Exhumiert und Beschnitten (1999)

Exhumiert und Beschnitten (1999) - Germany

Directed by: Leif Lorenzen and Sönke Petersen

ABOUT THE FILM:

Exhumiert und Beschnitten is one of three amateur German "splatter" films made in the year 1999 by the colorfully-titled label, CUM Pictures. This label was run by two teenage metalhead filmmakers who were fixated on dark humor, gore, and very graphic and disgusting scat-centered toilet humor. The first film in their trilogy is a very loosely tied-together collection of shorts made over the past few months of the two filmmakers acting out various "funny" scenarios, including fighting giants, watching porn, eating their pet rabbits, taking a shit, killing each other, and a variety of trashy antics.

REVIEW:

...And I thought Kifferduell was bad. This amateur German roughie is an embarrassing wart on the face of underground horror.

There is very little to no structure to this thing at all. Each short will randomly kick in with no build-up or anything. That is, aside from overlong title card sequences with the name of each short crudely sketched onto toilet paper. Occasionally, these are decorated with gross-out gore/porn images stolen from the internet. The entire movie is nothing but two teenagers dicking around with a camera while the parents are away, as they play with real feces, pretend to eat their pet rabbits, and play with some of the shittiest gore this side of Der Henker. Fake blood seems to be made of either paint or watery ketchup, there are ping-pong balls for eyeballs, and semen is just water flung out of buckets.

This unholy pile is topped with a soundtrack consisting of low-quality, stolen grindcore/brown-metal tracks, and video quality so atrocious that the filmmakers had to have run the master tape through sewage.

I could forgive Exhumiert und Beschnitten being bad if it wasn't absolutely boring as hell. During each short, the camera will usually run the entire time; they rarely cut the shot or make any edits. I think this film could have definitely used some editing; It could have easily been 45 minutes long, considering how much dead air there is. There are many scenes where the two just walk around and do nothing, and any of their juvenile attempts at humor feel very drawn out and fall flat.

Ultimately, Exhumiert und Beschnitten is a tedious, boring and ugly 90 minutes to sit through, and I would advise against watching it if ever given the opportunity. This atrocity is proof that some amateur films deserve to remain hidden.

SIDE NOTE:

Interestingly enough, it seems as though German authorities actually wanted this to remain hidden. According to a Pastebin link, there is an excerpt featured from the now-defunct Gory News magazine claiming that the filmmakers were visited by the police after they obtained their three videos by mailorder. Among the other films were Permanentes Diarrhö und Hämmorhoiden, Anale Geburt and a film called Fötus Gulasch. Whereas the first three films listed were finished and distributed, Fötus Gulasch was only about 90% complete when the raw materials were seized and production was shut down, thus making it a lost film. Judging by the quality of their other works (or lack thereof), this could be a good thing. But at the same time, morbid curiosity is peaking my interests. In the link provided, the director claims that the film was better than their previous efforts, even in terms of splatter effects. I don't know if the film will ever be released, but if it does leak or get released, maybe I will check it out.

RELEASES:

-Exhumiert und Beschnitten was distributed by CUM Pictures on VHS and sold through advertisements in the Gory News magazine. However, due to the scarcity of the film, it is currently only available on bootleg DVDs.