I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

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.

Der Todesking (1990) ** 1/2 (out of 4) The "story" of this Jorg Buttgereit film is pretty simple. We get seven different tales all taking place on a different day of the week. All seven stories deal with people who commit suicide.DER TODESKING was made by the director right after his notorious NEKROMANTIK and it seems that a lot of people call this film here his masterpiece but I'd argue that it's not nearly as good as the film that came before it. With that said, not too many filmmakers would make an entire movie based around suicide since, obviously, the story isn't going to go over well with the masses but it probably wouldn't go over too well even inside the horror community.I must say that I was really letdown by this film. I had heard and read so many great things about it but I must say that I didn't find there to be anything overly great here. The film does manage to have a certain dark atmosphere that really works to its favor and the director also throws in some gore. The problem I had with the film is that none of the seven stories really struck me as being anything overly interesting. The direction was great and the atmosphere was there but there just wasn't anything great about the stories.

This film is brought to you by the controversial German director, Jörg Buttgereit. I had a difficult time understanding the premise to its maximum potential – but from what I've gathered, for each day of the week, a short tale is told with the theme of death or suicide present in each one. It makes reference to a religious chain letter in circulation from a group calling themselves "The Brotherhood of the 7th Day." Also, the reoccurring scene of a decomposing corpse against a black back drop is shown with the use of classical music in the background. "Life is an illusion and becomes ridiculous and meaningless once we face it. The one security life has to offer is DEATH."This piece was constructed with an obvious existential nihilistic approach. Life is treated meaninglessly and the idea of suicide is likened to vengeance. Each person has control over their destiny and this enables them to become "The King of Death." This concept is not without interest, but Buttgereit's delivery was lackluster. Unlike his previous film, Nekromantik, the abstract elements present in this film are deep – I'm not sure I've fully grasped what the director was trying to convey. Certain scenes are splashed together and inconsistent. I partially blame the uncut copy I viewed for its poor use of subtitles – if I had a more coherent version, it surely would have been easier for me to piece together the meaning of certain segments. If I was to accurately judge this movie I would say that it's mostly boring and unprovocative. Buttgereit doesn't spell the message of his film out to the audience, and whatever feeling you're left with after watching Der Todesking is the right one. There are no definitive answers.

Only a handful of horror directors are true craftsmen when it comes to constructing fear out of celluloid, and Jorg Buttgereit is one of them. "Der Todesking" is an early, virtually plot less effort from the German auteur that follows a week in the life of a deadly chain letter. The film possesses a stream-of-consciousness style which strings together a series of random, nightmarish images (the sped-up decomposition of a corpse; castration; suicide) that rely on a coldly realistic tone to deliver chills. Additionally, the musical score is as hauntingly effective as anything Goblin composed for Dario Argento. Be warned, however--depending on your mood, "Der Todesking" might plunge you into a deep depression.