Page 220 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

What about your main cinema influences?
My influences came more from underground cinema like the films of John Waters, not so much
from horror movies. It wasn't like a plan to do a straight horror movie.
Were you influenced a lot by the German film scene? A lot of things you've mentioned have been Ameri-
can.
Yes, the whole approach during that time, when the punk revolution was going on in the early
1980s, was that everyone in Berlin was very open to listen and to watch things you get from an
underground scene.
Nekromantik 1 and 2 are very different — what did you want to do with the second one? I read that you
wanted to make a movie for girls!
The thing was that after Nekromantik everyone was expecting something really gross, you know.
So the next film we did was Der Todesking, which was a totally different thing just to make sure we
could get ourselves free from the horror audience a little bit and to get back to art-house roots. But
my approach was always to combine this art-house thing with exploitation cinema. I was always
fascinated by gross exploitation films like Faces of Death (Conan Le Cilaire, 1979). Those mondo films
made me think, why am I watching this? You didn't need art-house films to shock youth.
These two films, although shocking, often don't go in an 'exploitation direction; they have an arty feel
and sometimes I feel the mix doesn't work.
With exploitation you deal with things in a very open way, when you see the poster for Nekromantik
the things that happen in your head are more strong than the things you see. The romanticised thing
is something that makes it more beauriful and it's not supposed to be beautiful and that's what does
the trick. That it's not portrayed in the way it should be.
Most films about serial killers are shown through the perspectives of their victims, but your films are
mainly about the killer/defiler. This is different from the standard in dealing with this subject matter.
It's the only choice for the audience to stick to this guy because there is no other object. I'm kind
of forcing people to deal with them. And I think the fact that I focus on these people is a statement
to take them seriously, so they are not like a demon or a monster, but they are real people and then if
they are real, then they are true and you believe the stuff they do.
Sometimes I feel I would like more information on what happened to your characters before they became
interested in killing or necrophilia.
But that's very tricky because then you go to all the clichés you already know. I was so tired of all
this because I read so many of these (true crime) biographies.

JORG BUTTGEREIT INTERVIEW II

Buttgereit is so pleased by Linnie Blake's article on his work that he has asked if he can use it for the
D V D liner notes for the forthcoming Nekromantik II release (although he does not agree with all
of its contentions). When asked if there are links between his films and Hans Jürgen Syberberg, he
faxes back, 'No, but I might be too much involved to see.' On the question of whether Nekromantik's
slaughtered rabbit is a reference to the so-called 'rabbit films' banned in East Germany in 1965, he
answers 'I do not know those films.' Buttgeriet goes on to assert that the 'visible man' ornament

206