An example of Dutch horror that, like many such films (TO PLAY OR TO DIE, TEN MONOLOGUES FROM THE LIVES OF THE SERIAL KILLERS), only lasts around an hour. NECROPHOBIA is notable primarily for its elaborate gore effects, but otherwise isn’t very good.
It opens appropriately, with Collette, a severely traumatized blonde, having a nightmare in which she finds herself at the bottom of an open grave. There a shadowy someone slowly turns her head to mush with a shovel.
Mark is a modest young man whose girlfriend Rebecca is run over by a truck one day, leaving him a freaked-out basket case plagued by nightmares and hallucinations of his beloved coming back to life. Rebecca’s corpse, meanwhile, is dug up by Collette, who takes it to a creepy environ decked out with hooks and chains.
Mark and Collette meet one day in the graveyard where Rebecca was interred, and against his better instincts Mark makes a date with her. Another woman, Martha, turns up at Mark’s house and warns him about Colette. Martha herself ends up in Collette’s sinister clutches, and, needless to add, doesn’t survive the night.
The date between Mark and Collette commences. Later the two have sex, during which Collette has visions of the trauma that so affected her all those years ago, which turns out to have involved a bout of especially rough sex. This is very bad news for Mark.
The film is reasonably well visualized, but the directors Edwin Visser and Frank van Geloven vastly overuse the synthesizer score, and foist a clumsily staged nighttime car chase and wholly gratuitous stalk and slash sequence upon us, not to mention a thoroughly unconvincing twist ending. The best things about the film are the old school special effects, pulled off with a good eye for spurting blood and ripped flesh. Those effects don’t make up for the many shortcomings, but they are strong enough to justify a viewing by undiscriminating gore hounds.
Vital Statistics
NECROPHOPIA
CD-ACE Interactive Publishing
Directors/Screenplay/Editing: Edwin Visser, Frank van Geloven
Producer: Cees Morsch, Ton van Mil
Cinematography: Frank van Geloven, Edwin Visser, August Swietkowiak
Cast: Martijn Oversteegen, Gerry Verhoeven, Rutger Weemhof, Grietje Besteman, Eric Maas, Janno Heck, Joop van Bijnen, Vincent Gerris