In the world of disturbing paraphilias, necrophilia certainly ranks among the most taboo. Aside from the unlikeliness that the deceased would consent if alive, there’s the unavoidable matter that being sexually intimate with a rotting corpse is excessively gross to most people. Just the smell of decaying flesh is enough to send many fleeing. The idea of someone diving in crotch-first is especially depraved. Yet there’s a strange romance to the act, to the thought of love — or at least desire — extending into the grave. This contradiction has been inspiring artists and writers for eons, sometimes to poetic ends and sometimes to merely shocking ones. In the latter column resides “Nekromantik,” a notorious German gross-out fest that has been testing horror fans’ tolerance of “Can you believe this shit?” outrageousness for thirty-five years now. Unsurprisingly, this has made it a cult favorite among adventurous gore hounds. I’ve never seen the movie before so let’s, uh, dig this one up.
Rob works for a street cleaning company, which frequently removes dead bodies and other gore from the sight of tragic accidents. This morbid profession also allows an easy path for Rob to indulge his favorite hobby. That would be a sexual passion for corpses. His girlfriend, Betty, shares this necrophilic desire. She’s especially enthusiastic about the latest dead plaything Rob has dragged home. Yet when Rob is fired from his job, Betty leaves with the rotting cadaver. This causes the titular Nekromantik to spiral even further into madness.
"Nekromantik's" status as an assault on good taste is also obvious in its presentation. Buttgereit shot the movie on Super-8, leading to a cramped aspect ratio and frequently shaky camerawork. The lighting and colors are washed out and grimy. The performances are unpolished, with Daktari Lorenz as Rob being especially stiff. As much as the movie seeks to shock its audience, the special effects are also rather crude. The corpses are obviously rubber and the entrails clearly belong to animals. No matter how grungy the film gets, the impression it made on me is one of comedy, not full-bore horror. "Nekromantik" placing the sexual foibles of the living alongside the placid dead means it's closer tonally to a Troma movie than endurance tests like "Cannibal Holocaust" or "Ichi the Killer." Only the actual death of a rabbit manages to be genuinely upsetting.
Maybe Buttgereit's ambitions outstripped his budget. The only time "Nekromantik's" attempts to blend vomit-inducing gross-outs with more poetic ideas succeeds is the rather literal climax. As well as the piano-driven main theme, which manages to generate more emotional catharsis than anything in the screenplay. Despite its rickety budget and thin screenplay, there is a certain appeal to the homemade nastiness on-display here. I guess I'm too much of a perpetual horror punk — or a pretentious would-be creative type — not to relate to where Buttgereit is coming from. "Nekromantik" is crude as can be and is absolutely gross while also falling short of how shocking it wants to be. Yet I'm not surprised it developed a cult following among strong-stomached horror fans. There is a certain something to this corpse-fucking saga, despite its obvious limitations. [6/10]
I've been talking a little bit about Filmgroup, the company Roger Corman created with his brother Gene before rejoining A.I.P. Yet I haven't yet covered any of the films Corman himself directed for his own company. Such as “Creature from the Haunted Sea.” Like almost all of Filmgroup's productions, was also not copyrighted and fell into the public domain immediately. This means the movie's central visual – a ridiculous, mossy monster crawling out of the sea to abduct a pretty blonde – can be used by anyone, royalty-free. And it has, in the opening of “Malcolm in the Middle” and episodes of “Muppet Babies.” It seems anytime someone wants to use some footage of a ridiculous monster, from some old horror flick, this is the one they go with. But what about the movie itself? Is it as laughable as that one clip makes it seem?
An American secret agent, code-named XK150, infiltrates a gang of crooks planning to steal a horde of gold, being smuggled out of Castro's Cuba by a group of Cuban loyalist. The scheme, led by an on-the-run gambler named Capetto, involves locating the gold, killing the Cubans, and blaming the murders on a legendary sea monster said to roam the area. Capetto and his incredibly eccentric team will provide the monster themselves, of course. As the boat travels further into the ocean, the men get attached to some local girls while XK150 develops a crush on Capetto's moll. The scheme is interrupted when a real monster emerges from the deep and begins attacking people.
Another element of “Creature from the Haunted Sea” that is blatantly absurd is its cast of bizarre characters. As far as heroic spies go, XK150 is largely incompetent. His deadpan voiceover describes each characters' history and quirks in extensive terms. He builds up his own mythology in his head, while the film shows him as usually unsuccessful. Such as his attempts to seduce Mary-Belle, which are rebuffed every time. Yet the spy is far from the film's only weird character. Among the crew is a guy who mostly communicates in animal noises, Mary-Belle's brother who has a disorder that makes him constantly smile, and a Cuban general that only speaks Spanish. As the movie progresses, more bizarre characters – including a local island girl, who only cares about selling stuff to tourist – appear.
Apparently, “Creature from the Haunted Sea” was exactly as slapdash a production as it seems to be. Corman was in Puerto Rico to film “Last Woman on Earth” and, ever the overachiever, decided to shoot an entirely separate movie with the left-over film. He had Charles B. Griffith cook up a script in six days, the writer largely recycling the premise of “Beast from the Haunted Cave.” Supposedly, he intentionally made the story and characters weird to frustrate Corman. While similar conditions which result in classics like “A Bucket of Blood” and “Little Shop,” “Creature from the Haunted Sea” is a little too preoccupied with its own flippancy without giving the audience enough of what we expect. [6/10]
The eighties iteration of “The Twilight Zone” doesn't seem to have made as much of an impact on pop culture as the original. Yet I can recall cousins of mine discussing an episode that frightened them as boys once. That would be “Something in the Walls,” from the show's third season. It follows Dr. Mallory, a new addition to a psychiatric hospital. He quickly becomes enamored with Sharon, the facility's most baffling patient. Appearing perfectly calm, Sharon refuses to have any patterns on her room's wall paper or in her clothes. She believes that faces can be seen in patterns and that these '”faces” belong to malevolent entities from another dimension, attempting to push their way into our world. Mallory dismisses these fears are plain old pareidolia and delusions. Yet, the more he studies Mallory's case, the more he finds himself looking at patterns on the wall with curiosity.
I can see why “Something in the Walls” made an impression on my cousins when they were young. It features a corker of a sequence about halfway through. While describing how she came to hold this apparent delusion, Sharon explains the first night she saw something in the walls. Set in a dark room with a flashing thunderstorm outside, she slowly sees a set of faces emerge through the walls. This is accomplished via the reliably freaky special effects of faces stretching through pliable latex, as seen in “A Nightmare on Elm Street” or that creepy U.N. Peacekeepers commercial. Director Alan Kroeker, who has worked almost exclusively in television, brings a lot of nightmarish intensity to this scene. I can see this moment easily traumatizing an unprepared kid.
Big physical gags rule the day in these two episodes of “The Munsters.” “A House Divided” begins with Herman and Grandpa making a go-cart for Eddie's birthday. When Herman crashes the little car, an argument builds between grandfather and son-in-law. They paint a line halfway through the house, literally dividing it in two, frustrating Marilyn and Lily to no end. “Herman's Sorority Caper” has the Munster patriarch developing a supersized case of hiccups. Grandpa hypnotizing him into catatonia as part of curing the condition. That's when a college fraternity decides spending a night in the Munsters' house – which they mistakenly assume is abandoned – is the ideal frat initiation. The kids grab Herman and stick him in the rival sorority's house.
“A House Divided” builds upon on of this show's best attributes. That would be the chemistry between Fred Gwynne and Al Lewis. They spent almost the entire episode bickering about the pettiest shit imaginable. This involves cutting objects in half, fighting over the TV, and even splitting Spot up between them. This makes for some solid gags, such as when Herman cuts the phone cord just as Grandpa is talking to someone. Lily and Marilyn's increasingly perturbed reaction to this rivalry also make for some healthy chuckles. I guess the women in old sitcoms just naturally become the straight men, in comparison to the buffoonish men. There's also an extended sequence of Herman Munster driving around in a go-cart, clearly a precursor to cinematic masterpiece “Leprechaun.”
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