Dis­cov­er the per­verse alle­go­ry of this film about love after death

With its unflinch­ing focus on the messy mechan­ics of necrophil­ia, Jörg Buttgereit’s Nekro­man­tik was a macabre shock­er in mono­chrome – the sort of film that it is hard to believe even exists until you have seen it with your own eyes. Yet despite its rep­u­ta­tion for extrem­i­ty, it also con­sis­tent­ly lived up to the sec­ond half of its title, trac­ing the three-way romance between a man, a woman and the rot­ting human corpse that they have brought into their home, and show­ing what hap­pens when the third wheel comes off.

In its shock­ing final sequence, Robert Schmadtke, aban­doned by his two lovers, stabs him­self in a melan­choli­cal­ly mas­tur­ba­to­ry act that bridges love and death, show­er­ing his bed­sit with cum and blood – and then a coda shows Robert’s new grave being pen­e­trat­ed by a shov­el that is pushed in by a foot dressed in a high heel…

“I want to mas­ter life and death,” reads the text that opens Buttgereit’s 1991 sequel. It is a quo­ta­tion from none oth­er than ser­i­al killer Ted Bundy, whose habit of hav­ing sex with the corpses of his putre­fy­ing vic­tims, and of keep­ing their sev­ered heads as tro­phies, informed cer­tain aspects of the film’s plot­ting. Rather bril­liant­ly for a series devot­ed to the notion that death is nev­er real­ly the end, Nekro­man­tik 2 picks up pre­cise­ly where the first film left off, first repris­ing that final sequence, and then show­ing Robert’s corpse being dug up – not, as expect­ed, by his ex Bet­ty (Beat­rice Manows­ki) but rather by Moni­ka (Moni­ka M), a nurse who has read in the news­pa­per about Robert’s strange sui­cide, and who realis­es that he is the one to ful­fil her own errant desires.

Such ful­fil­ment does not come eas­i­ly. Robert may be stiff, but where it counts he is not hard, and he is also begin­ning to ooze and smell, leav­ing Moni­ka feel­ing sick­ened and frus­trat­ed in their rela­tion­ship. Enter Mark (Mark Reed­er), a time-sen­si­tive porn dub­ber who is every­thing that Robert is not: sex­u­al­ly potent, annoy­ing­ly ani­mat­ed, over­ly talk­a­tive, still alive. Moni­ka likes Mark, or at least parts of him, but loves Robert more. If only there were some way that she could com­bine what is best about both of them.

Like the orig­i­nal, this sequel is a bizarre love tri­an­gle where­in a very niche sex­u­al need is pur­sued to a place first between – and then beyond – life and death. Once Moni­ka has worked out exact­ly what she wants from her man, she pieces it togeth­er from the two rivals for her affec­tion, and is her­self changed for­ev­er by a sin­gle, sin­gu­lar act of ecsta­t­ic trans­gres­sion. By ground­ing these scenes in a mun­dane prag­ma­tism, with close and pro­longed atten­tion paid to the process of dig­ging or cut­ting up a body, Buttgere­it ensures that even the most repel­lent spec­ta­cles come with the sly humour of banality.

At the same time, he finds a broad­er metaphor­i­cal frame through which to view Monica’s rather par­tic­u­larised Liebestod. By first show­ing the flow­ers that Moni­ka puts by Robert’s cadav­er to reduce his stench, and then show­ing those same flow­ers wilt­ing, droop­ing and dying in time lapse, Buttgere­it offers up his film’s world as a memen­to mori where all life must cease in the end, but where too the dead can still have their uses.

Moni­ka keeps a fam­i­ly pho­to album of rel­a­tives on their death beds or in open cas­kets, and with her polaroid cam­era takes pho­tos of her­self seat­ed along­side the dead Robert, or of Mark sit­ting next to stat­ues, or even of Mark posed as a corpse. These are a reflex of film itself, a medi­um com­posed of fixed still images mere­ly lent the momen­tary illu­sion of move­ment and life. Even more reflex­ive­ly, Nekro­man­tik 2 also fea­tures sev­er­al films-with­in-films: the pornog­ra­phy that Mark voic­es pro­fes­sion­al­ly, try­ing to get in synch with the on-screen sex­u­al per­for­mances; the hilar­i­ous black-and-white art­house par­o­dy Mon Déje­uner Avec Vera seen by Moni­ka and Mark on their first date, in which a naked man drones on to his equal­ly naked com­pan­ion about stuffed birds while eat­ing boiled eggs; and the illic­it video nasty, watched by Moni­ka and a group of fel­low freaks, of a dead seal being graph­i­cal­ly dis­sect­ed and butchered.

Of that video, Mark com­ments, ​“It’s total­ly per­verse to watch this for fun” – words that many would no doubt think apply equal­ly to Nekro­man­tik 2 which, like a com­bi­na­tion of all three of these filmic mise en abymes, fea­tures its own vic­ar­i­ous sex, pre­served bod­ies and sur­gi­cal dismemberment.

Yet here’s the thing: as cinephiles, we too, like Moni­ka, dream that the object of our affec­tion, though flat, cold and unre­spon­sive, is some­how alive and not mere­ly a blank repos­i­to­ry for our own pro­ject­ed feel­ings and fan­tasies. And so we devote our­selves to pre­serv­ing and pen­e­trat­ing the mem­o­ries of the past and the dead. This is why necrophil­ia, as a filmic theme, is also a reflex for cinephil­ia itself.

View­ers may well tut dis­ap­prov­ing­ly at the obscen­i­ties of Buttgereit’s film – indeed, it was seized and con­fis­cat­ed by Munich police, with­out hear­ing or tri­al, a mere 12 days after its release in 1991, and this de fac­to ban was not lift­ed until the film was offi­cial­ly recog­nised as ​‘art’ in 1993. Yet as Nekro­man­tik 2 fol­lows Monika’s obses­sive pur­suit of her love for a corpse, it also catch­es us view­ers out in our own per­verse one-way rela­tion­ship with cin­e­ma: a com­pul­sive fetish for mum­mi­fied movie remains.

Nekro­man­tik 2 is released by Arrow on Dual-For­mat DVD/Blu-ray on 3 July, 2017.