Is that a maggot in your mouth or are you just happy to see me?

Back in college I had the bright idea of watching both Nekromantik I & II alone, after eating 3 ounces of mushrooms. It induced a full psychotic break in me, but strangely not until about two hours after I had watched them. It’s not the gruesome corpses, the relatively minimal violence (minimal for most horror films) or the gore. It was the MUSIC, the feeling of the films. Nekromantik I & II are ROMANCES.

The films are quiet, sweet and strangely tender. Watching them, you feel completely insane, like you are having a really weird nightmare. Add a shit load of psybocilin and things get ugly. I started questioning everything about me. What was wrong with me that I could even watch something like this? What was wrong with the world that this could even be conceived? I started pondering the idea of throwing out Mr. Twerpyworth my pet cat that I had preserved in a pickle jar full of formaldehyde. Did that huge blown up photo of the burning monk really need to be hanging over my mantle place? Maybe I should release that sweet old man that I had shackled in my basement. I was so freaked out and the trip the Nekromantik films induced was so bad that I actually tried to hide in my oven for 6 hours.

As art goes, the Nekromantik films are complete success, but like so much art that pushes the boundaries and provokes you to face the dark side, you have to ask if that success is really a victory or a defeat for humanity. In the end I say they are important films, just don’t watch them on drugs, and make sure you’ve rented some Disney for after you’re done.

-R.E. Brown
Swellco & Swellco 64312b