1. Der Todesking (1989)
Excessive German gloom mongering from the enfant terrible of Teutonic cinema - Jorg 'Nekromantik' Buttgereit (I would really love to shake his hand some day!) - Der Todesking is an excellently realised piece of experimental film making - with suicide at the core of its goings on. Basically the film is set over seven days, with each day devoted to a suicidal act or a simultaneously violent and suicidal act. Monday gets off to a great start whenever a man enters his home, sits down and pens several mysterious letters. He then swallows a lot of pills, gets into the bath and dies. Oh yes! It's laugh a minute in Buttgereit world! On Wednesday, a man and woman meet up in a park in the lashing rain. He tells her about his disastrous sex life with his wife which drove him to kill her. The woman in the park hands him a revolver to shoot himself. On Sunday, a man in his bed is crying and wailing in anguish. He beats his head against the wall in utter despair and this leads to brain damage. Interposed against all the morbid shenanigans is a corpse of a man decomposing in real time. I am very lucky in possessing a VHS copy of Der Todesking. The DVD version, like most of Buttgereit's films don't come cheap you know. We are reduced to a very basic state of intelligence by Der Todesking. We don't understand the mechanisms of death or suicide. They are idiosyncratic to each victim, we come into this world alone, and we die alone. Buttgereit offers up seven portraits of despair that we must confront in the film and try to wrap our heads around. We are not given the motives behind what unfolds on the screen. The subject matter is strong enough to overcome slight editing and production problems. Delicate souls beware! This is an extremely gruesome movie which could lead to intense stomach churning.