Page 209 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

disruption of linear temporality, insertion of dream sequences and absurdist parodies of classic films)
also resulted in swingeing censorship unheard of in Germany since the days of the Third Reich.
The political climate into which Nekromantik was released in West Germany was an extremely
conservative one. As in Britain, this impacted directly on contemporary genre cinema. All horror
films shown, both on video and in picture houses, were heavily cut, with numerous classics of the
genre (such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and Evil Dead (1982)) being banned outright
on video. Refusing to submit Nekromantik to the agency responsible for implementing the code of
Freiwillige Selbst Kontrolle, or 'voluntary self control', under which directors were supposed to work,
Buttgereit released the movie directly to cinemas for screening to those over the age of eighteen.
And nothing much in the way of reprisals ensued, either from the radical left, known for its attacks
on cinemas screening films they considered sexist or pornographic, or from the authorities. Only in
1992, following the scandal surrounding Nekromantik II, would sale of the film by mail order be
briefly outlawed. The film, it seemed, was too essentially 'arty' for the horror crowd and it passed
without a great deal of notice at home, until its enthusiastic reception in America and elsewhere made
it something of a cause celebre. Nekromantik II, however, released following the fall of the Berlin Wall
and the re-unification of Germany, faced a considerably harder time of it, being placed on the list of
'seized videos' whereby it could neither be owned, watched or shown legally in Germany. Orders were
thus given, without hearing or trial, for its negatives, production-related and publicity materials to be
destroyed. This was a move unprecedented in Germany since 1945 and it was echoed internationally,
where the Nekromantik movies remain widely banned and largely unavailable.
So, what is so dreadful about the Nekromantik movies that has driven governments to ban
them and critics so consistently to neglect them? Certainly, their heroes and heroines are decidedly
unappealing. Rob and Betty of Nekromantik are bound together by their shared passion for the dead
- Rob working as a 'street cleaner' with the Nazi-encoded Joe's Sauberungsaktion, the company logo
of which is a skull and crossbones within a pentacle. It is an occupation that allows for the acquisition
first of body parts and then of a complete corpse for this oddest of couples' mutual erode delight.
But this is no ordinary body. It is not the product of an automobile accident, as seems to be the case
with many of Rob's acquisitions, but was once a young man who was accidentally shot whilst picking
apples. The perpetrator of the crime was a beer-guzzling, oompah-listening fat-man, remarkably
visually similar to Buttgereit's own father of Mein Papi, and extremely reminiscent of the kinds
of characters depicted in the Heimatfilms of the 1950s - West Germany's most popular post-war
genre.9 Positioning the murderer in a back-yard deckchair, shooting small birds that fly across the sky,
Buttgereit simultaneously evokes and derides not only the Heimatfilms as essentially conservative and
enormously popular depictions of morally unimpeachable familial and community lives - but also the
culture that so enthusiastically consumed them. As Buttgereit makes clear, then, it is neither Rob nor
Betty who has transformed the young apple-picker into a corpse. This has been accomplished by an
ostensibly morally upstanding member of society who subsequently disappears from view, unpunished
for his crimes. Buttgereit's mission, it seems, is to embrace that corpse, and in so doing to raise the
question originally posed by Alexander Mitscherlich, Director of the Sigmund Freud Institute in
Frankfurt, as to why the collapse of the Third Reich had not provoked the reaction of conscience-
stricken remorse one might logically expect; why, in Elsaesser's words, 'instead of confronting this

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