I am initially underwhelmed by Der Todesking (The Death King). So we are presented with 7 stories, one for each day of the week. Every story is depicting suicide, with cuts of a slowly decaying corpse(made from pigs guts and strawberry pudding) in between. So what we basically get is an anti-suicide movie made on a shoe- string budget it does work quite well for what its trying to achieve with the budget they had. However, Its a bit of a hit and miss with some of the stories some of the scenes tend to drag on and one day which was Thursday was just shots of the bridge in Germany called the suicide bridge. The director himself said that its very hard to capture what he had in his head due to the budget restraints. We also have a sneaky homage to the Ilsa films which are banned in Germany and a nice shootout at a cinema. The decomposition of the corpse looks great and its nice to watch you'd almost think it was real. The same skeleton was used from necromantic and the scene was shot at 1 frame per hour. As for sound, they repeat a rather depressing song over and over but it doesn't really get annoying. check it out if you're a film student or interested in the themes presented here but i can't recommend it personally.

This film wishes so hard to be art, but it just doesn't have what it takes to get there. It is gruesome in an unpleasant way, and the gruesomeness may be intense enough to steer the naive viewer into thinking that there is something deep beneath all the gore. There is nothing. Nothing but the guarantee that it will irreversibly cut 80 minutes out of your precious life, should you endure all the way to the ending credits. Unfortunately, I did. I'm afraid there is no way that I can ever be reimbursed.It's not horror. Horror should scare you. This amateurish piece of clap-trap will just nauseate you.

German nut case Jörg Buttgereit apparently has fans - but I don't know why, and I'm Definitely not one of them! The only Buttgereit film I'd seen previously was Nekromantik and I hated every minute of it, but - shockingly - this film is worse! Der Todesking is pointless in the same way as Nekromantik, but it's a worse film because it's boring in a way that few movies have ever managed (it's not far off The Blair Witch Project, seriously). Some people say that this film is 'sick' and 'shocking', but it really isn't. The director may have been making a point about death, but only he knows what it is. How anyone could watch this film and be anything other than bored with it is completely beyond me. The film revolves around the theme of suicide, and follows the deaths of seven different people over the course of a week. Yes, that means we have a pointless and boring episode for Monday, a pointless and boring episode for Tuesday, a pointless and boring episode for Wednesday etc etc. This film manages to be even more boring than my average week! Der Todesking is apparently an 'art' film, although this would appear to be a reference to the way that not very much makes sense rather than a reference to the film bearing any resemblance to 'art'. Each segment of the film is meant to tell a separate story - but it doesn't! We just get a quick little sketch on suicide, and it only makes you wonder what the point is. The film feels like it should be deep, but there's a great big void where the intelligence should be and nothing there to fill it. Buttgereit uses a few evocative images; but I'm unlikely to remember any of them for more than a week or so because this film just isn't that memorable. There's a shot involving a decomposing man's body that features fairly often, but that gets old pretty quick and all you're left with is the rest of the film, which is unfortunate. If I were to struggle for good things to say about this crap, all I can think of is this; the title sounds cool. As I mentioned, Nekromantik is the only other film I've seen from this amateur director; I have copies of Schramm and Nekromantik 2, and now I'm really in no rush to watch either. Der Todesking is a dull film with no point and anyone that calls it 'art' is very much mistaken. Give it a miss.

"Der Todesking" is not exactly the type of film that makes you merry… Jörg Buttgereit's second cult monument in a row, which is actually a lot better than the infamous "Nekromantik", exists of seven short episodes – one for each day of the week – revolving on unrelated people's suicides. In between these already very disturbing episodes, Buttgereit inserts truly horrifying images of a severely decomposing male corpse. The episodes aren't all equally powerful but, as a wholesome, "Der Todesking" is ranked quite high on the list of all-time most depressing art-house films. Particularly the episodes on Wednesday, involving a man explaining his sexual frustrations to a total stranger in the park, and the one of Sunday, focusing on a younger man molesting himself to dead, are extremely intense and devastating to observe. The added value of this film, or any other shockumenary like it, is debatable and I'm not even sure whether or not Buttgereit had any type of message to communicate here. There's the vague mentioning of an eerie chain letter that encourages its readers to commit suicide but mostly we remain uninformed about these people's motivations to end their lives so dramatically. Entirely unlike I expected, "Der Todesking" isn't exploitative or repulsively graphic! On the contrary actually, I never could have hoped Buttgereit would be so subtle and thoughtful regarding the portrayal of pure human misery. The Thursday episode is a perfect example of this, as it stylishly shows different viewpoints of a famous German bridge while the names, ages and occupations of persons who jumped off appear on the screen. The production values are inescapably poor and the editing often lacks professionalism, but this isn't what really counts in this type of cinema. The subject matter is strong and forcing us to contemplate about the less cheerful – but also indispensable – aspects of life. GREAT use of tragic music, too!