All Rise...

Appellate Judge Daryl Loomis always wears his tallest heels while digging graves.

The Charge

The return of the loving dead.

The Case

In 1988, Jörg Buttgereit released his seminal necrophilia work, Nekromantik. The public, so entranced by the film's charm and nuance, demanded a sequel and, in 1991, he relented, releasing Nekromantik 2 to oceans of adoring fans climbing over themselves to witness the follow up. Maybe it didn't go down quite like that, but for those into German horror-romances, the release was pretty big. A quarter-century later and they get to experience it all over again, because thanks to Cult Epics, Nekromantik 2 has arrived on Blu-ray. Be quick about it, though; they're limited to a mere 5000 copies.

Rob, from the original film, has been in the ground a while now, but he won't be for long. Monika (Monika M., Schramm) has her mind on that rotting corpse and she won't rest until it's in her bed and she's making love to it. But hot as all the sex is, she's entranced by adult film dubbing artist Mark (Mark Reeder, The Death King) and is excited to date a real living boy. First, though, she has to dispose of Rob, so Mark doesn't find out about her predilections, though he would have been better off had he discovered her secret at some point.

When it was originally released, Nekromantik 2 must have irritated fans of the first film. While Nekromantik wasn't the disgusting shock fest it was cracked up to be, it is compared to what is basically a pure Euro-romance that has a couple of relatively gross scenes sprinkled into it. It does have a better looking corpse than the first film and one of the better beheadings of its era, but when a fair chunk of the middle act is spent watching the young lovers watch a parody of My Dinner with Andre, it's not exactly a gorefest.

Whatever you might think about the worthiness of Nekromantik 2, there's no denying that the Blu-ray is as good a presentation as the movie has ever received. The 1.33:1/1080p image looks a little rough, but that's a problem with the original elements, not the transfer, which makes the movie look about as good as it's going to get. The colors are a little washed out, but it's also a German movie from the early ?90s, so that's not entirely unexpected. Detail is good and black levels are pretty deep, and the only real problem is some scratches on the print, but given how the movie has looked in the past, it's pretty nice. Audio is nothing special, though there are three separate tracks (all in German), but they are mostly clean and clear, if a little non-descript.

Fans of the movie are in for something of a treat with the special features:

* A full-length audio commentary from 2001 featuring author Franz Rodenkirchen along with Buttgereit and actors Monika M. and Mark Reeder. It's a fun commentary that finds the group pretty jovial about the movie; they clearly know what they've made here and don't take it any more seriously than viewers should. That the movie is still banned in England at the time of the commentary's recording is certainly discussed (the ban was lifted in 2014), as well as a host of other stories about the movie and its general weirdness.

* A twenty-minute making-of featurette that goes relatively deeply into the production, including a lot of detail on the making of the corpse effect.

* Eleven minutes of a live performance of the soundtrack performed by Monika M. and her band, which is a pretty neat extra.

* "A Moment of Silence at the Grave of Ed Gein," is a short film of silent footage in front of a grave, though I cannot confirm that it is actually the grave of the serial killer.

* Half Girl: "Lemmy, I'm a Feminist," is a music video that holds little interest for me.

* Two separate versions of the complete soundtrack, one in the studio and one live.

* A short introduction from the director, giving viewers context for what they're about to see.

It's tough to argue with a package like that for any movie and, given how much respect it's been given in the past, you really have to hand it to Cult Epics for caring as much as they do. As a movie, it's a pretty silly gross-out romance that earns its cult status, but doesn't really have all that much going for it. For all of its infamy, it's a fairly tame and often dull movie, but one that has its fans. For them, this release is gold.

The Verdict

Harmless, but guilty.

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