It is known to be frequently controversial, banned in a number of countries, and has become a cult film over the years due to its transgressive subject matter (including necrophilia) and audacious imagery.

Their apartment is decorated with centerfolds featuring models, pictures of famed killers, and jars containing human parts, which are preserved in formaldehyde.

Excited, they both cut off part of a wooden chair leg, before sticking it onto the corpse's crotch and putting a condom over it, allowing Betty to use it as a makeshift phallus.

The next day, Robert is confronted at work by his co-workers, and ends up getting fired due to his habitual tardiness and the odour festering from the suit in his locker.

Robert quickly grabs the gravedigger's shovel and decapitates him with it before fleeing back to his apartment, where he commits suicide by stabbing himself in the stomach, whilst simulatenously ejaculating.

Buttgereit and co-writer Franz Rodenkirchen conceived the basic concept of the film while discussing the relationship between love, sex, and death.

[6] The original musical score for the film was composed by Hermann Kopp, Bernd Daktari Lorenz and John Boy Walton.

Created in 1930 by Franz Tschackert, it was a life-sized model of a male figure with transparent skin, making visible the skeleton and several internal organs.

[10] Linnie Blake finds it telling that the murderer of the young gardener is previously seen shooting at birds, and is so similar to characters from the Heimatfilms.

[11] The film includes several occasions of a dream sequence, such as Rob's visions of a woman in white in a rural landscape.

[12] The suicide scene is a depiction of extreme masochism, but it also concludes the story of the character's sexual dysfunction, existential crisis, and social isolation.

It was only the scandal over the sequel Nekromantik 2 (1991) which caused the German authorities to temporarily ban sales by mail order of the original film.

In 1992, the Australian Classification Board banned the film outright in Australia due to "graphic necrophilia content".

Norwegian black metal band Carpathian Forest covered the film's opening theme in their album Strange Old Brew.