Jan Reiff went on to be a director of photography on movies like Iron Doors and Slave, but before that he made this shot on video tale of Ludwig Herrmann, who killed his wife Elizabeth — and her lover — when he caught them in bed together. Then he killed a witness who was completely innocent. And oh yeah, then they came back as zombies.
Translated as Requiem for the Devil, this feels like a German Fulci superfan made his own movie because, well, that’s exactly what it is. Those zombies put him through hell — razor blades in the spaghetti anyone? — but Ludwig isn’t going down easy.
That said, he also kills his wife in a way that will get him on one one my many Letterboxd lists: he throws a hairdryer into the bathtub while she’s in it. Then he shoots her lover and runs him over to be totally sure, then because that witness saw everything, he remembers Italy and jabs out one of his eyeballs.
I mean, this has a lot going for it, beyond the gore, like an eighty minute running time and an ending that has, well alright it’s mostly the gore because the wife gets her face ripped clean off before quite literally facefucking our protagonist with a drill and then finger banging the hole left behind because, you know, why not? I’ll bet Ludwig wished he just kept playing his Gameboy and never looked around to see if he was being cucked. I mean, there are some questions you don’t want the answers to.
You can watch this on YouTube thanks to altohippiegabber.
