the title doesn't give it away, the plot handles the theme of necrophilia. We follow a sewage worker who brings home body parts for his twisted girlfriend. One day, he manages to lay his hands on a full corpse; and unlike most women, she is delighted with this present. We then get 'treated' to seeing the three of them (...) in bed together, etc etc and it's all very difficult to enjoy.

The film obviously wants to examine love; but it just continually fails. No points are made, even the fact that the girlfriend ends up choosing the corpse over her man isn't explored at all. It would seem that the sick pervert who wrote it had a great idea about making a film that handles two of life's most important elements; namely, love and death, but had no idea of exactly how he would go about doing it. The result is this film. Necrophilia is, undoubtedly, a perverse subject; but it's also one that automatically generates intrigue, yet this film also fails even in that respect. The whole plot line is just too silly to take seriously; and even if you look at the movie as a black comedy, it still fails because it's not funny. The necrophilia element isn't even the most shocking thing about this movie; the most shocking things are the animal violence (pointless), and the fact that some people actually like this film! If I really had to come up with positive things about Nekromantik, I would say that I liked the score; and the fact that it's not on for long is a very good thing. On the whole, this movie is a piece of garbage - don't waste your time! Wayward cinema has produced far more satisfying gore-porn flicks than this.

This movie is the sickest movie that I have ever seen. One good thing about the movie is that it did have a decent plot during the movie enough for me to go by. I couldn't believe some of the scenes that I was watching and I had to even close my eyes during the scenes of animal mutilation. This one is a good one to churn your stomach a little, or a lot. I would definitely recommend this one to anyone into some real gross stuff, give this one a look.

For the uninitiated, Nekromantik is one of the most notorious horror movies ever made. It may actually be reviled more than it is admired, even in horror circles, but it's one of those few movies that's provocative, in the truest sense of the word. Nekromantik is the story of a nice young couple with unusual sexual proclivities. Specifically, in order to get off, they require congress with a human corpse -- or at least a nice selection of pickled organs. Fortunately for these two, the fella (Daktari Lorenz) has a good job on the clean-up crew that tidies up automobile accidents, and eventually winds up with a real find, a half-rotten carcass dragged out of a swamp. He brings it home, where he and Betty (Beatrice M.) give it a warm welcome in a distended love scene involving a striking optical-printing technique that leaves motion trails on the screen as someone (presumably Lorenz, who doubled as composer of the score) pounds out the lyrical love theme on a piano. It's not all hugs and corpses, however, and when Betty abandons Rob after a tiff, the corpse goes with her.

Alternately disgustingly gory and terminally boring, this is clearly a film that tries to coast along on sheer shock value, because it has nothing else of merit to recommend. Technically, it's about as bad as any movie you're ever likely to see (aside from the fairly good gore effects), and the director appears to be a man sick beyond comprehension. (0)

Buttgereit has proved himself to be first and foremost a filmmaker concerned with Germany's political and social past and present. That past of course includes the unfathomable horror of concentration camps and the deliberate execution of over nine million people who did not conform to the values and aspirations of the Third Reich. How does one represent this particularly dark moment in not only Germany's past, but in human history? What other horrors are humans capable of? Contemporary Germany remains unresolved to this part of its history and filmmakers like Buttgereit have set themselves the task of thrusting it in their faces. Watched literally, his Nekromantik films are buffoonish meaningless projects concerned with exploiting taboo topics and turning even the hardiest of stomachs. Indeed, regardless of how one approaches Buttgereit's film, it is hard to watch, but that is his point. What other describe as the film's "poor" production values and "bad" performances are all conceived to contribute to the overall pessimism and rage that underscores the film. Buttgereit deliberately embraces a trash aesthetic as it fits in with his intentions to disturb, repulse and offend.

It is with great difficulty that I can find words to describe this movie, and I am being generous calling it a movie. If you give a 5 year old a camera he will record a better movie than this. There is no story line, no action, ...no movie. The first impression is that they didn't give you the right movie, but I can honestly say that this is the worst movie ever. I can appreciate any genre but this "thing" cannot be called a movie. All that the producers tried to do is shock with the graphic scenes, and they miserably fail even at this simple task. I cannot imagine what could be appreciated at this movie, the soundtrack is absent, and there is no logic in the script, a simple look at the scenes will surface a lot of abnormalities that one would never encounter in the daily routine. In conclusion, don't waste your time, read a newspaper or look outside your window, you will be left with much more that after watching this movie.

I have to admit that I like this film. At the same time, I don't know whether or not I can sit through it again. Jorg Buttgeireit proves himself as quite a revolutionary director in this field of film-making, and since has gone on to make even better films.

Nekromantik is actually not a very complicated story. Robert and Betty are in love. Robert and Betty have some sick fetish's. Robert works for a company that cleans up dead bodies, and one day Robert brings home a rather rotten cadaver pulled out from a swamp. When I say rotten, I mean disgustingly rotten. Well, after Robert and Betty have a rather disgusting threesome with there new found friend, Robert gets fired from his job. It is at this point that Betty leaves him and takes the rotten corpse with her. The rest of the movie is Robert trying to cope with his loss.

This movie has to be seen to believe. I wouldn't recommend this to just the average horror fan. You have to be wanting to look for something new. In my case, I had seen everything. My collection of horror films is in the hundreds. But I hadn't seen this. The second film is rather good also, and I am having a hard time deciding which movie had the sickest ending. I hope this comment helps. 8/10

Rob (Daktari Lorenz) works days cleaning dead bodies up from fatal car crashes on the Autobahn, develops a sick fascination with death and collects body parts and internal organs which he stores in mason jars back at his cramped apartment. In order to spice up a rocky relationship with his equally disturbed necro girlfriend (Beatrice M), he brings home a rotted corpse for a ménage-a-troix, which backfires when she decides she prefers the stiff to him!

The grainy, low-budget feel adds extra oomph to the shock value, not to mention some gritty atmosphere, and there is certainly enough depraved sickness to go around, including one of the most twisted and memorable endings in horror history. In addition to all the simulated gore, a real rabbit is killed and skinned, there are some hilariously misplaced "artistic" touches and loads of full (often unappealing) nudity. Film Threat offers a subtitled and unrated (would be X) version, and its 1989 sequel, NEKROMANTIK 2: RETURN OF THE LOVING DEAD.

Lots of gore and shocking moments, but no psychological momentum at all. The characters are not developed and you couldn't care less about them. They just act like puppets of the director doing disgusting thins to offend.

I give the movie credit for not been squeamish about its subject matter. But in the end the lack of real interest becomes obvious and it takes over the initial shock, leaving us with a soulless, amateur-looking movie with scenes that you probably wont forget on a visceral level, but that wont resonate in your brain.

So, is it recommended? Yes, if you are into mindless gore. But if you look for a strong story with compelling characters, look somewhere else.

The director said it himself: It was made to spite German censors. And that's exactly what you get. A few scenes are mildly entertaining, and the film is thankfully short.

Necrophilia films usually fall into two categories, "black comedy", or bizarre. "Nekromantik" definitely fits with the bizarre group. A gruesome accident sets the story in motion, introducing a street sweeper husband who collects body parts for his hot wife who routinely takes blood baths. Eventually he gives her a gift of a badly decomposed body, which leads to the bizarre part, a love triangle. It's love at first sight for the wife, who eventually runs off with the rotting corpse. Between interesting visuals, and musical interludes, there is plenty of dead space. Speaking of dead, there is some totally unacceptable animal cruelty, in this crude curiosity of a movie. - MERK

This film is one that I never heard about until getting into podcasts. I actually heard one of my favorite shows to listen to cover this as well as other films from the director, Jörg Buttgereit. It definitely was one that made me nervous to check out, but also excited me. This was actually the midnight movie on Friday at the Nightmares Film Festival, so my first viewing was on the big screen. The synopsis is a street sweeper who cleans up after grisly accidents brings home a full corpse for him and his girlfriend to enjoy sexually, but he realizes that she might like the corpse more than him.

We start this off with a woman that is urinating outside. She gets back into the car with her husband and the two of them end up getting into an accident, with both being killed. Through this we meet our main character who is a street sweeper for a company called 'Joe's Cleaning Agency'. Our main character is Rob (Bernd Daktari Lorenz). He doesn't really get along that well with his co-workers, but when he returns home, we see that this is the perfect job for him. He steals body parts and keeps them in jars. He also lives with his girlfriend, Betty (Beatrice Manowski), who also shares the same interests.

The film then goes a bit artsy here where we see an interview on television of a psychiatrist on how people can overcome their fears as well as seeing a man killing a rabbit. He then skins it. The next images are of a man who is hunting and accidentally kills a gardener. The body is discarded in a pond nearby.

This brings Rob and his crew to clean this up. He gets the idea to bring the body home for him and his girlfriend to have fun with. A steel pipe is added and the two of them have an interesting encounter with the corpse. Things take a turn for the worse though. Rob's co-workers don't like him and he didn't wash his work jumpsuit. He's taken to the boss where he's fired. He tries to find solace with his girlfriend, but she is upset he lost his job. Rob tries to pull it together, but the nightmare has just begun.

Now I had to go a little bit lighter on the recap here since there's not a lot to the story. We get some long, interesting takes of things that are pretty horrific if I'm completely honest. I won't kink shame someone for being into necrophilia though. It was pretty gross to watch if I'm going to be honest. I'll parlay this into the effects, since they're really good. I could tell that the body was fake, the thing though is they make it so gooey that I lost myself there. It didn't necessarily sit well with me, but I'm weirdly glad I got to see it. There are other things that were done practically and don't necessarily look real, but the movie has such an arthouse feel that it works. I do think that it is shot very artistic and despite what we're seeing, it looks great.

To shift back to the story though, I didn't catch on until I read up a little bit about this film that the killing of the rabbit was supposed to be Rob's father and seeing his beloved pet murdered. We later see this sequence shown in reverse. My take on this, was that peeling the skin from the rabbit and returning it was Rob taking off his inhabitation to explore his sexuality and then when his life falls apart, returning his protection to the depressing ending. Betty left because he can't stand up for himself and we also see that when he's bullied at the theater in the film as well.

I'm going to move this into the pacing of the movie. It only runs at 75 minutes and to be honest, that's a perfect length. The story is quite basic, but it is all about the visuals here, which I don't recommend for everyone to check out. It is odd though, because of how beautiful the images are actually shot, despite their nature, and coupling that with the music. The lovemaking scene has such a song that would fit for a normal sexual encounter, it is almost sensual. What is really being shown is quite the opposite, but it definitely works. This one has an extremely bleak and depressing ending, but it really works for what the film is giving to us.

The last thing to cover would be the acting. It is quite amateurish, but I'm forgiving of that when you're dealing with an arthouse film. It isn't about the performances. It is about the images that we are seeing. I do think that Lorenz fits the role of Rob very well. It is interesting that bringing home this corpse makes his world fall apart and the depressing nature of him really did fit. Manowski and the rest of the cast really don't have big roles, but definitely fit in the downfall of our main character for sure.

Now with that said, I need to re-iterate that this film isn't going to be for everyone. It has some really taboo subject matter and the arthouse take on it makes it grotesque while still being beautiful. There's a gritty look to it that makes it feel even more real as well. I think that the effects, even if they don't necessarily look real, there's just a surreal feel and it made me question if what we're seeing. I have to give credit for that. The soundtrack doesn't necessarily fit in the general idea, but oddly it does in this artsy type way. There's not a lot to the story, but it doesn't really need too much to get by what the film wants to convey. Personally I have to say that I enjoyed this in a non-traditional sense and overall this is an above average film.

7/10

After years of hearing about how shocking and disgusting this film was I finally sat down to view it. What a monumental waste of my time. I can't recall a film that I have viewed recently that was so utterly without merit. It just reeked of cheapness. From horrid cinematography to cheap effects there isn't much here. Even the scenes supposed to shock you are really that shocking. Maybe because its hard to tell what's going on since the director filmed in soft focus and constantly layered the edits to give a hallucinogenic effect. I found it all kind of dull and pointless. Sorry, screwing a corpse just isn't my idea of a good time.

pretty much i liked it for all the horrifyingly wrong things in this film. sure there is a lot of wrong stuff on here. but all i can say is... it's not a horror movie by much. but a very screwed up romance movie. it's an interesting film. but with the wrong genre title tagged on it. also this film is not for anyone who likes everything to be well... ALIVE. plus there are some uncomfortable scenes that may make people throw up (like the beginning warnings before the movie starts).

personally i liked it (as another way of a guilty pleasure). but i can't really see a mob of devoted fans raving about this movie. there are even stuff on this film that would obviously be CONTRIVERSIAL or ILLEAGAL, and most importantly ATROCIOUSLY DISGUSTING!

This is a movie about, as the title indicates, the love to the dead. A sort of perverted theme. And yes, it is a film with a lot of gore and a lot of disgusting dead meat. The weird thing about this movie is, that all this nastiness is filmed in a beautiful way – with beautiful music. This makes this film unusual and definitely needs an open mind to be watched. I personally liked the cheap synth-music the best. It suited the bad quality of the movie (which was filmed with a hi8 camera) perfectly. Combined this created a great and unusual atmosphere.

Sadly the movie is very exhausting to watch. And sometimes you get the idea, that the movie is all about living out a perversion. But then again, the movie asks interesting questions about humanity and life itself. One of many reasons why I consider this movie art and believe it's worth to watch – despite all the perversion and gore.

Well were the heck do I begin with this film, i seriously don't know. There were 2 minor things i didn't like about the film but the rest was a disturbing presence of romance, depression, brutality and weirdness of the mysterious beyond.

I like how the film's tale is told so simply. All it is, is about a guy and his buddies who find a rotting, charred corpse in a lake. The guy takes it home and him and his wife/girlfriend make love to it. His partner starts taking more interest in the corpse than him and she decides to leave him and run off with a corpse. His insanity gets to him and he goes on a small killing spree and then he commits suicide in the most unnatural way.

For a low-budget cult horror, I will say as the story goes it is pretty decent in my book. It's like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Cannibal Holocaust and other films fused together to make this.

I don't like the killings of the rabbit & cat. i felt they were'nt needed and it especially made me cover my eyes since it was real. The day dreaming sequences were stupid and to me there wasn't any reason for it, otherwise everything is up to scratch. I find most of the film interesting.

The kills are pretty sweet, the rotting corpse is really graphic and it looks great, the music is insanely intriguing and the characters are stupid in the funniest way. The film also has a really disturbing tone. The funniest scene is when a woman is reading to the corpse.

I only advise this film to those who have a strong mind. It is also a good thing that you watch 10 or so horror films before this one because if you watch this first you might not want to watch any horror film again. So watch this film in your time wisely. 7.8/10

The only reason I decided to watch this was because I was informed it was sick,deranged,horrific etc. and of course love being disgusted. It does take a lot to gross me out and I hate to admit it but I was grossed out by parts of this. It took a while to find this but at least all the time didn't go to waste. If you are looking to be grossed out or want something interesting or are surprisingly a necrophiliac I would suggest this movie. Not for people who are easily grossed out or people who aren't into the genre. All in all it was an okay movie but the gross factor was pretty up there. 6 out of 10 from me.

~Joe

Employed as part of a team that cleans corpses off the street, a young necrophile enjoys taking home body parts (and whole corpses where possible) for him and his girlfriend to enjoy in this low budget flick from Germany. Banned upon initial release in several countries, 'Nekromantik' definitely comes with some shock value as it depicts in grisly detail just how the two lovers use their corpses and body parts in their lovemaking routines. What's more, the film even manages to drum up some sympathy for its protagonist who is ostracised by his colleagues and who does everything possible to satisfy his girlfriend's interests (one gets the sense that she was always more into it than him). Unfortunately, the film falls apart around halfway through as his girlfriend walks out, leading to him quite literally meandering around. He cries in the bathtub, goes to watch a horror movie that is not nearly nasty enough for him, and the list goes on as he wallows in depression. And yet, while the fact that the story comes to a virtual halt in the second half is perplexing, it is arguably the less shocking nature of the majority of the second half that underwhelms the most. The extent of the young couple's deviancy is the real highlight here, particularly with all the intriguing questions of what led to them to have such a perverse interest in corpses. The graphic scenes of the protagonist and his work colleagues cleaning corpses up is pretty intense too. Those interested in a shock or two will likely not be disappointed here, but the film is also never quite the cohesive whole that it could have been.