Aftermath is #2 on THE LIST

Just about everybody has something to say about Aftermath, the 2nd sickest movie of all time on the list - a list I keep bringing up. This leaves only one movie on the list completely unexplored for me.

Well I got a bootleg tape of Aftermath, probably put together before the DVD came out. It's got the other two shorts that the DVD has on it, though Genesis, which comes from another source, is so grainy it is unwatchable. There are some video extras, like the making of Aftermath, which I'm sure is on the DVD, and a 'debate' between Nacho Cerdà and the director of Nekromantik. I watched it in fast forward, so can't say what they were talking about. I'm pretty sure you can get that on the DVD too. The tape has got the dirty cover (DVD has a reversible cover - clean side shown here) which has the full frontal male nudity courtesy of a male model who is the real star of this picture, playing a corpse.

Now that I look online, I see that my tape's cover is a color copy of the original vhs cover, with the "Waken Prods" logos removed and some new text, like "special edition" photoshopped badly onto the front and side. I'm not complaining, it cost me about 3 bucks at the most.

What impressed me about Aftermath is that it is eleven years old and looks like it could have been made today. It is beautifully shot and top notch. You'd expect a short like this to be cheaply made. It's not. Personally I think that the female prosthetic corpse is a little less realistic that the male prosthetic corpse, though I am not so familiar with what bodies that have gone through rigamortis really look like.

Here is a complaint that perhaps says more about me than it does the movie. Warning: I am about to get vulgar. After the mortician stabs the vagina 20 or so times, you would expect the vagina to be damaged beyond recognition, but when it is next shown, it looks the same as it did initially. Ok, listen, I know that the film makers paid attention to detail and that is why this irks me. During the making-of we are told how blood was digitally filled-in to a drain in one shot to preserve continuity.

Are these the best corpses on film ever? Probably not.

Nacho Cerdà is very likable in the documentary. He says he was inspired to make this film after watching a real life autopsy in person, and this autopsy admittedly disturbed him deeply. He claims that what he saw was more horrific than what he put in his film.

Chas Balun, famous horror magazine editor and artist (plus the 1st American distributor of the Guinea Pig movies!) has called Aftermath 'pornographic'. I disagree on the grounds that their is simply no insertion shown. Also, this is art cinema, there is no dialogue, the camera tells the story.

Some have though that Nacho Cerdà made the alien footage in the Fox special Alien Autopsy: (Fact or Fiction?) and in fact he appears on the tv special as a horror film maker. According to this link, Olaf Ittenbach, brought the world the dead alien that could bleed like a real corpse. You know, a lot of reviewers talk about how they wish they could have "these ninety minutes of my life back" after watching a movie that blew. Well, if there were any 60 minutes I wish I could have back, it would be the hour it took to watch Alien Autopsy. What's more, I swear I watched a follow up special where they admitted it was fake? Does anyone else remember this?