Fear.net has created an online game that is part Saw part mystery. Seems like they are putting a twist in the torture porn motif. Check it out.
Buried Alive centers around a handful of 20-somethings, each unwillingly encased in a custom-made coffin. Trapped in this underground world that is ruled by a maniacal antagonist, the group must discover the connections between themselves; the reasons for their abductions; and, with luck, an escape from the nightmare. Aiding the group above ground are two sleuths, siblings Melanie and Travis, each with a secret stake tied to the victims' fates. The detectives--and the viewers of BURIED ALIVE--can piece together information gleaned from found footage and online diaries hidden on the Web, in the ultimate race against time to unravel the mystery and discover the locations of the buried coffins before time runs out. This innovative daily series will feature a new two-minute episode premiering each morning at 10:00 AM EST--so check daily for new clues.
Insano Steve wanted to chime in on the Buttgereit week festivities so we conclude Jorg Buttgereit week with his review of Der Todesking. Der Todesking Der Todesking (1990)
Der Todesking (the Death King) is Jorg's more ambitious artsy suicide movie.
Does Jorg pull it off? Is he skilled enough?
Um, no. You gotta admire the effort though. Movie is broken up into 7 days/episodes (which you know he got the idea from another movie from a better director). In between the days, there's imagery of a corpse slowly decomposing. You can just picture Jorg yelling at his videographer (uh, himself), "More death! More art! Perfect!". Let's see what a typical week in Germany's like:
Monday
A man comes home, phones his boss to resign from his job, writes mysterious letters, cleans his apartment and swallows poison in his bathtub. His death is simultaneous with the death of his fish, the only being that was close to him.
Yeah, this is like a typical Monday for me too. Except I don't have any fish. And I usually take my poison while watching TV. Germany is a miserable country.
Tuesday
A man rents a film in a video store, a movie in which Nazi soldiers are torturing a prisoner in a concentration camp, castrating him and painting a swastika on his breast. When the young man's girlfriend comes home, she yells at him until he kills her with a gun. This whole episode is being shown on a TV screen in a room where somebody has been hanged.
Alright, some Nazi death footage! Are all Germans Nazis in 2007? Who knows. But, I watch movies to reinforce my stereotypes (and maybe make some new ones), thank you. Jorg's vision for Tuesday: "Man watching video of man watching video. Everybody dies".
Wednesday
A man and a girl meet in a park in the pouring rain. The man tells the girl about his disastrous sex life with his wife which led to him killing her. The girl pulls out a gun to kill him, but the man takes it from her and blows his brains out. Yeah, Wednesdays do tend to suck. Top death of the week. Bullet in the brain. Jorg can still bring it strong when he wants to.
Thursday
A motorway bridge somewhere in Germany, superimposed by the names, ages and occupations of the people who have jumped from it.
Jorg got kinda lazy here. No action. Just names of people who jumped off some bridge in Germany. Is there a message here? Jorg? You there? Are you sure you're good enough to make stuff like this? Show some poor bastards jumping off the bridge next time.
Friday
A woman, alone in her apartment, is observing a young, seemingly happy couple in the neighbourhood. She spies on them and finds a chain letter in front of her door, urging her to kill herself. Obviously everybody in the house got the letter. She ignores it, eats chocolates and falls asleep, dreaming of surprising her parents when they make love. The camera shows the young couple, dead on their bed.
This was probably the weakest day (at least Thursday was short). Kinda like one of those Japanese WTF horror movies. You keep waiting for something to happen. I remember thinking "Yo, Jorg, it's been 10 minutes, nobody's dead yet, let's go". Then the couple's dead w/o a death scene. Girl eats chocolate. What the fuck???.
Saturday
A young woman, equipped with a camera and a gun, kills several people in the audience of a rock concert and records it on film, until someone kills her.
Saturday night out in Germany. This was on the trailer for the movie, and what made this a must-rental. Some girl completely shoots up a Euro-trash rock club. Jorg puts the camera in POV of the girl. No reason is given for the killing spree. Random German extras getting shot dead. Some of Jorg's best work. Even funnier than it sounds.
Sunday
A man, alone on his bed, is crying and banging his head over and over violently against the wall until he dies.
Just like my Sundays watching the New York Jets play.
If Buttgereit were still making movies today, horror sites would be clamoring for Jorg to make a serial killer movie. Well, we're glad he did. Way back in 93. And oh my, it's one hell of a sick movie.
The thing about Buttgereit is that to understand the madness of his films is to dig deep into the psychosis of insanity itself.
Wow that sounds all Freudian. But alas after watching Schramm, you'll know why they don't make horror movies like they use to.
It's nitty, it's gritty and the violence and splatter are all top notch.
Enter the psyche that is Lothar Schramm (who looks like a German George Costanza) . The movie begins with his death and through a series of flashbacks, we see that he went all serial killy before he kicked the bucket.
I can't exactly remember everything that happened in this movie but the only scene that keeps popping into my head is "NAIL IN PENIS".
Yup. Schramm hammers a nail into his penis. After seeing that for the first time, I actually said to myself: "I've never seen somebody hammer nails into his penis".
I'm shivering just thinking about it.
So let's discuss the plot-o-rama shall we? As we travel back into the mind of our serial killer, we discover Schramm is a cab driver who is totally mental. Shockingly, he makes serial killing not as cool as Dexter makes it out to be. After meeting some religious missionaries, Schramm shows us his killing ways.
See Schramm kill! (with extra spanish punk rock soundtrack)
I particularly like the ocular trauma. So graphic, so realistic. Kudos Jorg!
Schramm slowly devolves into a black whole of depravity. He meets a hooker (Monika M from Nekro 2) named Marianne who he has an attraction to. Schramm accompanies Marianne on a few of her "jobs" but as Schramm slowly realizes she's indifferent to him and his feelings. To combat this he fucks an inflatable doll and later then drugs her and masturbates on her corpse..oops...err I mean unconcious body.
Alas this is the life of Schramm. He is sick, crazy and totally depraved. Jorg obviously is reminding us that the mind of a serial killer is not easy to understand. Schramm dabbles in normaly but is a millenia away from it at the same time. Schramm is so brutally realistic, so shamelessly wicked, it's the pinnacle of all serial killer movies (with Henry: Portait of a Serial Killer being the other).
Buttgereit's visuals are all random but edgy and jam packed with disturbing gooeyness. Various Scrammy dreams contain his leg being severed in leg splitting beauty, leg braces, dentist ocular trauma, a homeless man committing gun suicide with a bullet to the brain and a VAGINA WITH YELLOW TEETH. Yes, my jaded viewers, a hairy VAGINA WITH SMOKER'S TEETH. Though all this added up to a movie that went way beyond my expectations, it's three words that can never be erased from my memory.
Jorg Buttgereit
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