SCHRAMM

Directed by Jörg Buttgereit
Written by Jörg Buttgereit and Frank Rodenkirchen
Produced by Manfred O. Jelinski
Music by Gundula Schmitz and Max Muller
Cast: Florian Koerner Von Gustorf, Monika M, Micha Brendel & Carolina Harnisch

1994/65 mins/Color/Stereo
1.33:1/German/Germany/NTSC Region 1

Web site: www.barrel-entertainment.com

Review from the Barrel Entertainment DVD

Jörg Buttgereit last film, so far, is also his most stylish and gruesome. In a none linear way SCHRAMM tells the story of Lothar Schramm, the lipstick killer. This taxi driver lives one unusual life. He loves to photograph and to put red lipstick to his victims. He has a crush on a prostitute (Monika M.) living next to him and whenever she has a client at her place Lothar listen to them and then "fuck" a sex doll which only has a pussy and tits. He has some weird hallucinations about a vagina monster and a sadistic dentist. And when he has nothing else to do he likes to put nails through his dick!

In the wake of the serial killer sub genre of the early 90's, Buttgereit delivered the heaviest one. HENRY PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER and SILENCE OF THE LAMBS received public and critical acclaim but none of them can compare with the rawness and audacity of Buttgereit's work. What most amazed me is that with a budget so small they were able to pull out a nice looking film with some great visual moments, wild camera work, good story telling and believable characters.

Like their previous NEKROMANTIK DVD, Barrel Entertainment delivered another superb edition. SCHRAMM was filmed in 16mm back in 94 so it's normal that the film looks a little grainy and has some scratches and spots every now and then but it's nothing alarming. The film sure never looked that good. This new transfer was made of the original 16mm negative and was supervised by producer, Manfred O. Jelinski. Since the original audio track is in German we have the option of watching the film with newly done and easy to read English subtitles. The original mono audio track is available but the big surprise is that a new stereo track was done and it sounds quite good.

This disc is loaded with extras! First of all there's two commentary track. One by Jörg Buttgereit himself with co-writer Franz Rodenkirchen and the other is with actors Florian Koerner and Monika M.. In the first commentary track, Buttgereit and Rodenkirche goes into the details of productions, sometimes there's silences but it remains interesting. The commentary track with Florian and Monika has more feel to it, it's kinda strange to hear Florian doing so many jokes and sounding like a peaceful guy after watching him portraying the Lipstick killer. There's a pretty cool 35 minutes Making of SCHRAMM documentary in which we get to see pretty much how everything was done along with some interviews with the whole production team and cast. It sure looks like they had a great time doing the film even if the nature of it is so raw and ruthless.

The DVD also contains two short films from Buttgereit, CAPTAIN BERLIN and MEIN PAPI. These are some of his early shorts shot on Super 8. There's also a very poor videoclip for the band Mutter in which actor Florian Koerner plays drums. We can also see a gallery of over 100 stills in motion with the creepy soundtrack to SCHRAMM playing in the background, theatrical trailers for NEKROMANTIK, NEKROMANTIK 2, DER TODESKING and SCHRAMM.

The main menu has some animations and background music. The film is separated in 32 chapters (kinda unusual for a 65 minutes movie), it comes in a keep case along with a cool four pages booklet. This is another must own DVD from the folks at Barrel Entertainment.

Thanks to Barrel Entertainment

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Review by Kim Dubuisson. All Right Reserved. 2003. ©

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