Der Todesking

Product Information

Complete collection of Buttgereit film trailers: Nekromantik, Der Todesking, Nekromantik 2 and Schramm

The Making of Der Todesking (15:40, SD) – A rough, homemade, retrospective look at the production. It’s basically silent footage (from behind-the-scenes and the finished film) set to an interview with Buttgereit. The basic concept of DER TODESKING is that there is an "episode" for each day of the week that revolves around a strange chain letter that apparently causes people to commit suicide, interspersed with scenes of a slowly decomposing corpse...

Masters of Life and Death – a documentary looking at the film's production and release history, featuring interviews with Buttgereit, Reeder, Monika M. and Jelinski

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. First to take his own life is a man (Hermann Kopp) obsessed with fish. He studies fish, has a fish poster on his wall, eats fish, keeps a pet goldfish, and has a little picture of a fish on his mailbox. Rather fittingly, he dies in a full bath-tub after taking an overdose washed down with wine. The standout scene is a prolonged rotating shot of his apartment, showing the passage of time, just the start of Jörg getting creative with his visuals. Jorg Buttgereit proved with NEKROMANTIK that he’s not afraid to plumb the darkest depths of depravity, and DER TODESKING (THE DEATH KING) continues the tradition. It showcases a far more thoughtful side than the anything-for-a-gross-out NEKROMANTIK or its 1991 sequel, and is far closer to Buttgereit’s third feature, 1993’s non-linear phantasmagoria SCHRAMM. Like that film, the word for DER TODESKING is, fortunately or unfortunately, “interesting.” 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 15minMonday – Things begin with the brutally sobering suicide of a lonely office worker. We aren’t given much information about who this guy is, but his actions – quitting his job, writing suicide notes (?), cleaning his apartment, shaving, and eating canned sardines – are enough to subtly humanize him. The imagery of him expiring in the bathtub simultaneously with his pet goldfish sets the stage for the film’s consistently eerie poignancy.

Schramm: Redux – option to watch Schramm and its sequel Tomorrow I Will Be Dirt as a single, continuous feature Starring Hermann Kopp, Heinrich Ebber, Michael Krause, Susanne Betz, Eva-Maria Kurz, and Andreas Doehler.

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Friday follows a lonely spinster who enviously spies on two seemingly happy lovers in a neighbouring apartment. The woman receives a suicide chain letter that says she must make copies of the letter and then take her own life, but she decides to eat chocolates instead. The camera then shifts to the other apartment where the lovers are in bed together, covered in blood, having killed themselves. Jörg Buttgereit goes a bit too far with his movies and themes at times, even for my taste but his movies are always something special and hard to classify. They are artistically made, with also often deeper meaning to its themes. This movie is a perfect example of his work. Commentary by Buttgereit and co-writer Franz Rodenkirchen – This English language commentary originally appeared on the German special edition DVD. It is quite informative and valuable, considering that almost all of the other supplements here were made almost 30 years ago. On Thursday, the names of several people who committed sucide appear over shots of a bridge where people have jumped to their deaths.TODESKING, on the other hand is, in my opinion, one of the best films ever made. It consist of a series of scenes depicting the many facets of death. Death as an enemy; Death as a reliever, Death as the very fysical decomposition of the body. The film is a metaphor over life. It shows how fragile life is and how short our lives are. It reduces its viewers to the childs they (we) actually are. The fact that we cannot really understand the nature of Death, and hence neither the process of dying, is the core message of the film. This is a most realistic film. Never does Buttgereit try to hide death behind white roses or whatever. No matter what moral standards you set up, death is unevitable, and will sooner or later be not a fiction but YOUR reality. This applies to YOU, Dear Reader, like it applies to the viewers of the film. Some juvenile reviewers seem not to grasp this, which is fully excused, since they of course will live forever... Two short films by Manfred Jelinski: Orpheus in der Oberwelt (1970, 31 mins) and Ein Ku'ze' Film übe' Hambu'g (1990, 5 mins) Two short films by producer Manfred O. Jelinski: Die Reise ins Licht (1972, 27 mins) viewable with optional audio commentary, and Geliebter Wahnsinn (1973, 7 mins)