Memento Mori: The Jörg Buttgereit Collection (Arrow Store exclusive)

[Finch]

Shocking and controversial, yet permeated with a dark, poetic beauty, the films of underground German auteur Jörg Buttgereit stand at the very intersection between art and exploitation.

In Nekromantik, the director's groundbreaking 1987 debut, nihilistic couple Rob and Betty seek to enliven their relationship by bringing a freshly-acquired corpse into the equation, with predictably nauseating results. 1990's Der Todesking takes a more experimental - but no less gruelling - approach, offering up seven vignettes of suicide, one for each day of the week, all prompted by a mysterious chain letter. In 1991, Buttgereit would return to the realm of corpse-loving with Nekromantik 2, which sees the young Monika torn between the two men in her life - the dorky yet doting Mark, and a rapidly-decomposing cadaver. Lastly, with 1993's Schramm, Buttgereit takes us deep into the deranged mind of a psychopath, charting the final days in the life of twisted sex killer Lothar Schramm.

With Memento Mori: The Jörg Buttgereit Collection - which brings together all four of the director's feature films, packed with extras and accompanied by a wealth of exclusive content - Arrow Video is proud to offer up the definitive compendium of this most singular of genre filmmakers.

Product Features

5-DISC LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS

High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation of all films
Uncompressed PCM stereo 2.0 audio for all films and additional mono audio option for Nekromantik
Optional English subtitles for all films
Limited edition packaging incorporating an exclusive, 100-page rigid book featuring new writing by David Kerekes, author of Sex Murder Art: The Films of Jörg Buttgereit, a selection of archival essays and the colour debut of the Nekromantik comic book sequel, Son of Nekromantik
Exclusive bonus disc containing the extended cut of Nekromantik 2, the home video premiere of the 2020 Jörg Buttgereit-directed documentary short Schweinchen, recently-unearthed short films and more!
Original Nekromantik 2 16mm film strip
DISC ONE: NEKROMANTIK

Audio commentary with Jörg Buttgereit and co-writer Franz Rodenkirchen
2014 introduction by Jörg Buttgereit
Alternative "Grindhouse" version of Nekromantik
In Conversation with The Death King - 2014 interview with Jörg Buttgereit
Morbid Fascination: The Nekromantik Legacy - 2014 documentary
2014 Q&A with Jörg Buttgereit filmed at the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow, Scotland
The Making of Nekromantik - archival documentary
Nekromantik premiere footage
A 1997 retrospective on the film featuring interviews with Jörg Buttgereit and producer Manfred Jelinski
Two short films by Jörg Buttgereit: Horror Heaven (1984, 23 mins) and Hot Love (1985, 29 mins), both with optional audio commentary
Horror Heaven trailer
Hot Love premiere footage
Two Jörg Buttgereit-directed music videos: "I Can't Let Go" by Shock Therapy and "Lemmy, I'm a Feminist" by Half Girl
Image gallery
Jörg Buttgereit trailer gallery
DISC TWO: DER TODESKING

Audio commentary with Jörg Buttgereit and co-writer Franz Rodenkirchen
From Bundy to Lautréamont - Jörg Buttgereit in conversation with journalist Graham Rae at the 2016 Manchester Festival of Fantastic Films
Todesmusik: Conversations with the Fish Man - 2018 featurette with actor and composer Hermann Kopp
Skeleton Beneath the Skin - 2018 featurette on Der Todesking tattoo culture with Graham Rae
The Making of Der Todesking - archival documentary
Der Todesking premiere footage
Alternate English-language chain letter insert
Corpse Fucking Art - 1992 documentary
Der Gollob (1983, 25 mins) - short film by Jörg Buttgereit, with optional audio commentary
Two short films by Manfred Jelinski: Die Reise ins Licht (1972, 25 mins), with optional audio commentary, and Geliebter Wahnsinn (1973, 8 mins)
Image gallery
Jörg Buttgereit trailer gallery
DISC THREE: NEKROMANTIK 2

Audio commentary with Jörg Buttgereit, producer Manfred Jelinksi, co-writer Franz Rodenkirchen and actors Monika M. and Mark Reeder
2015 cast and crew introduction
Masters of Life and Death - 2015 documentary on the making of Nekromantik 2
City of the Loving Dead - 2015 featurette on the locations of Nekromantik 2
Nekro Waltz: The Music of Nekromantik 2 - 2015 interview with actor and composer Mark Reeder
Necropolis: Jörg Buttgereit's Berlin - 2015 featurette with film scholar Dr. Marcus Stiglegger
The Making of Nekromantik 2 - archival documentary
Outtakes reel
Nekromantik 2 Livekonzert - footage from the 20th anniversary Nekromantik 2 concert in Berlin
Complete 20-track audio recording of the concert [BD-ROM content]
Two short films by Jörg Buttgereit: Bloody Excess in the Leader's Bunker (1982, 8 mins), with optional audio commentary, and A Moment of Silence at the Grave of Ed Gein (2012, 2 mins)
Two Jörg Buttgereit-directed music videos: "Rise Up" by Die Krupps and "Die Frau in der Musik" by Stereo Total
Image gallery
Jörg Buttgereit trailer gallery
DISC FOUR: SCHRAMM

Audio commentary with Jörg Buttgereit and co-writer Franz Rodenkirchen
Audio commentary with actors Florian Koerner von Gustorf and Monika M.
Tomorrow I Will Be Dirt (2019, 8 mins) - short animated sequel to Schramm by filmmaker Robert Morgan
Tomorrow I Will Be Dirt behind-the-scenes and premiere featurettes
Take My Body: The Journey of a Blow-up Doll - 2019 featurette with author and filmmaker Kier-La Janisse
Buttgereit: Into the Mind of a Cult Filmmaker - Jörg Buttgereit in conversation with Ewan Cant at the 2019 Offscreen Film Festival in Brussels
The Making of Schramm - archival documentary
1994 Q&A with Jörg Buttgereit, producer Manfred Jelinski, actor Monika M. and author David Kerekes, filmed at a UK screening of Schramm
Two short films by Jörg Buttgereit: Mein Papi (1981-1995, 8 mins) and Jesus - Der Film (1986, 3 mins), the latter with optional audio commentary
Two short films by Manfred Jelinski: Orpheus in der Oberwelt (1970, 31 mins) and Ein ku'ze' Film übe' Hambu'g (1990, 7 mins)
Image galleries
Jörg Buttgereit trailer gallery
DISC FIVE: BONUS DISC

Nekromantik 2 Extended Cut (110 mins)
Nekromantik 2 premiere footage, with audio commentary by Jörg Buttgereit
Monika M. screen test footage for Nekromantik 2
Schweinchen (2020, 19 mins) - short film directed by Jörg Buttgereit documenting a decomposition study conducted by renowned forensic biologist Dr. Mark Benecke
Captain Berlin versus Hitler (2009, 75 mins) - filmed version of the stage play written and co-directed by Jörg Buttgereit, with optional audio commentary by composer Mark Reeder
New York - Paris (1986, 9 mins) - never-before-seen short film by Jörg Buttgereit documenting his 1986 trip to New York, via Paris, for a screening of Hot Love, with optional audio commentary
The Muschibärs Live at the Gleisdreieck (1981, 6 mins) - never-before-seen short satirical concert film by Jörg Buttgereit, with optional audio commentary

[therewillbeblus]

Never heard of this - anyone recommend it? Or a particular film that might be a good indicative sample of the set?

[swo17]

This is a repackaging of four films Arrow has previously released. Perhaps some of the extras are new, I haven't checked. You can see what people have said in these threads:

Nekromantik 1/2
Der Todesking
Schramm

[Peacock]

The Nekromantik 2 extended cut disc is new. I didn’t even know there was an extended cut! Can’t imagine what horrors it includes.

And the short films on that disc are all new.

These films must be big sellers as this is the third time Arrow is putting out a boxset of them! I’ll include my reviews of all the films below

[Peacock]

MEIN PAPI

Made up of a handful of discreetly filmed snippets when testing cameras and film stocks as a young man living at home, Buttgereit tries to distill one man’s life into a 7 minute short.

His father, a very blue collar truck driver who looks bewildered and lost by his son(s?) experiments with cinematography appears to be a simple guy. A man who works hard and wants to unwind with food and tv when he gets home. That’s it.

Buttgereit inserts captions explaining the various health issues his father was dealing with at each stage.

Even though clearly they were very different people it’s evident that Buttgereit loved his dad.

Groovy music and simple, but endearing.

——————————————————-

BLUTIGE EXZESSE IM FÜHRERBUNKER

Ever wondered what would happen if a latex skin Hitler surgeon (stuffed with newspaper) re-animated Eva Braun and a hunky Aryan “breeding bull” to create a new master race…? No…? Why not?

I feel bad rating this so low when it’s just a young filmmaker shooting a silly gore film in his bedroom. It’s more of a test with his friends than a serious movie to be dissected (if you’ll excuse the pun).

I’m working my way through Buttgereit’s work chronologically and can see a crass provocateur theme appearing, but there’s equally a tongue in cheek quality which makes it all enjoyable.

Looking forward to seeing where he goes next from here.

————————————————

DER GOLLOB

Another beginners no-budget short from Buttgereit. This one has a bit of sprawl as a couple of hotshot cops try to track down a flesh eating mutant pizza which is terrorising the city.

This very much feels like an early student film in every respect, but the latex monster is impressive in a bad 70s Doctor Who villain kind of way. Plus it’s nice to see Buttgereit play around with tension and drama a bit.

The concept of Ajax accidentally added to Italian food potentially leading to the death of humanity is amusing as is the gun-wielding blonde policeman (played ridiculously by Buttgereit) who always shoots first asks questions later.

————————————-

HORROR HEAVEN

Buttgereit is slowly improving with each new film as I go through his work chronologically.

This one features Buttgereit as an anthology host introducing a variety of micro budget comedic horror shorts. We get The Mummy, Frankenstein, The Revenge of The Mummy, Captain Berlin Against Hyxar, Gazorra: The Beast From the Depths of the Earth, and Cannibal Girl.

As always with his early films the weakest element is Buttgereit’s scene-stealing winking-to-the-audience performances in each story but if you can look past that you might get something from the enthusiasm of the young creatives behind it, the DIY creativity and love of cinema.

The best of the lot is probably Frankenstein but they are all on a similar level, the stop-motion monster movie Gazorra rightfully got released separately the following year.

———————————————————

GAZORRA: BEAST FROM THE BOWELS OF THE EARTH

Stop-motion low-budget monster movie about a giant T-Rex terrorising the modern world, can the military led by an over-acting Buttgereit find a way to stop the beast before all his lost?

I think this was Buttgereit’s first stop motion and in some senses it shows. This is a story which demands massive destruction but the toy vehicles used don’t take a dent. The houses do. But the fire effects are just a flame burning weakly on the side of a couple of objects.

That said the dinosaur looks great and his introduction took me by surprise in how well done it was. I just wish the acting scenes were a bit better and the tanks fired visible ammunition.

Included (in full I think?) in Buttgereit’s Horror Heaven.

——————————————-
HOT LOVE

This is still very much a “student film” but it’s nice to see the most disgusting vagina in cinematic history as well as the creepiest baby ever conceived.

Bohemian young German dude meets Bohemian young German gal at a party and they fall in love, everything is idyllic until he spots her one day in the park with a muscular guy, it soon goes horribly wrong for everyone.

This is by far the most and advanced and mature of Buttgereit’s pictures up to this point. He still plays a character but is much less hammy than normal and isn’t one of the two leads.

There’s still some of Buttgereit’s earlier immaturity with his irritating dubbing of side characters belching etc at a party but on the whole this is another level to his earlier work.

On the downside it does contain that irritating silent stock music used extensively during the romantic scenes in a lot of the Feuillade serials.

Worth watching for the final ten mins.

—————————————————-

JESUS: DER FILM (segment)

A white blonde clean shaven German Jesus is carrying his cross to Calvary. After a while he sheds his top, puts on the crown of thorns like a fashion item and is crucified (in an interesting way!) by the lead actor from Hot Love. The film ends with the striking image of the cross falling away behind him and Jesus remaining in the same pose.

Beyond that last shot there’s nothing to recommend here. It was clearly shot in an afternoon by some friends with no meaning behind it.

Interesting to note that Buttgereit doesn’t act in this one for once. In his first shorts he would play the scene stealing lead (and usually end up the weakest element), in his previous film Hot Love he finally played a more subtle supporting character. And here he’s gone, a decision which will no doubt improve the films he went on to make next as he can instead focus his attention on the directing.

[Peacock]

NEKROMANTIK

Buttgereit’s first feature advances over his previous work in every way…

He hired a proper cinematographer who was able to add some production value to the camerawork and lighting, we get a fabulous lead actress, some really well made prosthetics, less childish humour etc.

Buttgereit himself plays only a minor character here and it helps a great deal. The direction of the few scenes he appears in are worse than the others, in his earlier films I believe Buttgereit struggled to make decent quality work because he was distracted by (over) performing in most of the scenes, so it’s nice to get him instead focussed on the directing here.

The lead played by Buttgereit’s friend and long time collaborator Daktari Lorenz is kind of made for him as a weak, feeble and perverted forensics/clean up crew member but unfortunately he’s also - as with his similar character in Hot Love - boring to watch, a guy we care nothing about.

Beatrice Manowski on the other hand is amazing as his amoral, gleeful, horny girlfriend who - in perhaps a nod to Possession - falls in adulterous love with a corpse. Unfortunately she is way underused here, hopefully her role in the second film is significantly bigger?

To be honest I wouldn’t recommend this to people who haven’t seen Buttgereit’s earlier work as it’s pretty amateur, with nothing to say about anything really. This is Buttgereit still in student film mode, but in feature length. I suspect his next film will be noticeably better!

—————————————————

THE DEATH KING

Remember that chain mail you used to get saying you’d die unless you sent it on to 50 people? Same idea here, but this time you’ll kill yourself regardless once you’ve sent it to as many people as possible.

Taking place over 7 days as a number of unemotional suicides (and murders) sweep the country, The Death King is a disturbing movie. There’s no real melodrama here, no story, no emotion, no characters which survive to the next day… no hope.

What we’re left with is almost a series of short films about a revolving door of drab individuals in the run up to their deaths. Surprisingly the feel of each part is quite different to each other: in one we follow the faintly comical antics of a lonely nosy neighbour, in another we observe a man delivering a monologue on a park bench in the rain to an awkward stranger, another is a list of names and professions of people who committed suicide that day played over ominous shots of a bridge.

It’s a hard picture to rate. In many ways it’s a step backwards for Buttgereit in its low budget, cheap visuals. The producer, Jeninski, acted as cinematographer rather than getting a proper DP like in Nekromantik, he even plays a character in the movie. (He does manage a couple of cool camera movements though I’ll give him that!). There’s no production design here, just real people’s sparsely furnished homes. Buttgereit makes three small cameos; a man being tortured in a low-budget Naziploitation flick, as half of the Rear Window young newlywed couple in love and finally as the Death King himself. Buttgereit loves acting in his movies but when it’s just cameos like this it’s fine, he was wise enough to leave behind the OTT central performances of his early career.

The movie is punctuated with timelapse footage of a recently dead body decomposing fully while repetitive creepy music plays. That this image also appears as flashes in the movie’s victims before killing themselves just adds to the uncomfortable feeling.

Buttgereit successfully crafted a depressing, partially found-footage movie for his second feature that preempts Ringu. One must assume Der Todoking was whispered about among hardcore horror fans as a must see oddity; that obscure German movie which is exclusively a bunch of suicides and seems almost to be implying the audience themselves are now infected and will do the same within a few days.

Clever.


———————————————————

DIE REISE INS LICHT

No-budget sci-fi short about a young man that signs up with NASA to take part in an experimental teleportation to survey another planet with a soldier and then return. However immediately before they leave nuclear war begins. What will they find when they return to Earth?

It’s a clever overall concept to be honest. Maybe due to having been written while the Jelinski was on acid?!

However the LSD also maybe hurts the picture as a lot of it isn’t clear at all: the man drawing hangmen on a classified document is supposed to be the American president, as is a a guy lying over his desk. The teleportation device the plot hinges on is never shown. Most critically the finale doesn’t make any sense and I don’t mean that in a good way - this is major mistake when you have such an enticing build up, dystopian sci-fi’s usually have memorable endings for a reason.

Jelenski cast his friends in this and while the NASA chief is half-decent, the Major is constantly angry for no reason and worst of all our protagonist has zero personality, zero expression, almost zero lines and zero presence at all - you forget he’s there most of the time!

One major goof when they land on the alien planet is there’s a shot in the Blake’s 7-esq space quarry with a random bloke wandering around at the edge of frame, surprised no one told him to fuck off as he ruins the atmosphere of a supposedly isolated planet!


I can’t hate this film though, it’s ambitious for something with no money and it earnestly tries to tell a compelling and prescient story, I just wish the main character had a character and the ending was developed.

Also contains an eerie scene shot in half-an-hour in the bombed out Luftwaffe building in Berlin. Very cool, is it still there?

I recommend checking out the director’s commentary for this in the Arrow Buttgereit boxset if you’re interested in no-budget filmmaking.


————————————-

ORPHEUS IN DER OBERWELT

Orpheus, a young man at a stoner party, is given his first dose of LSD. He mixes it with a massive joint and has a terrifying trip, forcing him to flee his friends. The next day he’s still in a bad place and wanders the streets of Berlin alone in despair until he’s coaxed back to the drug world by his friend Luzifer…

While it’s a no budget short, Jelinski obviously spent a lot of time on it and paints an illuminating picture of life for the disaffected hippie youth of West Germany in 1969.

There’s a pretty predictable twist, some groovy music, some brief symbolic encounters with passers by and a guy playing the devil that looks like a young Roger Waters (edit: just realised that’s Jelinski himself! He gives a good performance here)

Don’t watch it expecting high art, excitement or bravado. But it is an interesting slice of slice from a very different time.

It’s interesting to watch these early Jelinski directed films and compare them to the early stuff Jörg Buttgereit was making. Obviously Jelinski would end up producing Buttgereit’s later feature films but he also clearly helped make them less immature, more meaningful, more naturalistic. Elements all found in Jelinski’s work. On his own Jelinski was maybe a little too conventional to have ever been successful and Buttgereit was perhaps too amateurish and formless by himself. But together they complemented each other well and the results speak for themselves…

———————————————

GELIEBTER WAHNSINN

Maybe there was a meaning behind this but it was beyond me, so I just let the brief images wash over me: a hectic football match, a woman clutching her pelvis in pain in a graveyard, an angel sending hippies to heaven (best part), kids playing cowboys and Indians, a domestic fight leading into murder, shop mannequins, shots from a beautiful park and a junkyard, streets and birds flying. Double exposures.

Mercifully short. Jelinski has a background in the music world so as ever there’s a pretty cool soundtrack to make it bearable.


—————————————-

EIN KU’ZE’ FILM ÜBE’ HAMBU’G

Fun, short sense of place documentary filmed in Hamburg in 1989. Jelinski clearly just shot a bunch of random footage while visiting his friends one weekend.

Sound boring? Surprising it’s not because Jelinski was clearly influenced by his then-collaborator Jörg Buttgereit. Jelinski’s early films were pretty serious and dry, but he seems to have been influenced by some of Buttgereit’s sense of humour and fun here (and a hint at his goriness).

Rather than dull images, Jelinski plays around throughout, for example: we see two men waving, he loops the shot then dubs them mechanically saying ‘hello’ and adds robot noises as they turn their head. He films a sharp gate that resembles a saw, he moves the camera back and forth quickly, framing the saw cutting through a distant tower while adding sawing sounds. Etc etc.

Brief and fun and meaningless.

[Peacock]

NEKROMANTIK 2

want you to act realistically like you’ve just opened your new girlfriend’s fridge to make breakfast only to find a small, black, decomposed cock and balls upright on a clingfilm wrapped plate”

“Wait wha -“

“ACTION!”

This is a wildly uneven picture. It has some genuinely hilarious sequences like an amazing part where Monika and her moody friends are blankly eating cream cheese on bread with a rotten severed head on the coffee table and a graphic seal autopsy on the tv. There’s also a weirdly interesting love story between the corpse and Monika. But it is clearly lower budget than the first movie and has a lot in common with Buttgereit’s earlier rough amateur short Hot Love.

Like in that film we get a pointless overlong and dull date sequence with repetitive music and no live sound - only this time it’s almost ten mins long. It just really feels like an amateur film in many parts, which is weird after the slight sophistication of Nekromantik and The Death King. Looking at the outtakes though it really was a low budget shoot, just the director and 3 or 4 others as the crew. I wish they’d built on the earlier films and grown in scale rather than wilted somewhat.

Buttgereit makes his smallest cameo ever here; playing a cinema patron seen briefly watching a pretentious French film about a naked man and woman discussing birds while eating a table’s worth of eggs. That Buttgereit shoots this scene straight is a further example of the increasing maturity of his comedy style, which is one of the best things about this movie.

The leads are also great. Daktari Lorenz, Buttgereit’s long time friend and composer/wooden actor was one of the weakest parts of the first film (and Hot Love) but fortunately his character died in that same movie so we have a new leading man here - Mark Reeder - and while he isn’t a trained actor (he’s a pretty major figure in the Berlin music scene) he has a lot more charisma on screen than Lorenz did which helps you empathise more with his character, Rob. In earlier films Buttgereit often would undermine any sympathy you may have built up for the lead by having them randomly rape or abuse a woman; not here! Rob is a nice guy, even if he is a little strict about tardiness!

As for the female lead, this is where the film does a bit of a bait and switch. The first Nekromantik starred Beatrice Manowski in an unhinged performance as the bitchy necrophilic girlfriend of the main guy. She’s credited here so I was looking forward to her return to the central role. But instead she only makes a brief funny cameo as her original character that appears in the graveyard a little too late to dig up her dead ex-boyfriend for sex, because she’s beaten to the punch by the new female lead, Monika. What is with German girls and rotting corpses?!

Monika is played by… (drumroll) Monika M and is to be fair a good alternate to Manowski’s character from the first film. Monika is also obsessed with corpses but not in a gleeful, salacious way but rather a banal everyday sense; her only hobby beyond occasional solo cinema trips appears to be watching autopsies, visiting graveyards, playing with her anatomy model skeleton and grinding her naked body on cadavers gooey chests.* She also always has great 60s eye makeup and hair.

That said we do have to watch her dig up a grave for ten minutes at the beginning and the movie repeatedly pads out the running time (in an attempt to not make it as short as Nekromantik 1) with overly long scenes of nothing much happening. And I loved Out 1, Satantango, the films of Lav Diaz, Lisandro Alonso, Tsai, Costa etc. I have no issue with slow cinema! But it’s because they are showing something interesting. Here? It just feels like bad editing.

Jelenski, the producer, co-edited this and acted as the cinematographer. He also lensed Der Todoking and added a bit of showy visual style to certain shots, he does the same here too. However he’s not a cinematographer and therefore he doesn’t really care about the lighting, which often isn’t that great here. I wish he had focussed on the producing and let someone else handle the cinematography like the guy he got to do Nekromantik 1, and who shot several of Jelinski’s own films. I guess Jelinski figured they could save money by doing the job himself but it is a shame. It’s certainly not a deal breaker though, there are some nice shots in this, but it feels like a step backwards visually at times, closer to Hot Love.

I’m pretty sure there was no art department on this one either. Production design - or rather the lack of - is an issue on several of these Buttgereit films. Because they didn’t employ someone they just threw up some printed pictures onto some walls and shot it quickly in people’s messy homes. It makes it feel real, but it also makes it feel like they are shooting in their friend’s undecorated flats rather than anything visually interesting. A similar issue I had with Der Todoking. There is a nice yellow wall at one point here though! Wow!

Music is a big step back from Der Todoking. Much more stock music-y and repeated.

Right, if you’ve read this far you need to do something more productive with your life. Give the review a like so I know who the real heroes are.

In conclusion - more mature and funny than any of Buttgereit’s other films, but only in parts. And a step back budget-wise and technically to his previous two films. Definitely worth seeing, if only for the hilariously brilliant twisted twist during the final sex scene, and what comes after.

Enjoy!


——————————-

SCHRAMM

With Schramm, Buttgereit finally made his first “professional” movie. Alas it was to be his last feature film!

Now Der Todoking is probably still Buttgereit’s greatest work as it’s one of the most uncomfortable films ever made and really unique structurally. But Schramm manages to surpass it visually, artistically, in terms of production design, prosthetic effects, by not feeling like a student film and by its strong performances.

Let’s talk about those performances. Florian Koerner Von Gustorf plays the complicated lead, an awkward taxi-driver filled of almost, suppressed rage and self hatred. He gives a very vulnerable performance here and it’s one of the best in any Buttgereit film. Monika M was discovered for Nekromantik 2 and although she doesn’t play a deranged necrophile here, she delivers another nuanced performance this time as a jaded prostitute who forms an unlikely relationship with Schramm. Jörg Buttgereit began his career acting somewhat obnoxiously in all his films. As his movies got bigger he gradually gave himself smaller roles until he only made mere cameos. But in Schramm he doesn’t appear for the first time, he doesn’t shoehorn himself into this very sparse, isolated world and the movie is all the better for it. Buttgereit does include a different clever cameo in this movie though - Jesus is played by Michael Brynntrup, the experimental German filmmaker who produced and starred in Buttgereit’s earlier very short Jesus Der Film back in 1986. He could have got someone else for this small part but was clearly making a cheeky nod to his early work. This is also the first of his movies to feature older men in it which is cool (not just Buttgereit’s friends for once!)

The budget clearly isn’t huge here, the cast is small and the number of locations is very limited however for the first time in any of his movies there is production design, not just drab borrowed flats owned by student friends. Monika M’s apartment is gaudy, she is trapped in a prostitute’s world. Schramm’s home is mostly white and clean but has some flashes of colour. Colour which is erased after he murders and falls headfirst into hell.

Jelinski is a producer (and director in his own right) but from Der Todoking on he took on cinematography for Buttgereit also. He gives his best here, taking the random virtuosic camera moves from the last two films and giving them psychological meaning here, his knowledge of lighting is still very crude and harsh but it is a lot better than the earlier films and works fine for a story like this.

Buttgereit really finds his feet here. The movie opens with a blurry image of slow motion runners as music darkly plays and the credits roll. We soon realise we are witnessing a flashback to more innocent, happier days. A man running a marathon in memory of his parents. The film plays around with a non-linear structure and it’s never clear what happened when, but it works perfectly with the concept of a man’s memories flashing through his mind as he slowly leaves this world. It’s remarkably mature compared to his earlier movies, even the gore is handled deliberately here and never overused (and this is a movie which features a sad man hammering nails into his foreskin!)

So would I recommend this to an 8 year old’s birthday party? I genuinely didn’t expect this movie to be as effective as it is, it’s not rated particularly highly among Buttgereit’s work. And I understand why; it’s a very focussed movie about a very small world and drops the humour of most of his other movies. But this is hands down the first accomplished, grown up movie Buttgereit made and it’s a tragedy that it ended up being his last full-length one, it would have been really interesting to see where he went next from Schramm, particularly if he had a larger budget.


—————————-
TOMORROW I WILL BE DIRT

This extra film on the Arrow blu-ray of Schramm is really good.

Stop-motion about Schramm in a cold, nightmarish vision of Hell after his soul leaves his body shortly after the events of Buttgereit’s film. He encounters the vag with teeth from that movie, this time larger and smoother than ever. His dick gets totally ruined after he plays around with nails and hammers once again (doesn’t he ever learn?) and we get some amazing eye shifts.

Seriously the modelling here is great as is the movement, I’m not really sure how the director pulled this off as a one-man-band. Very impressive.

Buttgereit’s film paints Schramm as a complicated, occasionally sympathetic figure carrying a heap of buried trauma. This short just makes Schramm a pitiful almost-worm, a tragic end to a tragic life.

We can only hope that Schramm finally found peace deep inside the giant vagina that consumed him and which will consume us all someday.

————————————-

A MOMENT OF SILENCE AT THE GRAVE OF ED GEIN

Hard to rate a film like this. The title of the movie perfectly describes what this is: a 2 minute static single shot on a tranquil day of the Gein family’s burial plot in Plainfield with a gap where Ed Gein’s gravestone used to be until it was stolen in 2000.

Why was Buttgereit there? Perhaps he was exhibiting some of his earlier films and swung by in passing?

Why did Buttgereit need an editor and camera assistant for this? Good question!

We all know Ed Gein’s insane history, and you may even know that many of the burial plots surrounding his grave were desecrated by Ed himself. But when this was shot many decades later everything is beautiful and peaceful.

This couldn’t be further from Buttgereit’s grotesque previous films, if young Jörg had made this he would have overlaid intense German synths and flashed images of Gein’s victims on the screen. But old Jörg is a more contemplative soul and is clearly more interested in the strange way that nature moves on and forgets the horrors of the past.

That Buttgereit decided to shoot a contemplative movie at an infamous serial killer’s grave is obviously somewhat cheeky and helps him live up to his reputation, but he handles it interestingly and it leaves you thinking.

[Peacock]

In hindsight many months later The Death King is probably the one that stays with me the most, such an unpleasant and depressing film, I can’t think of anything quite like it,

Nekromantik 2 is fun. Schramm is abstract and unusual.

I’m gutted that the Nekromantik 2 disc in this new set is a boxset exclusive. Such a shame for those of us who own one of the previous sets.

[colinr0380]

I'm still waiting for Arrow (or someone) to release Kissed, which is basically an unacknowledged arthouse remake of the plot of Nekromantik 2 (that's the one I'd guide you more towards therewillbeblus, as the Buttgereit films are, um, an acquired taste)

(And Kissed is culturally important in UK censorship terms as following their 'successful' rally against Crash in 1997, the Daily Mail tried to turn the outrage into an annual thing by highlighting both Kissed and the Adrian Lyne Lolita remake as the unconscionable films that the 'lax BBFC' were passing uncut into cinemas for the 1998 season! All of which furore became somewhat of a moot point when Channel 4 showed all three on television a couple of years following that!)

[yoloswegmaster]