Unholy Obsessions: Decoding Nekromantik 2’s Descent into Necrophilic Madness
In the shadowed underbelly of German extremity cinema, Nekromantik 2 dares to exhume the rawest taboos of love, death, and unquenchable desire.
Released in 1991, Jörg Buttgereit’s Nekromantik 2 stands as a brazen sequel to his notorious 1987 debut, pushing the boundaries of horror into realms of psychological and physical extremity rarely explored in mainstream or even cult filmmaking. This underground masterpiece, often shrouded in controversy for its unflinching portrayal of necrophilia, invites viewers to confront the intersections of addiction, sexuality, and mortality. Far from mere shock value, the film weaves a narrative that probes deeper human impulses, cementing its place as a cornerstone of the European extreme cinema movement.
- A meticulous breakdown of the film’s narrative structure, revealing how it subverts traditional romance tropes through graphic necrophilic encounters and hallucinatory sequences.
- An examination of thematic depths, including addiction recovery, gender subversion, and the eroticisation of decay, contextualised within post-Wall Berlin’s cultural turmoil.
- Spotlights on director Jörg Buttgereit and lead actress Monika M., tracing their careers and the lasting influence of Nekromantik 2 on global horror subcultures.
The Corpse Bride’s Reluctant Redemption Arc
At its core, Nekromantik 2 follows Monika, a young woman grappling with an insatiable addiction to necrophilia inherited from the events of the original film. The story opens with her furtively exhuming a fresh male corpse from a cemetery, dragging it home in a body bag for intimate rituals that blend tenderness with grotesque mutilation. This opening sequence sets a tone of intimate horror, where the camera lingers on the minutiae of decay—rigor mortis stiffening limbs, fluids seeping from orifices—transforming the act into a perverse ballet of desire.
Seeking escape from her compulsion, Monika attends therapy sessions with a psychologist who employs unorthodox methods, including exposure therapy via pornographic videos projected onto her body. These scenes juxtapose clinical detachment with visceral eroticism, highlighting the futility of conventional rehabilitation against primal urges. Her attempt at normalcy peaks when she meets Rob, a strait-laced audio technician, leading to a brief domestic idyll marked by awkward sexual encounters and shared meals. Yet, the corpse—dubbed “Knorzi” by Monika—lurks in the background, a silent rival that undermines her fragile heteronormative facade.
The narrative crescendos in a spiral of violence and relapse. After burying Knorzi, Monika succumbs to hallucinations of animated cadavers engaging in orgiastic revelry, culminating in her murder of Rob during a moment of coital frustration. She then vivisects his body, incorporating it into her necrophilic menagerie. The film’s climax features a dreamlike sequence where Monika imagines herself as a suicide, only to awaken to a final act of self-mutilation, severing her own breast in a ritual of ultimate surrender. This detailed plot trajectory, clocking in at 104 minutes of unrelenting intensity, eschews jump scares for a slow-burn immersion into psychological dissolution.
Entwined Eros and Thanatos: Thematic Necrophagy
Buttgereit masterfully interlaces Freudian concepts of eros and thanatos, portraying necrophilia not as mere deviance but as an existential response to life’s impermanence. Monika’s addiction mirrors substance dependency, with withdrawal symptoms manifesting as corporeal cravings that therapy only exacerbates. This framework critiques societal repression, suggesting that taboos amplify rather than contain forbidden desires. In post-reunification Germany, the film resonates with a nation confronting its own buried histories of division and decay.
Gender dynamics emerge as a subversive thread. Monika embodies a rare female necrophile in cinema, inverting male-gaze tropes prevalent in slasher films. Her agency in dissecting and possessing male bodies challenges patriarchal norms, positioning her as both victim and predator in a cycle of emasculation. Rob’s impotence and eventual dismemberment symbolise the fragility of masculinity under female extremity, a commentary echoed in feminist readings of the film as empowering through horror.
Class undertones infuse the proceedings, with Monika’s drab apartment contrasting Rob’s bourgeois aspirations. Their relationship fractures over mundane incompatibilities—his aversion to her scatological habits, her disdain for his vanilla sexuality—underscoring how extremity cinema exposes the rot beneath domestic bliss. Religious motifs punctuate the narrative, from crucifix-adorned graves to Monika’s masochistic stigmata, questioning redemption’s possibility in a godless void.
Cinematography of Corruption: Visual Putrefaction
Shot on 16mm by Manfred Jelinski, the film’s visuals revel in lo-fi authenticity, favouring natural lighting and handheld camerawork to evoke documentary realism amid fantasy. Close-ups dominate, capturing the tactile horrors of rotting flesh with unflinching clarity—maggots writhing in sockets, skin sloughing like wet paper. Colour palettes shift from the cadaver’s pallid greens to the warm sepias of Monika’s home, mirroring her internal schism between life and undeath.
Mise-en-scène amplifies unease: cluttered rooms overflow with sex toys, animal carcasses, and medical props, creating a womb-like claustrophobia. Symbolic motifs abound, such as recurring goldfish representing fleeting life, flushed away in acts paralleling Monika’s failed normalcy. Hallucinatory interludes employ superimpositions and slow-motion, blurring dream and reality in a psychedelic assault reminiscent of Kenneth Anger’s occult shorts.
Aural Atrocities: Sound Design’s Symphony of Squish
The soundscape, crafted by Buttgereit collaborator Max Müller, weaponises audio to visceral effect. Wet squelches of evisceration, laboured breaths over decaying flesh, and Monika’s ecstatic moans form a pornographic requiem. Diegetic noises—dripping faucets echoing bodily fluids, distant traffic underscoring isolation—ground the extremity in urban mundanity. Non-diegetic industrial drones swell during relapses, evoking Throbbing Gristle’s influence on the Death Industrial genre.
Dialogue is sparse and functional, prioritising silence punctuated by moans or therapeutic banalities. A pivotal scene features Rob’s audio cassette tapes looping mundane recordings, distorted into nightmare fuel during Monika’s blackouts. This auditory layering not only heightens disgust but philosophically equates sound with memory’s persistence, even in decomposition.
Effects Mastery: Practical Gore’s Lasting Rot
Nekromantik 2‘s special effects, executed on a shoestring budget by Buttgereit and his Skeleton Crew collective, prioritise practical authenticity over digital fakery. Real animal entrails and pig carcasses stand in for human viscera, their authenticity amplifying ethical debates. Monika’s self-mastectomy employs a prosthetic breast crafted from silicone and latex, severed with a hacksaw in a single, unbroken take that bleeds convincing stage blood mixed with corn syrup and food colouring.
Corpse decomposition is simulated through layered prosthetics: initial rigor via plaster casts, advanced putrefaction with gelatine moulds injected with milk curds for bloating. The body bag drag sequence utilises a weighted dummy stuffed with offal, its leaks choreographed for maximum squalor. These low-tech triumphs influenced later extremity filmmakers like Gaspar Noé, proving ingenuity trumps expense in evoking revulsion.
Optical effects are minimal yet potent—double exposures for cadaver animations draw from German Expressionism, while colour grading via bleach bypass lends a sickly pallor. The film’s effects eschew glamour, embracing imperfection to underscore themes of inevitable decay.
Genesis in the GDR Shadows: Production Perils
Filmed in 1990 amid Berlin’s reunification chaos, Nekromantik 2 faced acute challenges. Buttgereit, operating from West Berlin squats, sourced props from morgues and abattoirs, navigating legal grey zones without permits. The cast, drawn from Berlin’s punk underground, endured grueling shoots; lead Monika M. performed most stunts herself, including submersion in simulated cadaver juices.
Financing came via bootleg VHS sales of the first film and private donors, totaling under 20,000 Deutschmarks. Censorship loomed large—Germany’s BPjM index banned it upon release, driving underground circulation. International bans followed in the UK and Australia, yet this notoriety fuelled its cult status, with bootlegs proliferating across Europe.
Legacy of the Living Dead: Ripples Through Extremity
Nekromantik 2 birthed the “Berlin School” of extreme cinema, inspiring films like Schramm (1993) and international echoes in A Serbian Film (2010) or Irreversible (2002). It influenced music, from Rammstein’s necrophilic lyrics to noise acts sampling its audio. Scholarly discourse frames it within queer theory, celebrating its disruption of heteronormativity.
Remakes and homages persist in underground festivals like Hamburg’s Shocking Asia, while Buttgereit’s later works expand its universe. Culturally, it endures as a litmus test for horror tolerance, challenging viewers to separate art from obscenity.
Director in the Spotlight
Jörg Buttgereit, born 20 September 1963 in Berlin, emerged from a working-class family in the divided city. A self-taught filmmaker, he devoured horror classics from Night of the Living Dead to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, honing his craft with Super 8 shorts like Plain Clothes Fugitive (1983). Rejecting film school, he embodied punk DIY ethos, premiering works in squats during the 1980s West Berlin scene.
His breakthrough, Nekromantik (1987), a 71-minute meditation on necrophilia, sold 20,000 VHS units underground, launching his notoriety. Der Todesking (1990) anthologised suicide methods across seven days, blending documentary with fiction. Nekromantik 2 (1991) refined his aesthetic, followed by Schramm (1993), a biopic of sadist Fritz Honka starring Florian Koerner von Gustorf.
Transitioning to narrative experimentation, Neue Liebe – Neues Leben (1993) parodied his own extremity with romantic comedy. The 2000s saw Shrinkage (2008), a meta-horror on digital decay, and Medicines Against Death – Perry Farrell vs. Jörg Buttgereit (2015), a music video collaboration. Theatre ventures include Frankenstein adaptations, while writing credits encompass novels like Post-Mortem: Selected Short Stories (2003).
Influenced by Paul Verhoeven’s provocations and Herschell Gordon Lewis’s gore, Buttgereit’s oeuvre critiques consumerism and mortality. Awards include Fantasporto’s Jury Prize for Nekromantik, and he lectures globally on underground cinema. Recent projects like Untitled Horror Film (2022) affirm his enduring relevance, with over 20 directorial credits cementing his status as extremity’s philosopher-king.
Actor in the Spotlight
Monika M., born Monika Baumgartner in 1960s West Germany, grew up in a conservative household before embracing Berlin’s counterculture. Discovered by Buttgereit at a punk gig, she debuted in Nekromantik (1987) as the necrophilic lead, her raw performance blending vulnerability with ferocity. Lacking formal training, her intuitive acting suited the film’s intimacy, earning underground acclaim.
Reprising in Nekromantik 2 (1991), she carried the sequel’s emotional weight, performing graphic scenes with unflinching commitment. Subsequent roles include Schramm (1993) as a prostitute and Die Rache des Flohknödel (1986), an early comedy. She appeared in Buttgereit’s Mörderisches Gärtnern (1994) and shorts like Hot Love in the Subsoil (1986).
Beyond film, Monika M. ventured into music with punk band Die Alliierten and performance art critiquing body politics. Her sparse filmography—around 10 credits—prioritises quality over quantity, including Kokain – Tränen eines Clowns (1997). No major awards grace her name, yet her cult status endures; interviews reveal her viewing the Nekromantik roles as cathartic explorations of taboo femininity. Post-2000s, she retreated from spotlight, occasionally resurfacing for retrospectives, embodying the punk spirit of ephemeral extremity.
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Bibliography
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