DVD Reviews

Below is the full text for Vince Bonavoglia's review of Schramm that appeared on the DVD Unleashed web site.

Schramm (Color, 1994) 65 min.
Barrel Entertainment
Directed by Jörg Buttgereit
Assistant Director: Franz Rodenkirchen
Produced by Manfred O. Jelinski
Written by Jörg Buttgereit and Franz Rodenkirchen
Cinematography by Manfred O. Jelinski
Original Music by Max Muller and Gundula Schmitz
Special Effects by Michael Romahn
Format: Full Frame (1.33:1)
Language(s): German
Supplementary Material: Audio Commentary by Jörg Buttgereit and Franz Rodenkirchen, Second Audio Commentary by Florian Koerner von Gustorf and Monika M., 35-Minute The Making of Schramm Featurette, Early Buttgereit Super 8 Shorts, Music Video, Image Gallery, Theatrical Trailer, Jörg Buttgereit Trailer Collection, Easter Egg, Liner Notes by Jörg Buttgereit and Biographer David Kerkes, Removable English Subtitles, Scene Access, Audio-Enhanced Animated Menus, Bloody Foreskin
Audio: Dolby Digital 2.0 / Dolby Digital Mono
Cast: Florian Koerner von Gustorf, Monika M., Franz Rodenkirchen, Anne Presting, Michael Romahn, Gerd Horvath, Micha Brendel, Carolina Harnisch, Volker Hauptyogel, Xaver Schwarzenberger, Eddi Zacharias
MSRP: $34.95

Lurking at the core of the dark creative impetus, past progressively shadowy stratum stimulating the psyches of such acerbic artistes as infamous illustrator, Joe Coleman; Throbbing Gristle/Psychic TV frontman and Coum Transmissions mastermind, Genesis P-Orridge; and Survival Research Laboratories' scrap metal savior, Mark Pauline (whose work predated the current Battlebots-inspired robotics craze by more than 20 years), lies the cancerous realm giving rise to the warped genius of German wunderkind, Jörg Buttgereit. For those lacking the patience to plow through the admittedly ponderous prose populating the preceding sentence, allow me to pillage the vernacular: Buttgereit is one badass nasty mofo of a filmmaker. While all of the aforementioned artists use varying degrees of sex and violence to mainline their respective messages, none, it can be argued, have approached their subjects with the seemingly contradictory candidness and cold detachment Buttgereit displays in Schramm, his most recent feature-length film. Cut from the same thematic cloth as Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Schramm easily outdistances John McNaughton's diabolical vision through the sheer power of its indescribably graphic imagery (the potency of Henry's knockout punch -- the bathroom sequence where Michael Rooker relieves Tom Towles of his head -- pales in comparison to Schramm's revelry of repugnant revelations) and the surgical precision with which Buttgereit dissects (often literally) his more-than-slightly disturbed main character.

Buttgereit's feel-good fable begins with the death of its polemic protagonist, Lothar Schramm (Florian Koerner von Gustorf ), sent spiraling to the floor while attempting to whitewash the results of a recent rampage from the walls of his bare apartment. Time flows in reverse (and eventually erodes entirely) as Buttgereit, like Jackson Pollock possessed, flings fleeting events and images leading up to the character's seemingly self-inflicted demise. After summarily slaughtering and defiling a pair of religious zealots (Carolina Harnisch and Micha Brendel), their naked bodies positioned in a plethora of pornographic positions for the pleasure of Lothar's Polaroid, the killer takes his long distance love affair with his prostitute neighbor, Marianne (Nekromantik 2's deadly damsel, Monika M.), to the next level, drugging her after a dinner date and photographing her stripped form for his future enjoyment. As Schramm steamrolls to its inevitable conclusion, the main character literally and symbolically disfigures himself in response to his psychosis. Donning a brace after imagining his leg has been shorn away while he slept, Schramm, in a sequence continuing Buttgereit's love/hate affair with the most maligned of male members (see the final moments of Nekromantik and Der Todesking's Tuesday episode for further examples) attempts to stem his sexual assaults by nailing his foreskin to a chair. Needless to say, it's a scene that will send most audience members, particularly those possessing similar attachments, scrambling for the remote. As if that weren't enough, Lothar's obvious problems with women, materializing in the form of a ravenous vagina monster, threaten to inflict even more damage to his dangly bits...

While many have charged Schramm, as well as the majority of the Buttgereit oeuvre, with being little more than a series of sensationalistic setpieces in search of a story -- admittedly, the sloppy stuff is the film's major selling point -- when one makes an effort to peer beneath film's puerile pellicle, the director's formidable skills become glaringly evident. Forever poised, due to his infatuation with the seedy side of the human condition, between schlock and genuine artifice, Buttgereit is one of the few filmmakers with the ability to pull even the most unwilling of viewers kicking and screaming into his malignant macrocosm. And what a magnificently-rendered realm it is, as evidenced by Barrel Entertainment's superb second DVD release, Schramm. Belying the film's 16 mm origins, Barrel's full frame presentation is remarkably sharp and colorful, with only an occasional smattering of grain. Though a far cry from Buttgereit, Lorenz, and Kopp's haunting compositions accompanying Nekromantik, Max Muller and Gundula Schmitz' suitably unsettling score is wonderfully fleshed out by a newly-remastered stereo soundtrack and, for purists, the film's original mono track. Like carrion careening through a putrefying corpse, Barrel's Schramm is teeming with extras. Along with trailers representing the feature, Der Todesking, Nekromantik 2, and a pair for Nekromantik, the disc includes a sprawling image gallery, highlighting the film's all-too-real special effects, shots of the recording of the commentary tracks, video box art, and images of Buttgereit introducing the film at the CineMuerte festival; a 35-minute documentary, rife with scandalous behind-the-scenes footage, detailing Schramm's creation; Die Neue Zeit, a music video, complete with mini-documentary, directed by Buttgereit for Mutter (a group which includes Florian Koerner von Gustorf on skins); a selection of the director's early works including Captain Berlin, a sophomoric superhero romp, and Mein Papi, an alternately tender and terrifying tribute to the filmmaker's father; and the Mutter Boxing short, during which Florian gets his head handed to him. The best is yet to come, however, as the loaded platter houses not one but two audio commentaries. While Buttgereit and his frequent partner-in-crime, Franz Rodenkirchen, do an adequate job of retaining the listener's interest, it is the second track, hosted by the lovely Monika M. and the Lipstick Killer himself, Florian Koerner von Gustorf, that proves to be the more entertaining and, due to the candidness with which they dig up Schramm's bones, valuable of the pair. Poke around the filmography screens for an Easter Egg unveiling the banned dossier on Buttgereit and his work created by Britain's Channel Four.

– Vince Bonavoglia