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Necronos: Tower of Doom
Released by: Troma
Released on: March 25, 2014
Director: Marc Rohnstock
Cast: Thomas Sender, Manoush, Timo Fuchs
Year: 2010
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The Movie
Following his debut and sophomore splatterfests Dungeon of Horror (2005) and Graveyard of the Living Dead (2008), writer/director Marc Rohnstock has been steadily building his reputation as the heir apparent to fellow German goremeister Andrew Schnaas (Violent Shit I-III, Nikos the Impaler). Fans of Schnaas' gore-obsessed, micro-budget epics will want to check out Rohnstock and his crew at Infernal Films latest feature, Necronos: Tower of Doom, because beyond a shadow of a doubt this is the most extreme and depraved movie that the German gore scene has produced to date.
Necronos: Tower of Doom opens with a prologue in which we are told that the Satanic wizard Necronos (Thomas Sender) is gathering corpses for his army of the dead and trying to use the blood of a virgin witch to make his army invincible. The only problems are that his witch turned out to be not a virgin, and before he can finish gathering his corpse army, Necronos' tower is invaded by a group of knights in service of the local King. The wizard is captured, beheaded by the King, and then his corpse is butchered by the King's guard. After accumulating his power in Hell for several centuries, Necronos returns to Earth. Now aided by the blood demon Goran, Necronos continues his evil quest to add new corpses to his undead army, build a demon berzerker out of human remains, and find a virgin witch whose blood will make his army invincible.
This sums up the basic plot of Necronos: Tower of Doom, but it doesn't even begin to approximate the experience of actually watching the movie, which is like seeing a Cannibal Corpse album cover come to life before your eyes (and even that reference is probably too mainstream for a cult German gore film like this). Even before the opening credits roll, the wizard tortures his victims and drinks their blood as naked women chained up in his tower convulse and bleed from their eyes as they puke on themselves. So yes, Necronos is seriously fucking Metal, and it's completely unironic and humorless about how Metal it is. If Necronos: Tower of Doom were a Norwegian black metal band, it would definitely burn down your local church.
The plot only serves to set up the next victims for Goran and Necronos, and the rest of the movie transitions from one murder set piece to the next. New characters are introduced, and then killed. A few of these victims get some screen time prior to their murder and mutilation, particularly two sisters- one of whom might be the witch that Necronos needs to complete his spell- but neither of them live long enough to count as actual protagonists. Despite the small roles from each of the victims of Necronos and his minions, the performances from the cast are generally quite good. Almost everyone involved with the film is a veteran of the German gore scene, and it shows in the way the cast handles the material seriously and without irony.
A lot of underground gore films claim that they feature non-stop death and dismemberment, but Necronos: Tower of Doom is exactly that while having just enough plot to make it more than a faux snuff film like August Underground or the Guinea Pig series. This is one of the rare extreme gorefests that really lives up to the boast on its box art, which (at least on my copy) states that Necronos “Makes Cannibal Holocaust look like Bambi!†The only thing that Bambi and Cannibal Holocaust have that Necronos: Tower of Doom doesn't is animal death (animated or otherwise).
The Cannibal Holocaust reference on the DVD cover isn't just a canny bit of marketing by Troma either. There is an extremely disturbing scene about halfway through the movie that recreates the infamous impalement sequence from Cannibal Holocaust. Allegedly, the filmmakers hired German porn star Luna B. to film the scene because no other actresses were willing to be filmed nude and in that context, and it's easy to see why. Necronos actually exceeds the gross-out factor of the infamous Cannibal Holocaust scene by having the camera zoom in on the blood gushing out of Luna's vagina after it's been violated by a wooden stake. And just when you think the movie has gone as far as it possibly can with ultra graphic vaginal impalement, Necronos: Tower of Doom goes one step further with a brutal forced abortion scene that is very graphic and tough to stomach. Overall, there is a very nasty, misogynistic edge to all of the violence directed at women in the movie (all of whom are described as either witches or whores).
At 127 minutes, Necronos: Tower of Doom is a lengthy epic of German splatter moviemaking- and likely all but the most hardcore gorehounds will be fatigued by its running time and the mind-numbing excess of its murder sequences. The gore effects are incredibly well realized given the small budget of the movie, and the borderline shot-on-video look of the movie makes the gore appear even more realistic in camera. Fans of German gore films, especially the Violent Shit Trilogy, are going to love what Necronos: Tower of Doom delivers and will probably disregard any criticisms lobbied against it, but more casual horror fans or those who aren't already immersed in the German gore scene might want to consider this: watching Necronos: Tower of Doom is often like being tuned into the pirate TV signal of Videodrome, only it's far more graphic and violent towards women than even Cronenberg could probably stomach.
Audio/Video/Extras
Necronos: Tower of Doom is presented on DVD in 4:3 Fullscreen. It appears to have been shot in HD as there is a good amount of detail in the picture, but it clearly looks like it was shot on a high-end camcorder or a prosumer digital camera. Necronos looks better than most shot-on-video horror films, but you wouldn't mistake it for being shot on film.
The only audio option on Necronos: Tower of Doom is a Dolby Digital Stereo 2.0. Given the low budget nature of the movie, the 2.0, stereo track sounded pretty good. The music is very appropriate for the brooding, Gothic nature of the movie. The zombies and in demons in the movie all sound like their voices were processed through the same voice filter as the Deadites from the original Evil Dead. It's a cool effect and works in the context of the film. The only language option is German with English subtitles. During the text crawl in the prologue, the white subtitles often blended in with the German text, but they were easy to read throughout the rest of the movie.
Extras for on this DVD include a Teaser Trailer, a full Trailer, and a Behind the Scenes Slideshow of production stills. As this is a Troma release, you also get a full set of Tromatic Extras, including trailers for Father's Day, Mr. Bricks, The Taint, The Toxic Avenger and Return to Nuke 'Em High Vol. 1. Also featured is the Radiation March, and a feature starring writer/director James Gunn called How the Director Sells His Own Damn Movie.
The Final Word
Director Marc Rohnstock set out to make Necronos: Tower of Doom one of the most violent and depraved gore films to come out of the German market, and in that regard he and his crew at Infernal Films were successful. This movie is exceedingly more over-the-top and extreme than most of the gore films that that region has produced to date, and Rohnstock's contemporaries (many of whom appear in this film) will have to push the envelope even further to top the brutal and grim excesses of Necronos: Tower of Doom.
