Der Todesking

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TODESKING, on the other hand is, in my opinion, one of the best films ever made. It consist of a series of scenes depicting the many facets of death. Death as an enemy; Death as a reliever, Death as the very fysical decomposition of the body. The film is a metaphor over life. It shows how fragile life is and how short our lives are. It reduces its viewers to the childs they (we) actually are. The fact that we cannot really understand the nature of Death, and hence neither the process of dying, is the core message of the film. This is a most realistic film. Never does Buttgereit try to hide death behind white roses or whatever. No matter what moral standards you set up, death is unevitable, and will sooner or later be not a fiction but YOUR reality. This applies to YOU, Dear Reader, like it applies to the viewers of the film. Some juvenile reviewers seem not to grasp this, which is fully excused, since they of course will live forever... Nekromantik Premiere – a short featurette comprising footage from the film's premiere in Berlin, January 1988

On Sunday, a man, driven to madness by some unspecified mental disturbance, repeatedly slams his head into a wall before collapsing in a pool of his own blood. The film opens with a middle aged nude man, laid on his side. He turns and simply dies akin to a foetal position of birth and straight to the end. As the title music plays we hear moans and screams. Meanwhile, a little girl is sat sketching out a skeleton fella on a sheet of paper. Then it’s into the introducing tale. A man (played by composer, Hermann Kopp) sends out poison pen letters after he walks past and savours the grandeur of a cemetery. He rings his work, announcing he will not be returning, as his fish blows a few bubbles. Then the camera pans around his small apartment, round and round forever. Each time, he is in the gestures of doing something else in his daily routine. He eats, cleans up, and shaves, all normal and timed to his perfection. However, this evening ends rather differently for him. On Tuesday, a dude watches a Nazi exploitation video where a guy gets his dong cut off. The viewer’s girlfriend enters and he shoots her in the head…and later puts an empty frame over her brains splattered on the wall. But this entire episode, it turns out, is playing on a TV screen in a room where a nondescript man has hung himself. Sieben Tage hat die Woche, siebenmal letzte Stunden. Seven are the days of week (weak, mortal !), seven times the last hour. There was the feel in the NEKRomantik films that Jörg Buttgereit was often patching things together using his old short films and fragments from other films he has shot to pad out the story or running time. This feels even more the case with Der Todesking, which seems to be all made up of shorts and fragments. To what extent they were specifically shot for the film or it is composed from leftovers I have no idea. Der Todesking comes with the overriding theme of death – most of the episodes end with a death of some type, usually by murder or suicide – indeed, you could say that was the early version of The ABCs of Death (2012).Seven episodes, each taking place on a different day of the week, on the theme of suicide and violent death.

A man and a girl meet in a park in the pouring rain. The man tells the girl about his disastrous sex life with his wife which led to him killing her. The girl then pulls out a gun to kill him, but the man takes it from her and shoots himself in the head. In Saturday’s episode a woman straps a super-8mm camera to her shoulder and loads a gun. The remainder of the segment consists of soundless POV footage of her shooting people at a concert.

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A man, alone on his bed, is crying and banging his head over and over, violently against the wall, until he succumbs to brain damage. The "story" of this Jorg Buttgereit film is pretty simple. We get seven different tales all taking place on a different day of the week. All seven stories deal with people who commit suicide. Der Todesking (translated as the King of Death, or The Death King) is an anthology which explores death. Suicide and murder features very heavily as you can imagine (It’s a Jörg Buttgereit movie, could you visualize a world where he didn’t push those two realities into your face???!!)

The Letter: This is the alternate English-language chain letter insert used for the original UK VHS release Morbid Fascination: The Nekromantik Legacy – a documentary looking at the impact of the film on the horror scene both in the UK and abroad, featuring interviews with Buttgereit, genre critic Alan Jones, Buttgereit biographer David Kerekes and others

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Two short films by Manfred Jelinski: Orpheus in der Oberwelt (1970, 31 mins) and Ein Ku'ze' Film übe' Hambu'g (1990, 5 mins) Again, the production values all aren't too high and this might be something that might scare off some people. It however helps for this particular movie to set the right tone and atmosphere for the entire movie and its dark, disturbing and depressing themes. Der Todesking is one of Buttgereit's most accessible films. That could be the very reason why I was so disappointed with it when I first saw it. After the filth and carnage of Nekromantik, Der Todesking seemed almost timid. The film is a collection of vignettes relating to suicide and death, linked by footage of a rotting corpse. The gore is very mild in comparison to Joerg's other movies and the violence is largely implicit. Strangely enough, the film has grown on me immensely over time and despite my initial misgivings, I now consider it to be my favourite Buttgereit opus.

This is a cerebral and beautifully constructed film. Buttgereit has always exceeded in making the most repulsive act (having a threesome with a rotting corpse, for example) visually appealing. This film is no exception, containing some truly brilliant imagery. The scene where a man shoots his wife and then puts an empty picture frame on the blood splattered wall is one example, the man who screams and beats his head against a wall for literally five minutes is another. The film also benefits from a higher standard of acting than some of Buttgereit's other films. The director himself even has a nice cameo in the Ilsa inspired video.Last up is an extremely harrowing story of a tormented individual whose extreme anguish drives him to death. Buttgereit doesn't let on precisely what his character's personal demons are, but watching the poor fellow writhe and scream in agony (mental or physical?) is uncomfortable viewing, particularly when he begins to bash his head against a wall out of sheer desperation. Jörg Buttgereit is most one of those Marmite directors whose transgressive films ( Nekromantik, Nekromantik 2) you either ‘get’ or loathe. I’m certainly a big fan of his DIY underground style of film-making, which elevates the super 8mm home movie format (and 16mm) into arthouse territory. Complete collection of Buttgereit film trailers: Nekromantik, Der Todesking, Nekromantik 2 and Schramm