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Director: Jorg Buttgereit
Screenplay: Jorg Buttgereit
Cast: Jörg Buttgereit, Norbert
Hähnel, Marion Koob-Liebing, Patricia Leipold, Bernd Daktari Lorenz
Synopsis: A man falls in love with a woman, only for her to start a
romance with another man and break his heart to an irreparable degree.
Pregnant, the woman's child nine months later from this event will be a
personification of the scorned love at its most extreme.
The short film Buttgereit made before Nekromantik (1987), it does reflect the
enthusiasm of genre and horror film fans who would make their own films in
response to this passion. In the eighties this proved to be a mine for
directors who would develop cult reputations and even go to Hollywood - The Evil Dead (1981) for Sam Raimi and Bad Taste (1987) for Peter
Jackson perfect examples, whilst Nekromantik
for Buttgereit himself gave him
notoriety and a cult following to this day. The enthusiasm is enhanced in these
particular films, from this era, by the desire to improve in technical skill
and push what they could do in terms of ideas they could put onscreen, and
while Hot Love is less polished than
Nekromantik, it already establishes
a desire for invention not to mention Buttgereit's
far from conventional use of genre tropes by wrapping them around a drama. As Nekromantik is actually a black comedy drama about a man obsessed
with death, Hot Love is the
depiction of a relationship breaking down exaggerated to its gooiest point.
It starts as a sweet romantic
affair between two people, complimented by a montage of a relationship building
up you'd find in Hollywood films of the era and still today, only for an ominous
voice of a God-like force to speak in second person and reveal that the
relationship will be doomed. That Buttgereit
decided to make a short film like this, when the short he made a year before Horror Heaven was a compilation of
horror and kaiju film tributes that embraced their lo-fi effects, showed an
interesting side of Buttgereit wanting to bring potentially personal and idiosyncratic
material to his work. It immediately brings out a lot of virtue in Hot Love, as it plays out as a
melodrama for half its length, going as far as having the second boyfriend
admit to a doctor with awkwardness the child isn't his, only to switch tone
soon after in a graphic suicide. That it turns into a splatter film is not a
jarring change in tone; it's reminiscent of the films of the Kuchar Brothers and Jack Smith from the sixties and seventies, which were melodramatic
works that could suddenly surge into content from x-rated b-movies out of the
blue. The different is that in Hot Blood
you get something out of a Japanese body horror film from this era, a toy baby
spewing foam and someone getting stabbed with a broken bottle.
Technical Detail:
Part of its charm is the
improvisation that was used in lieu to obvious budget restrictions, such as the
decision to depict the birth of a child with the spread open bottom half of a
woman being made of paper-mache, a toy baby pushed between the fake legs with
what appears to be oat meal pasted onto it. This improvisation is as much the
reason why films of its ilk can be so entertaining. Also significant is the
music, which is a memorable part of Hot Love as a short. This as well would
continue on in the next Buttgereit project and is a huge virtue of Nekromantik.
Abstract Spectrum: Grotesque/Psychotronic
Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None
The one disappointment with Hot Love is that, unlike Nekromantik, it's pretty
straightforward in tone and couldn't be added to the Abstract List. The events
in the short escalate to an unconventional tone, especially when a grown man
grows from a place they shouldn't, covered in solid goo, and starts rampaging
about, but it isn't weird enough.
Personal Opinion:
To have access to Hot Love, on the UK Nekromantik Blu-Ray, is a good thing.
While it may seem unsubstantial compared to the later feature film, it wins you
over with its original slant on its subject and avoiding becoming predictable
or sloppy in its creation. It's a reminder of the joys of fan made films whilst
its moments of seriousness do catch you unexpectedly.
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