A long continuous rotating shot of a room with a man doing different things at different times of the day. Lots of rehearsals probably went into this to make sure the actor got his timing right. Extensive image gallery including behind-the-scenes stills and the rare, surrealist German-language Nekromantik comic by Berlin artist Fil, reproduced in its entirety Mein Papi (1981-95, 8 mins) – short film by Jörg Buttgereit offering a highly personal account of the life and death of his father, viewable with optional director commentary Jesus – Der Film (1986, 1 min) – a short piece directed by Jörg Buttgereit as part of a 1986 experimental movie of the same name by German filmmaker Michael Bynntrup Other segments bring us anything from a man rambling to a female stranger on a park bench about how his wife and he had sexual problems due to a mysterious bleeding issue, to a man suffering from an unknown malady in his room, the pain causing him to alternate between curling up in a ball on the floor and then banging his head against the wall. All of the stories are pulled together by the revisiting of a shot of a naked male corpse deteriorating, the rot and maggots shown via time-lapse photography and with a constant feeling of hopelessness.

Buttgereit: Into the Mind of a Cult Filmmaker – Jörg Buttgereit in conversation with Ewan Cant at the 2019 Offscreen Film Festival Jörg Buttgereit's films are not for everyone, but I have to say he has become my favorite horror director in the period 1985-1995. Buttgeriet has made his own art-house-horror genre and the more I watch, the more I like his style. Audio commentary with Buttgereit, co-writer Franz Rodenkirchen and actors Monika M. and Mark Reeder The second feature film from German underground director Jörg Buttgereit, Der Todesking (aka The King of Death) gets the Arrow treatment on Blu-ray and DVD. Arrow Films invites you to feast your eyes upon four of Buttgereit's most infamous works: Nekromantik, Der Todesking, Nekromantik 2 and Schramm.Bloody hell! Head into Sunday with a warning. You will not be ready! A young man wakes from his bed in fear, in hatred and in blind screaming rage. He repeatedly slams his head into the wall, leaving blood, and an echo in your own head of the noise. No explanation, no beginning nor end. It just exists! I was reminded of a film I saw years ago, the title escapes me. Short but flawless in its message, it simply showed the effects of a rape as the victim fights herself afterwards. She tore at herself, she cried, she yelled on and on. This part of Der Todesking is similar, except the wonder of ‘why’ floats above him. In the book, Sex Murder Art, Jörg states they underplayed the blood on purpose in this chapter. Directed by: Jörg Buttgereit | Written by: Jörg Buttgereit, Franz Rodenkirchin | Produced by: Manfred O Jelinski | Cinematography by: Manfred O Jelinski | Editing by: Jörg Buttgereit, Manfred O Jelinski, Franz Rodenkirchin | Special Effects by: Jörg Buttgereit, Sammy Balkas, John Dreyer, Franz Rodenkirchin, stefanie Ollenburg | Music by: Hermann Kopp, Daktari, John Boy Walton | Cast: Hermann Kopp, Heinrich Ebber, Angelika Hoch, Michael Krause, Suzanne Betz, Mark Reeder, Jörg Buttgereit, Simone Sporl | Year: 1990 | Country: Germany | Language: German (English Subtitles) | Color: Color/ B&W | Runtime: 1h 15min Two additional short films by Jörg Buttgereit: Hot Love (1985) [29 mins] and J.B.'s Horror Heaven (1984) [23 mins] with optional English subtitles The Letter: This is the alternate English-language chain letter insert used for the original UK VHS release

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). If ever there was a call for a movie about suicide – and why wouldn’t there be? – then it seems only fitting that Jörg Buttgereit, the filmmaker that spewed forth grubby corpse-loving classics Nekromantik and Nekromantik 2 into the world, should be the director to make it. However, true to the man’s style he hasn’t just made a film about suicide but seven vignettes all tied together by themes of suicide and/or violent death.Returning to the corpse whom cameoed at the beginning. Stop motion and sped-up film begins the process of decay in great detail. Superb. Following such a piece of art wasn’t easy. Thus the film’s most upsetting chapter is that of a simple bridge with no music. Traffic clatters overhead. The camera wanders around and the names plus occupations of so many real life suicides play on the screen. Students, pensioners, professionals, all ages. No one is spared the bridge once their mind is made up.

Der Todesking consists of seven shorts named after the days of the week. Other than the overlying theme of death and a recurring body in varied stages of decomposition, the seven stories are not inter-connected. Eating the Corpse: Footage from the January 25 1990 premiere in Berlin at the Sputnik cinema using music from the film This is an awesome film. Basically its a horror anthology with 7 short films, one for each day of the week. The stories aren't really connected to each other and there isn't a main character. They also aren't about werewolves or vampires or any of the traditional horror icons but about suicide and death, mostly suicide.The king of death resides resplendent on his throne, it will not be too long before you sit at his feet, it could happen in an instant, a heartbeat. It could take a long suffocating agony, the release from which you find yourself begging for. What happens after a final breath is taken nobody truly knows; nothingness is most likely. Welcome to Der Todesking (1990) Jorg Buttgereit’s unflinching look at the futility of life and death, this is not a feel good movie, be warned. Following on from his transgressive and seminal feature Nekromantik (1987) Buttgereit delved deeper into taboo subjects with this meditative study of death. It follows in the footsteps of the mondo and documentary styled films that sprang up in the 70’s such as the renowned Faces Of Death series, themselves stemming from the works of Italian filmmakers Jacopetti and Prosperi such as Mondo Cane (1962). After a rapid and underground (i.e. banned in countries like the UK) influx of such films taking things as far as they could go, they pretty much died a natural death themselves. Their audience had been satiated by stark and sobering images that even went as far as depicting the mysteries of what happens when the body is left on the slab for autopsy and embalmment. Der Todesking' is my first experience with Jorg Buttgereit. I have no idea whether it is representative of his other work or not, but after watching this puzzling movie I intend finding out. A verbal description of this movie does it very little justice. Scenes of suicides by various individuals are interspersed with footage of a decomposing corpse. That really gives you NO idea how thought provoking, repellant AND beautiful this movie is in places. A disgruntled boyfriend watching the above scene, then shooting his girlfriend and framing her splatter on the wall as a photographic memory. The final segment Sunday consists of no dialogue just a man in an apartment writhing on a bed and then falling to the floor where he bangs his head against the wall in torment. There is no death here, just a man suffering from torment of never explained cause. Thursday is a piece that comes with no people in it. It is simply a series of camera shots from under a bridge or moving along its upper struts. Overlaid with this is a series of names of people, along with their age and profession. You deduce from this that all of these are suicides who have leapt from the bridge. Nicholas Petche in torment in his apartment in the Sunday episode

A man rents a film in a video store, a Nazisploitation movie in which Nazi soldiers are torturing a prisoner in a concentration camp, castrating him and painting a swastika on his chest. When the young man's girlfriend comes home, she yells at him until he shoots her in the head. He then breaks a picture frame which had a picture of his girlfriend in it, takes the picture out and then places the picture frame over the place on the wall where her brain matter was splattered. This whole episode is revealed as being shown on a TV screen in a room where somebody else committed suicide by hanging. Wednesday: a woman runs into a man on a park bench who launches into a brooding monologue about how his wife bled every time they had sex and how he killed her (or something) because of it. The woman pulls out a gun and points it at him. He promptly takes it from her and shoots himself in the head. Nekro Waltz: The Music of Nekromantik 2 – actor and composer Reeder discusses his work on the film's score Q&A with Jörg Buttgereit, producer/cinematographer Manfred Jelinski, Monika M. and David Kerekes, author of Sex Murder Art: The Films of Jörg Buttgereit, filmed at a 1994 UK screening of SchrammThis 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. 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.