TWO STUBS UP!

Reviewed for Girls and Corpses by Ted Geoghegan

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Who doesn't like necrophilia movies? A show of hands. You're just all going to lay there, aren't you? Well then listen up corpsefiles. Girls and Corpses Magazine has dug deep into our crypt vaults to bring you reviews of the five greatest necrophilia movies of all time! So grab your cadnaver, curl up in your coffin with your bag of maggot corn and Milk Bloods, get close and... necco time!

NEKROMANTIK

It's rare when a reviewer can come across a film that both repulses and intrigues, but in the balmy Summer of '96, just such a film ended up on my doorstep. To add to my repulsion, the movie I'd ordered was packaged on a homemade tape with a short Norwegian film that featured a man having sex with a car's tailpipe and the skinning of a live cat. That picture, however alluring, was inconsequential. My boyhood fantasies of finding the absolute benchmark of "gross" was about to be fulfilled. The film? Jörg Buttgereit's Nekromatik.

They layout of the movie is simple -- a man (Daktari Lorenz), employed at a shady streetcleaning agency, occasionally sneaks home a real juicy chunk of a dead body they'd been hired to clean up... for he and his scrumptious girlfriend (Beatrice M.) get a strange thrill out of doing the nasty in front of a jar full of human eyeballs. Well, one day he hits the mother lode and he smuggles a whole, rotting corpse back to his pad. Talk about bringing home the bacon...

The girlfriend, of course, loves their newfound plaything and I, the gentle viewer, was treated to scene after scene of the most perverse threesomes I had ever laid my sweet, virginal eyes upon. I mean, I like watching a babe, a weird-looking German guy, and a slimy corpse get busy as much as the next guy, but when this girl sucks an eyeball from its ocular socket in mid-coitus... Well, let's just say the dead aren't the only things that rise when exposed to the proper elements. And the moment where she impales a severed table leg in the cadaver's abdomen, slaps a rubber on it, and, well...? You get the picture. A gentleman never tells.

As my cinematic barfbag continued to fill, the boyfriend comes home from work one day and learns that his beloved has left him... for the freakin' corpse! Well, rather than your average journey of self-discovery that the latest Mary-Kate and Ashley video teaches ya, this guy grabs a porn and finds himself a whore. One awkward sex scene in a cemetery later and he's killed a shocked caretaker, as well as the hooker, and found himself some much-needed necro-action.

Really, I can go on and on about this, but I'm pretty sure that if you're still reading, you're either gonna check it out or send me some delightfully threatening hate mail for suggesting that such a film is even worth your time. The bottom line is this -- if you're a crazed, closet necrophile (or a practicing one -- I don't discriminate!), this baby's gonna be right up yer alley. There's nudity galore (even a bit for the ladies in the audience); gore a-plenty; and more cold, hard sex scenes than you can raise a shamed erection to. All-in-all... its probably just your cup 'o tea. Sicko.

Nekromatik is a startling, disgusting, and all-around enticing film for lovers of the obscure and truly depraved. While I don't consider myself that "type", I'm happy to share this little gem with anyone who cares to experience it. This kind of depravity really isn't my thing.

Now, that guy having sex with the exhaust pipe while the kitty gets its much-needed comeuppance? That's hot stuff...

NEKROMANTIK 2

Oh, the return of the loving dead... what better way to spend a Friday night alone in my mother's basement!

Like I didn't have enough fun doing the no-pants-dance to Nekromantik, I'm now treated to its foul apparition of a sequel!? I don't know whether to grab the K-Y Jelly or jab out my eyes with a fork! Eh, its just as well... I'd probably be so lubed up, the fork would just slide out of my hands anyways. Might as well watch the damn movie.

Herr Buttgereit's sequel picks up shortly after the events of the first film, with a beautiful new necrophiliac (played, once more, by Monika M.), who works at the hospital by day and prowls the cemeteries by night. See, she's just heard of the suicide that capped off the original Nekromantik film and decides that she needs to nab the body of this guy before he goes cold. (Oh yeah, spoiler alert for the first film. The main character offs himself in a scene that requires ten gallons of blood, three gallons of semen, and a giant fake penis)

After digging him up, she takes him home and the action begins anew. Cue the hot dead love.

Thrown into the mix this time, however, is Mark (Mark Reeder) a guy who makes his living dubbing porn films (Uh, hi. The name's Ted. Where do I sign up?). Well, he's fallen for this mentally-deficient dame and suddenly, she's forced to choose between the cool guy from across town or the even-cooler guy who penis is on a tray in the fridge! I didn't know where she was going with her decision, but I felt like the convenience of having her milk, and her lover's naughty bits, in the same refrigerated box was just too good to pass up. Seriously. Its like a TV remote that also removes clothes and dispenses beer.

I can't quite fill you in, sweet reader, on where this film eventually leads, as the finale is just too spectacular to discover for yourself. Let's just say that everyone gets laid... in one way or another -- and I was grossly (emphasis on the "grossly") satisfied. Although Nekromatik 2 is far slower than its predecessor, it builds toward one of the finest, fluid-spewing climaxes of all time What fluids, I shall not divulge... but rest assured that if you've made it this far, you probably don't care.

For the six billion of you out there who feel like you'd like to start your necrophilia movie collection, but just don't know where to begin, this is a definite must-have. Much like a steamy night with the deceased, it starts out a little slow... but once you really get in there and start enjoying the moment, it'll rock your freakin' socks off.

...Not that I'd know.

KISSED

Probably the only mainstream necrophilia movie ever made, Lynne Stopkewich's Kissed actually works as a legitimate film. Now, I'm not saying Nekromantik isn't a "real" movie, but its not the kind of flick I'll recommend to a friend that I plan on keeping for more than a few more hours. This thing... I mean, MGM released it - the same folks who made The Wizard of freakin' Oz!

Kissed starts out with an awkward young girl, obsessed with death at an early age. As she blossoms into a young woman (portrayed by Molly Parker), her love of the afterlife develops into full-fledged necrophilia. While most folks I know love to shout their love of the damned from the closest rooftop, this little filly actually manages to keep it under wraps. Well, at least until available stud Peter Outerbridge begins to take an interest in her and everything just starts boilin' to the surface.

Unlike most necro-flicks, this one doesn't delve into the actual sex, but focuses more intently on the "relationships" that build behind the young woman and her room-temperature lovers. While a touchy subject on all accounts, Kissed really takes the classy route and keeps most of the "love after death" concept offscreen.

"Bah!" you cry. "I demand squirming in my seat when I watch babes get it on with cadavers!" Well, you aren't gonna find it here, bub. Leave it to those weird Canadians, who takes something perfectly normal like shuffleboard and turn it into curling -- to make necrophilia completely approachable by the masses. Next thing you know, they'll be winning Oscars for a movie about defecation.

But, all of my gorehound complaining aside, Kissed is a rather spectacular film. While it won't send any shivers down your spine or have you running for the nearest vomit receptacle, it has to hold some clout for being the only film about necrophilia that you could watch with your girlfriend.

Provided, your girlfriend is a f'ing freak.

BUIO OMEGA

Woo, boy! Here's another one for the record books. Just when you've seen it all, you happen across a film that shows a guy blowing his dead girlfriend's brains out of her head through a clear plastic tube... but we'll get to that in a few.

Buio Omega was one of the so-called "straight" films from Italian director Joe d'Amato, who rose to fame with his horror/porn hybrids during the 1970s. You know the guy is a whack-job when THIS is what we call one of his normal flicks.

It starts out with young Francesco (Kieran Canter), who lives with the much-older and slightly-deranged Iris (Franca Stoppi). Their relationship isn't what you'd call normal, but its good enough. Or at least, it seems to be - until Iris has Francesco's girlfriend murdered using some crazy voodoo mumbo-jumbo. Well, a little death isn't gonna stop Francesco, who brings his babe back home and puts his taxidermy stills to absolutely heave-inducing good use... aaaaaand, cue the brains in the twisty straw!

Well, it isn't long before those psychotic hormones are raging and Francesco can't help but -- pardon the pun -- crack open a cold one. Unfortunately, he's not so hot at keeping his little secret and, one-by-one, the bodies of his pursuants begin piling up! Yes, that's right, you not only get a necrophilia flick, but you're also getting grade-A Italian hack 'n slash in the same package! It's like Satan finally started reading my "most-wanted" wishlist!

While not exactly the sexiest of the necro-flix out there, Buio Omega certainly stands on its own as a righteous little picture. Its mighty gory, has surprisingly great acting, and a killer score by Dario Argento's secret weapon -- Goblin. The cinematography is breathtaking, from sweeping panoramas of the Italian countryside, to the eerily erotic close-ups of Francesco's dearly departed. The next time you notice that vacant look in your girlfriend's eyes while you're going at it, you won't be able to suppress your memories of this babe's face... Or, maybe that's just me.

Either way, you're in for a surprising treat with Buio Omega. You get a bit of what you're there for, and there's a top-notch giallo flick rolled in very nicely! If you're saying, "That's all fine and good, Ted, but I simply must get my rocks off," might I suggest d'Amato's earlier works, such as the Emannuelle series? And if that's still too tame, you can always go with one of his later pictures. Might I suggest Porno Holocaust, The Erotic Adventures of Aladdin X, or Robin Hood: Thief of Wives?

I thought as much. Sicko.

AFTERMATH

In the late 70's, there was Buio Omega... and all of Italy reeled. The 80's gave us Nekromantik... but it was easy to pin such depravity on the Germans. They single-handedly keep David Hasslehoff alive.

But nothing on God's green Earth could prepare us for the film that would spew out of Spain in 1994 -- a movie so vile, its 30-minute running time contains enough gratuitous filth that all previous full-length necrophilia flicks would bow down before it, thoroughly defeated. The film is Aftermath -- and it is, in a word, vile... which obviously explains why you're reading about it.

A short, directed by Nacho Cerda, Aftermath is more of an experience than an actual movie. As it opens, we hear the sounds of a terrible auto accident. Within moments, we're in the morgue. As one assistant leaves for the night, the other turns his wicked sights upon one of the female bodies from the wreck. Through chillingly clever cinematography, we all know what will undoubtedly occur. Subtle glances, tight close-ups, and eventually -- the sight of a blade.

After a drawn-out, demented "foreplay" of sorts, the mortician literally tears into his unwilling prize -- an act of primal rage that simply has to be seen to be fully understood for what it is. Unlike the gentle acts of lovemaking seen in Kissed or, to a lesser extent, Nekromantik - this is pure, unrelenting horror. Still without dialogue, director Cerda makes us feel every plunge of the madman's blade, every thrust of his body. At times, it feels as though the woman is conscious of what is happening -- a concept made far more disturbing by repeated close-ups of her injured, vacant face. The result, from beginning to gagging end, is an unnerving masterpiece of true filth and repulsion.

As I stated before, Aftermath is more of an experience than an actual movie. As a connoisseur of the macabre, it should be your duty to seek out films as appalling as this, just see what kind of things are going through the minds of filmmakers worldwide. The results, as seen in films of this caliber, will surprise even the most jaded of folks out there.

And let me note that I'm not saying I condone what's happening in this flick... but there's no point in denying that this is some mighty heavy stuff. And heavy stuff is meant to be experienced, not just "seen".

I highly recommend experiencing it.

Only once your necro-collection, as well as your nerves, are built up should you consider adding this little gem. Call it the icing on the cake, if you will...

Just be fully aware that after you finish your initial viewing, that tasty bit o' cake will most likely be making its way back up your esophagus.

How's that for entertainment?