1980s-2000s: To Splatter or Not to Splatter

As the New German Cinema movement leveled off, a newer movement built upon the artistic freedom of Herzog and company, bringing an increasingly dark and twisted vision to the big screen. In 1980, Ulli Lommel, a protégé of New German Cinema representative Rainer Werner Fassbinder, directed The Boogeyman, a supernatural tale of revenge from beyond the grave whose violent imagery led it to be banned in the United Kingdom as part of that nation's "Video Nasties" listing.

Nevertheless, it became a surprise international hit and signaled a new, darker, less artistic direction for German cinema.

Following Lommel's lead, by the mid-'80s, German filmmakers finally felt ready to jump back into the horror genre, and it was seemingly with pent-up aggression that a group of underground directors dove headlong into the fray with hyper-violent "splatter" films.

Aided by the advent of affordable home video technology, Andreas Schnaas recorded Violent Shit on a shoestring budget over the course of a few days in 1987. The movie, which consisted of graphic violence and sexual mutilation, was banned in Germany but became a cult hit in part because its status as the country's first direct-to-video film allowed for ease of dissemination internationally.

At the same time, Jorg Buttgereit made the even more controversial Nekromantik, which revolved around necrophilia and included graphic murder, masturbation, self-mutilation, suicide and animal cruelty. Follow-ups Nekromantik 2 (1991) and Schramm (1993) similarly melded shocking violence with sexual dysfunction.

Other directors followed in Schnaas and Buttgereit's bloody footsteps. Olaf Ittenbach contributed low-brow splatter-fests like Premutos (1997), Legion of the Dead (2001), The Haunting of Rebecca Verlaine (2003) and House of Blood (2006). Timo Rose chipped in with Barricade (2007) and Fearmakers (2008), while Wolfgang Buld has focused on sexually-charged English-language British productions like Angst (2003), Twisted Sisters (2006) and The Chambermaid (2004).

The most famous graduate of this era of German filmmaking, however, is Uwe Boll. Unlike his contemporaries in the underground German cinema scene, Boll has gone on to direct big-budget mainstream horror films like House of the Dead (2003), Alone in the Dark (2005) and BloodRayne (2005).

One thing Boll continues to share with his former cohorts, however, is critical scorn. In fact, of the "100 Most Significant German Films" compiled by German-Films.de, only seven were made in 1980 or later, and none of those fall into the horror genre. That said, not all of the German underground's work is mindless violence. Buttgereit's films can be seen as insightful journeys into psychosis, and Christoph Schlingensief's 1990 film The German Chainsaw Massacre, in which a group of West Germans slaughter newly-reunited East Germans, is tongue-in-cheek commentary on the cultural mélange that occurred following the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Since the extreme return of German horror movies in the '80s, the country's genre output has spread into larger budget, more mainstream, American-styled fare, from slashers like Flashback (2000) and The Pool (2001) to thrillers like Anatomy (2000) and Antibodies (2007) to campy horror-comedies like Night of the Living Dorks (2004) and Killer Condom (1996) -- all relatively well-received within horror circles the world over.

Notable German Horror Movies:

• The Student of Prague (1913)
• Homunculus (1916)
• Nachte des Grauens (1916)
• The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
• The Golem: or How He Came into the World (1920)
• Destiny (1921)
• Nosferatu (1922)
• The Hands of Orlac (1924)
• Waxworks (1924)
• Alraune (1928)
• M (1931)
• Vampyr (1932)
• The Fellowship of the Frog (1959)
• The Head (1959)
• Horrors of Spider Island (1960)
• Nosferatu (1978)
• Nekromantik (1987)
• Violent Shit (1987)
• The German Chainsaw Massacre (1990)
• Premutos (1997)
• Anatomy (2000)
• Night of the Living Dorks (2004)
• Alone in the Dark (2005)
• Antibodies (2007)