3. Der Todesking (1989)
Whenever director Jorg Buttgereit is not making his self proclaimed 'Corpse F**king Art' (NEKRomantik 1 & 2), he makes bitterly depressing German horror films. As the title may suggest, this film is about everyone's favourite light viewing topic - death! Der Todesking is primarily about suicide, but also brings ultraviolent death and murders into the mix. It is divided up into seven segments - each segment is titled 'Monday', 'Tuesday' and so on, after the days of the week. On each day a suicidal act occurs. Monday shows us an ordinary, middleaged man who comes into his house, resigns from work, writes a few letters and then takes tablets which kill him in the bath. On Tuesday, a man rents a Nazisploitation-esque film. He is watching it and his girlfriend comes home. She starts a row with him and he shoots her. In a rather sick move, he grabs a frame and puts it on the wall over her splattered brain matter. This sequence is shown to actually be a televised episode on the TV of someone who has just hanged themselves. The rest of the days of the week continue in a similar manner - portraying acts of suicide and ultraviolence. They are graphic, horrific and gruesomely realistic but the film is a true work of art. Der Todesking is never sensational in the treatment of his subject. Between the sequences, there is a body decaying rapidly that binds the episodes together. It is grotesque, but not gratuitous in the context of the film. If you watch Der Todesking - that is, if you can manage to stomach the film in its entirety - you will be richly rewarded, even if you don't feel like you have been. It is probably the most accurate film about the ugly nature of suicide - who kills themselves? How do they do it? What is their motive? Added to this is the fact that Der Todesking is a very beautiful and well thought out film, I think it is a work of high gloomy art, not exploitation. It shows us how fragile our existence is - how short life is, and how we are inexorably sliding towards death with every passing day. If that is not the epitome of German cinematic gloom, I don't know what takes the biscuit.