Page 227 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

Jorg was bowing to his core audience because they were so puzzled about Der Todesking.
Schramm - one of the things that confused me was that the amputated leg stuff was never really
explained.
He is imagining the fact that he is losing a leg, it is his sexual defect. We wanted to show that his
sexual hangups debilitate him so greatly that he dies because of his strong imagining of the loss of
his leg.
Isn't his dream of having his eye removed confusing, though?
To me this was the most direct commentary by Jorg himself on how he feels about his movies,
because the whole eye thing, the dentist taking out an eye after he has taken out a tooth, was a
dream he had. He wanted to incorporate it and I thought we should. In my opinion, the taking
out of the eye, like the loss of teeth in dreams, is closely connected psychologically with castration,
and this whole fear of castration is running strongly in the movie. I found it a nice in-joke
that it was really Jorg's dream. The taking out of the eye to me is a heightening that at the same time,
it is a punishment for having looked. He is imagining that his gaze has a kind of life of its own, for
which he is punished.
Who is the woman in the picture above Schramm's bed?
Do you think its his mother? That's exactly the illusion we wanted to have, and at the same time
not address it. In movies, this is the most common explanation for sexual hangups in men, that
they have a problem with their mother. Also to make the audience maybe reflect that they are
jumping so willingly to this conclusion is interesting. The 8mm footage is 'found footage' and we
decided to use it when we were in the editing stages (it was not in the script). We specifically
selected those pieces and had them copied and made longer. To me, the childhood scenes give a
very touching lyrical quality to the movie and feel pretty sad.
The shots of Schramm fondling his own body are odd...
That's something that Jorg is really fascinated with. We did those shots excessively, actually, where
Florian is fondling his own body. For Jorg it must have meant something more than it did for me.
For me, it was an odd attempt at the character of Schramm getting in contact with himself.
The red blood stains on Florian seem oddly marked.
It's like a stigma in a way. His guilt is placed there. The red marker is really a very intentional thing.
It didn't happen by chance.
It is quite close to Mein Papi.
It is in a way. Mein Papi is the core of Buttgereit actually, in my opinion. It is also the film that a
lot of other people feel says something that he normally avoids saying. The completed version
when he reworked it suddenly became a process of mourning. It was the first time he actually
addressed his anxiety about death in a very personal way and I found it extremely touching.
Der Todesking seems so negative...
Does it? I think it's the furthest we ever ventured into a kind of gross-out existentialist angst
thing. The negativity is more like an overall perspective on the futility of life which ties in with Jorg's
mother having died during the process of shooting, but in the end, there is this odd nice melody and
images of the kids playing. It's difficult to say, do the children represent a kind of hope or is it that
the children are seen as the next generation to die? We wanted to distance ourselves from the kind of

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