SEX MURDER ART - THE FILMS OF JORG BUTTGEREIT (1987-1993)
Synopsis: Cult Epics presents Sex Murder Art: The Films of Jørg Buttgereit a collection of his four underground horror films; the necrophilia classics Nekromantik and Nekromantik 2, the death and suicide anthology Der Todesking (The Death King) and the premiere of the serial killer film Schramm on Blu-ray. Includes exclusive Soundtrack CD’s of the films and a 40-page booklet, containing interviews and photos with Jorg Buttgereit and collaborators.
NEKROMANTIK (1987)
Label: Cult Epics
Duration: 75 Minutes
Rating: Unrated
Region Code: A
Audio: German Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p Full Screen (1.33:1)
Director: Jørg Buttgereit
Cast: Daktari Lorenz, Beatrice M.
Nekromantik is the story of a strange young man named Rob Schmadtke (Daktari Lorenz) whom is employed at Joe's Street Cleaning Agency, a service that cleans-up crime scenes. It's a grisly job but one that suits of Ron who is a necrophile. Rob collects various body parts from the accident and crime scenes and keeps them in specimen jars at his apartment where both he and his death-obsessed girlfriend Betty (Beatrice M.) can get-off on touching and stroking the gruesome body parts.
As this morbid fascination becomes more intense Rob steals a gooey corpse freshly pulled from the swamps and brings it home to the perverse delight of his girlfriend. They immediately fashion a iron-cock from scrap piping and before you know it we are treated to a very macabre threesome as Betty licks, sucks and fucks the rotting, tight-skinned cadaver as Rob takes her from behind in a trippy and revolting sequence.
However, when Rob loses his job Betty dumps him and takes her corpse-lover with her. Dumped in favor of a corpse poor Rob further spirals into the maddening depths of misery. He attends a misogynist slasher movie at the cinema before procuring a prostitute to fuck at the graveyard. Seems that the grave stones aren't enough to excite Rob as he experiences a bit of erectile dysfunction but rises to the occasion once he strangles her to death. It sex just isn't the same without the element of death for the depraved necrophiliac.
Afterward he further descends into disparity back at his apartment, he stuffs his cat into a trash bag and smashes it repeatedly against the wall into a bloody pulp. Now the cat is a prop but let me say that animal lovers will take exception with this film just in case the necrophilia didn't scare you off. Additionally, there's an actual scene of what appears to be an actual rabbit being bled to death, skinned and gutted - so just be aware of that.
Shot on Super 8 mm film in 1987 the film has a rough homemade quality about it that won't appeal to your average horror-fan, so pile that on top of scenes of necrophilia and the death of small animals and you have a film that just doesn't;'t have a lot of appeal to your average joe. The very first shot is of a woman urinating along the roadside just before her and a male companion are involved in a horrendous car accident that leaves the woman torn in half, it's in aftermath of this that we meet Rob during the crime- scene clean-up.
There were quite a few repulsive scenes but one of the first to affect me was the repeated bare handed handling of a corpses which made me a bit nauseous. The gore effects are low-budget and grotesque. When the lovers of the dead start to lick and suck the eye-socket of the cadaver I had to put my damn beer down for a few minutes before it came back up on me.
Aside from the licking of body parts and the corpse there a few other effective gore gags including a sweet decapitation scene with spewing blood at he graveyard when Rob is discovered next to the dead whore the next morning. Speaking of spewing we cannot overlook perhaps the most infamous scene in the film - SPOILER ALERT - when Rob completely distraught lies in bed and pulls out his erect cock and begins stabbing himself in the guts repeatedly as thick streams of cum start to spew and them torrents of blood straight from his cock. It's definitely a scene you won't soon be erased from your memory.
Audio/Video: The Sex Murder Art box set features the same brand-new HD transfer from the stand alone release approved by the director straight from the original Super 8mm negative is still not a pretty sight. It certainly looks like the lo-fi film made for pennies over twenty-five years ago. It's soft, the contrast is poor, the darker scenes are at times impenetrable and there's no fine detail to be found anywhere. This was a first time watch for me on any format and I can only assume this is superior viewing experience but without having something to compare it to I can only say this was a disappointing Blu-ray experience. I didn't go in expecting crystal clarity and pores of the skin to be jumping off the screen but it was a very flat and dull presentation.
There are two versions of the film - we have the 8mm HD transfer and one from a 35mm print which looked like it been around awhile. Honestly I preferred it to the 8mm - it's darker and the colors are more muted but the grain and print damage added a lot of character to the viewing. Audio is also flat and unremarkable, both the stereo and surround mixes. Recorded without audio the dialogue was later dubbed in which gives it a weird disconnected vibe which suits the nightmarish imagery quite nicely.
Onto the extras we have audio commentary by Jorg Buttgereit and Co-Author Franz Rodenkirchen plus a making-of doc and a featurette for NEKROMANTIK. The making-of doc features a bunch of unused scenes, outtakes and behind-the-scenes footage. Buttegreit's short film HOT LOVE (1985) is included on this disc and has never before been released, there's also a short making-of doc for the short film. .
There's a Q/A with Buttgereit from Beyond Fest 2013wherein he discussed everything from making the film to German schizer porn. There's also a collection of JB trailers, a still photo gallery and the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is included as a bonus on the Blu-ray, and as part of this liited edition boxset you can enjoy it on CD.
The A/V left me wanting a bit more but perhaps these are surely the best available elements available for the movie, so what can you do? I think the selection of extras more than make up for the unimpressive A/V. There's a lot to sift through here and it;s interesting to hear the director speak at length about legal troubles while fighting censorship plus we get the short film that preceded NEKROMANTIK with some very cool making-of extras with a wealth of behind-the-scenes material.
Special Features:
- New Director’s Approved HD Transfer (taken from the original Super 8mm negative)
- New Grindhouse HD Version (taken from the theatrical 35mm print)
- Introduction by Jorg Buttgereit
- Q+A with Jorg Buttgereit at the American Cinematheque (2013)
- Never Before Released Short Film Hot Love (1985) (29 minutes)
- Audio Commentary by Jorg Buttgereit and Co-Author Franz Rodenkirchen
- The Making of Nekromantik (12 minutes)
- Nekromantik Featurette
- Still Photo Gallery (102 images)
- JB Trailers
- Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Nekromantik is a dark and vile piece of cinema that is right up there with Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust as a film you should really never be in the mood to watch but instead feel compelled to endure, I'm not sure when I'll feel the compulsion to view this slice of repulsive cinema again but I can say that Cult epics have done a wonderful job bringing it to Blu-ray as both a stand alone release and as part of the Sex Murder Art box set. .
NEKROMANTIK 2 (1991)
Label: Cult Epics
Region Code: A
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 103 Minutes
Audio: German Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo, 5.1 Surround, Dolby Digital Mono
Video: Fullframe (1.33:1)
Cast: Monika M., Daktari Lorenz, Mark Reeder
Director: Jørg Buttgereit
Nekromantik 2 begins right where the first unforgettable film ended, with the heartbroken necrophiliac Rob's (Daktari Lorenz) suicide with a butcher's knife, killing himself in a torrent of cum and blood only to be dug up at the end of the film by whom I had thought to be his death-obsessed lover Betty (Beatrice M.), though there is a brief scene later where we see she has come tot he grave only to be disappointed that someone else has beat her to the punch, it seems in death Rob is quite a bit more desirable than he was in life.
This time the corpse thief is the pretty necrophiliac Monika (Monika M.), a cute young woman who is a gravedigger and who was drawn to Rob's after reading about his suicide in the local newspaper. She takes his corpse back to her apartment and sets about prepping him for some cadaver sex, his corpse is a dark marbled green and quite slimy, unfortunately the sex is not all it could have been and Monika is left unsatisfied by the experience, unfulfilled she can be seen vomiting into the toilet
Through a chance encounter Monika winds up at the movies with a young man named Mark (Mark Reeder) and the two strike up a budding relationship and head-off to the carnival. Mark is employed as someone who dubs dialogue and moaning into porn films, which might seem a bit weird but we've already met Monika and her cadaverous hobbies make his day job seem absolutely legit in comparison.
As her relationship with Mark becomes more serious Monika comes to the difficult decision that she needs to get Rob's corpse out of her apartment, tearfully sawing him into pieces and disposing of the parts except for the head and penis, the latter of which Mark discovers in the fridge when he makes breakfast for Monika. He's not quite sure what the rotting and blackened appendage is or sure but you can tell he knows it's something awful, I thought for certain he might cook it - it's a film about necrophilia so to think it might go that direction is not out of the question.
The surprisingly sweet looking necrophile does attempt to carry on a normal relationship with her new found boyfriend Mark but there are bound to be problems when you're a necrophiliac. She belongs to a group of friends who seem to be fellow necrophiles, at the very least they're extremely morbid people whose idea of fun group activity is watching a video of seals being slaughtered and skinned. These strange proclivities do not sit well with poor Mark whom is already disturbed that Monika's demands he remain completely still during sex, he can definitely sense that the two might not be compatible.
As the doubts grow the pair begin to argue and the relationship starts to unravel a bit, but after a day alone at the beach Monika comes up with a solution that will set things right, which brings us to the super grisly climax of the film and one that does not disappoint in anyway. During make-up sex Monika straddles Mark and once he has been fully aroused she saws off his head in a grisly over-the-top scene, it's quite a shocker and it doesn't quit end there, it goes even further!
Buttgereit's Nekromantik films are essentially morbid love stories and the love story in Nekromantik 2 is amped up quite a bit but so too is the gore, though maybe not quite as morbid as the first, that three-way in the first film is hard to top. This time out there's much more of an art house aesthetic to the film too, with long languid shots and more creative shot composition, with a score that definitely accentuates the artier side of shock cinema. Anchoring the film is the very believable performance from Monika M. that is both tender and disturbing, she brings the character to life onscreen with minimal dialogue and a brave performance, if you consider simulated sex with a cadaver prop brave, some might just call it nuts.
The gore this time out does not disappoint, from the slime-covered, green marbled skin of Rob's cadaver to the brutal decapitation at the end this one will have your gag reflex working overtime when it's not tugging at your warped little heart strings you sickies. A much better made film than the first with some nice moments of black humor throughout that make the moments of gore just that much more disturbing, a pretty interesting slice of shock cinema and not for the fain of heart.
Audio/Video: Again, this version of Nekromantik 2 on the box set features the same uncut and uncensored HD transfer as the standalone Blu-ray from Cult Epics. It is framed in the original full frame aspect ratio is has a lot of grain as you might expect from 16mm but there's a surprising level of clarity and detail highlighting all the gruesome sights you crave to see, quite a bit more enjoyable than the first film on a visual level.
You have the choice of three German language audio options, Dolby Digital Mono, Stereo and a 5.1 Surround mix, as with the first film the score is strangely gorgeous and drives the film quite a bit, without this score the film would be measurably less interesting in my opinion, it's a perfect marriage.Optional English subtitles are provided.
Onto the extras we begin with a a brand-new introduction by director Jorge Buttgereit whom speaks about the film being banned and confiscated in Germany for many years. Then onto a 27-minute making of featurette narrated by Buttgereit in English with some fascinating behind-the-scenes video of the making of the corpses in the film including how they achieved the grisly finale, all of this accompanied by score from the film.
The audio commentary by Jorg Buttgerei, co-author Franz Rodenkirchen, and actors Monika M. and Mark Reeder is conducted in English and quite a good listen but might be hard to decipher with the thick accents, it's a fun listen with some good recollection of making the film. Also included are a short film by Buttgereit, a music video he directed, an isolated motion picture soundtrack, a live version of the soundtrack, trailers for five Buttgereit films, outtakes, and a still gallery.
Special Features:
- New Director’s Approved HD transfer (taken from the original 16mm negative)
- New Introduction by Jorg Buttgereit (2014) (2 Mins)
- Audio Commentary by Jorg Buttgerei, co-author Franz Rodenkirchen, and actors Monika M. and Mark Reeder
- The Making of Nekromantik 2 (27 Mins)
- Still Photo Gallery (13 Mins)
- Outtakes (11 Mins)
- Trailer: Nekromantik (2 Mins), Nekromantik 2 (1 Min), Todesking ( 2 Mins), Schramm (2 Mins), Hot Love (1 Min)
- Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (57 Mins)
- Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (2011) Live (47 Mins)
- 20th Anniversary Live Concert performed by Monika M. and Friends - Video (2011) (12 Mins)
- Short film A Moment of Silence At the Grave of Ed Gein,
- Short film by Jorg Buttgereit (2012) (2 Mins)
- Half Girl – Lemmy, I’m A Feminist, Music video by Jorg Buttgereit (2014) (3 Mins)
One of the most warped love stories of all time presented in satisfying and grisly HD from Cult Epics with a sweet transfer, decent sound and packed with neat extras. This is a high recommend for fans of shock cinema who don't mind a somewhat touching love story with some arthouse pretensions.
DER TODESKING (1990)
Label: Cult Epics
Region Code: A
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 76 Minutes
Audio: German Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1 with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Fulsscreen (1.33:1)
Director: Jørg Buttgereit
Cast: Bela B., Hermann Kopp, Heinrich Ebber, Michael Krause, Eva-Maria Kurz, Angelika Hoch, Nicholas Petche, Susanne Betz, Mark Reeder, Hille Saul, Ades Zabel, Jörg Buttgereit
Buttgereit's follow-up to Nekromantik is a series of seven vignettes that are all driven my the theme of death and suicide, which probably won't come as a surprise fort anyone familiar with the Nekromantik movies, the smell of death was strong on both. This time out however there's far less emphasis on the gore as we are treated to seven entries, each happening on a different day of the week. The anthology of death is framed by both the drawing of the "Death King" figure by a young girl which both open and close the story, plus the interstitial scene of a decomposing corpse.
Each short vignette is a tiny slice of arthouse macabre, in the first story taking place on Monday a young man comes home and writes a suicide note before downing a handful of drugs and drowning himself. On Tuesday a young man returns home from the VHS rental shop with a naziploitation film, his girlfriend comes home and starts to argue with him, he takes pistol and blows her brains against the wall. This one has a nice movie-within-a-movie-within-a-movie framing that I enjoyed, and the naziploitation movie is another Buttgereit creation with a gristly castration scene which is by several measures the most grotesque scene in the film aside from the transitional decomposition scenes.
Come Wednesday a man and a woman are seated on a park bench having a discussion about his miserable life and the death of his lover at his hands, the segment was brief and didn't do much for me. On Thursday we have a haunting entry bereft of any onscreen characters, instead we have long tracking shots of a notorious bridge in Germany, as the camera glides over it from multiple angles the names and occupation of various suicides who leaped to their deaths from it appear onscreen, it's an affecting piece of minimalism.
The weekend arrives with Friday as a lonely woman eats chocolate in her apartment, she occasionally spies the young lovers across the way through her window as they are wrapped up in each others arms. When she receives a chain letter at her door encouraging her to kill herself things take a turn for the worse for someone, this one takes an unexpected detour and doesn't go quite where you might expect, we are also treated to a strange dream from an encounter during the woman's youth.
Saturday brings a young woman busy in her apartment strapping a camera rig to her body before attending a rock concert where she goes on a murderous shooting spree, for some reason this one brought to mind the unfortunate murder of Pantera's Dimebag Darrell which added a bit more weight to it. The week of death ends with a troubled young man alone in his apartment, he lays in bed crying for reasons unknown. He crawls along the floor to a nearby wall where he smashes his head repeatedly against the hard surface, screaming a series of anguished cries before succumbing to the head trauma he has inflicted upon himself, it's a chilling entry and I got the feeling he was not quite right in the head, there's an unsettling realism about it.
While the anthology of death lacks the visceral punch of Nekromantik carries with it a haunting and heavy weight, and again it falls into the arthouse horror category of Nekromantik while the results are a bit uneven it is unsettling across the board, infused with confusion and sadness, and it definitely strikes a chord that stays with you for a while.
Cult Epics have been doing a fantastic job with the Jorge Buttgereit releases, presenting Der Todesking on uncut on DVD/BD for the first time with a new HD master struck from the original 16mm negative. Having never watched the VHS I can only surmise that this is quite a uptick in A/V quality with some nice heavy grain and clarity. The German language score comes by way of both a Dolby Digital Stereo 2.0 and a more immersive Surround Sound 5.1 option with optional English subtitles. The mix is solid and well-balanced but not that notable, a lossless audio option would have been appreciated but considering the low-budget nature of the movie I think the Dolby Digital options are suitable.
Onto the extras we have a new Introduction by Jorg Buttgereit plus an audio commentary by Jorg Buttgereit and co-author Franz Rodenkirchen. A 15-minute making of documentary that goes into the making of the movie and creating the shots and special effects used in the making of the film, including the castration scene and the decomposing corpse seen throughout.
Also included on the disc is the documentary Corpse Fucking Art which goes into the making of Nekromantik, Nekromantik 2 and Der Todesking, plus a collection of Buttgereit trailers, a still gallery and the option to listen to the complete score for the film.
Special Features:
- New Director’s Approved HD transfer (taken from the original 16mm negative)
- New Introduction by Jorg Buttgereit (2015) (1 Mins)
- Audio Commentary by Jorg Buttgereit and co-author Franz Rodenkirchen
- The Making of Der Todesking (15 Mins)
- Still Photo Gallery (13 Mins)
- Jorg Buttgereit HD Trailers: Nekromantik (2 Mins), Nekromantic 2 (2 Mins), Der Todesking (2 Mins), Schramm (2 Mins), Hot Love (1 Mins), Corpse Fucking Art (1 Mins), Angst (3 Mins)
- Corpse Fucking Art (Documentary) (58 Mins) HD
- Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (28 Mins)
Der Todesking (1990) (aka The Death King) is a haunting meditation on death and a pretty compelling watch for fans of a Jorge Buttgereit's certain type of macabre cinema, while not quite as grotesque or shocking as Nekromantik this is still not for everyone, but it's certainly a interesting slice of arthouse depression. Coming in between Nekromantik and Nekromantik 2 you can see here the advancements Buttgereit was making in form and technique that he applied to the superior Nekromantik 2.
SCHRAMM (1993)
Label: Cult Epics
Region Code: A
Duration: 65 Minutes
Video: 1080p HD Full Screen (1.33:1)
Audio: German DTS-HD MA 5.1 Surround, Dolby Digital 2.0 with Optional English Subtitles
Director: Jørg Buttgereit
Cast: Florian Koemer von Gustorf, Monika M.
Synopsis: The story of a deranged serial killer from the director of Nekromantik. Lothar Schramm (Florian Koemer von Gustorf) is dying, face down in a pool of his own blood. Behind his closed eyes, fractured memories repeat themselves. He runs by the sea. He lusts after the whore (Nekromantik 2's Monika M.) across the hall. He staggers through life uncertainly. He kills. Schramm is the story of the notorious Lipstick Killer Lothar Schramm's last days on earth. Revealed in a series of tightly constructed flashbacks, the film offers an unflinching look into the mind of a serial killer. Uncompromising in its depictions of violence and perversion, Schramm is a poetic masterpiece of horror guaranteed to make you squirm.
The last movie on this depraved box set is also the last movie directed by Jørg Buttgereit back in 1993, a demented tale of a lonely guy named Lothar Schramm, played actor Florian Koemer. Schramm is a taxi driver by trade and a depraved killer of women by desire. The media has dubbed Schramm the "lipstick killer", as he poses his victims in the nude and applies red lipstick to their lips. He is is a rather sad sort of nobody, the kind of anonymous guy who falls for the hooker Marianna (Monika M.) who lives next door. Through the paper thin walls he can hear her nightly fornication with customers, all the while he fucks a sad and rather weird inflatable sex toy to the sounds of her screwing, which is already very said, but the scene of him washing out his sex toy in the tub is even more so.
Schramm is a bit demented in the head and often fantasizes and hallucinates all sort of wicked things, while visiting the dentist he hallucinates that the tooth doc surgically removes his eyeball, he also has a recurring of one of his his legs being amputated ...and then there's the nightmarish hairy and toothed vagina.
The movie is Buttgereit's criticism of mainstream cinema's fascination with serial killers, hos story is a non-linear and gruesome sort of movie, but in my opinion not one of his more depraved movies, it would be hard to top some of the depraved visuals from Nekromantik and Nekromantik 2, which are still stomach churning, definitely a pair of movies that will get under your skin. Schramm also get under your skin but for different reasons. Koemer is sort of a blank canvas as a character, his portrayal is cold and aloof, his deeds are diabolical and reprehensible, but his demeanor is not, which is all the more scarier, coming across as just a sad sort of person who is fucked in the head and controlled by compulsion.
I love the way the movie begins, with Schramm painting his flat atop a latter, white-washing the torrents of blood which he has unleashed after a recent murder. He falls from the ladder, white paint spills across the floor, his blood sprays across the white paint. As he lays with his life ebbing from his body there is a knock at the door, from here we are taken through a non-linear narrative and we learn what has transpired the previous few days, it has a nice flow about it. The visuals are very striking, this is by several measures Buttgereit's most accomplished film with good use of the camera with some nice movement and composition. The special effects work is also quite good, the murder of two young Christ-loving born agains who come knocking at his door, unaware of the horrors that await them inside, is nicely staged and well executed. A notable scenes of Schramm working out in his flat wearing bloodstained underwear shows a lot of creativity with the camera, too. The score by Max Muller and Gundula Schmitz is also pretty great, those familiar with the exceptional trailer for the movie will know the song "Lothar's Leibesubung", which is a haunting a pulsing piece of music.
Audio/Video: Cult Epics once again to a wonderful job bringing Buttgereit's movie to Blu-ray, sourced from original 16mm negative, grain looks natural and abundant, the colors are vivid and there's a good amount of fine detail to enjoy. We have two audio options, the German Dolby Digital 2.0 or a lossless German DTS-HD MA 5.1 Surround, both sound great, with the dialogue and hypnotic score coming through strong and clean, optional English subtitles are included.
Onto the extras we have a new introduction for the movie from Buttgereit plus a thirty-six minute making of doc with actor Florian Koemer von Gustorf who walks us through what it was like making the movie at the time. There are also two commentary tracks, one with Jorg Buttgereit and writer Franz Rodenkirchen, and a second with actors Florian Koemer von Gustorf and Monika M.. Cult e\Epics have also included three of Buttgereit's short movies, Horror Heaven (23 Mins) with an optional audio commentary by Jorg Buttgereit, Blutige Exzesse im Fuhrerbunker (8 Mins) and Mein Papi (7 Mins).
Additionally Cult Epics have stuffed this release to the max with two audio CDs containing the complete original motion picture soundtrack for each movie, which is pretty awesome considering how damn expensive these can be to purchase these days, these come housed inside separate cardboard slipcases. There's also a slipcase for the oversized Blu-ray keep case, which aside from housing the four Blu-ray discs also protects nifty 40-page perfect-bind booklet with an introduction by Nico B. of Cult Epics and interviews with Buttgereit, a filmography, behind-the-scenes pics, and information about each of the short movies on the set.
Special Features:
- New Director's Approved HD Transfer from the original 16mm negative
- Exclusive introduction by Jorg Buttgereit (1 Min) HD
- Audio Commentary by Jorg Buttgereit and writer Franz Rodenkirchen
- Audio Commentary by actors Florian Koemer von Gustorf and Monika M.
- The Making Of Schramm (36 Mins) HD
- Still Photo Gallery (6 Mins) HD
- JB HD Trailers: Nekromantik (2 Mins) HD, Nekromantik 2 (1 Min) HD, Der Todesking (2 Mins) HD, Schramm (2 Mins) HD
- Short Film Horror Heaven (23 Mins) HD with optional audio commentary by Jorg Buttgereit
- Short Film Blutige Exzesse im Fuhrerbunker (Bloody Excess In The Leaders Bunker) (8 Mins) HD
- Short Film Mein Papi (My Father) (7 Mins)
- Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (54 Mins)
- New DTS-HD MA 5.1 Surround Sound Mix
- Exclusive CD Soundtrack of Neromantik & Der Todesking (30 songs, 78 Minutes)
- Exclusive CD 2 Soundtrack of Nekromantik 2 & Schramm (37 Songs, 79 Minsutes)
- BD Exclusive 40-page perfect-bind booklet with Interviews and Exclusive Photos
- BD Exclusive new art design by Silver Ferox
The Sex Murder Art Blu-ray Box set is a must-own for hardcore Jørg Buttgereit fans who crave his demented and depraved version of lo-fi nightmare cinema, who maybe do not already own Neklromantik, Nekromantik 2, and Der Todeskins on stand alone Blu-ray from Cult Epics. Say what you will about his movies the director had a unique voice and vision, and this box set is one of the year's best releases. Though I enjoy it I would warn you that this it is not for the casual movie fan, while I'd love to think this will be this Christmas season's preferred stocking stuffer that will certainly not be the case, but the world would be a lot cooler if it was. For those who already own the other Buttgereir Blu-rays from Cult Epics Schramm is also available as a stand alone release, but considering that this set includes the CD soundtracks for all four movies I would give this limited edition box set some serious consideration.
However, on this particular night they call the one guy who just happened to have murdered his wife in the shower Psycho style and buried her in the woods. The man is played by John Ireland and he believes that the young woman on the phone has seen something she shouldn't have, but in an era before called ID they would have gotten away with if not for their teen hormones. After hanging up the girls begin to fantasize about how good-looking Steve sounded on the phone, and their curiosity gets the better of them and they make a trip to home to get an eyeful of the murdering hunk. 
Audio/Video: I Saw What You Did arrives on Blu-ray from Scream Factory with a new 2016 HD transfer framed in 1.78 widescreen, the black and white cinematography is crisp with some great contrast levels, the black are deep and the gray scale and white look just fine. The print used for the transfer shows some minor grit and debris from time to time and doesn't appear to have had much clean-up applied to it, which I don't mind. The English DTS-HD MA 2.0 Mono sounds just fine, with dialogue coming through clean and crisp, including the somewhat aloof but suspenseful score from Van Alexander. Extras on the disc include a gallery of stills and publicity materials for the movie,plus two trailers for the movie, on featuring William Castle doing what he did best, hocking his b-movie wares to the masses. 
