CEMETERY MAN
No, it's not a superhero movie

  My friend Christine taped this off of Showcase a few weeks ago and brought it over.  I know, I know, I should've asked her to marry me right then.  There's a good reason I didn't, though; the tape cut off with about five minutes to go!  I've seen this movie before, years ago; anyone else who's seen it might imagine the difficulty with which I tried to explain its last five minutes to a first-timer.

You know how some people keep falling for the same kind of person, over and over again? (Thank God, I don't have that problem - no more "hospital-chick"s for me) Francesco Dellamorte (gotta love that name; he's played by Rupert Everett) has that problem in a big way; women played by Anna Falchi keep popping into his life, and he falls in love with each of them, and they all keep dying.  Curiously, her constant reappearance has nothing to do with the fact that the cemetery he's the guardian of is one of those weird cemeteries where everybody who gets buried there comes back and has to be shot in the head.

Dellamorte is assisted by a lumbering, fat bald guy named Gnaghi (Francois Hadji-Lazaro), probably Igor's massively inbred cousin/brother/son.  And together, they have a grand time trying to woo their respective women and keep the dead where they belong.

Everett does a fine job, demonstrating all the appeal with which he would later make the women in more mainstream audiences wish he was straight.  He makes all sorts of pretentious-sounding pronouncements to himself and his feebleminded assistant about love and death, which might irritate some, but it struck me as pretty amusing, actually.  Not sure if that's what was intended, if it is, it's a lot more self-conscious than the rest of the laughs here.  A lot of actors are embarrassed by this kind of thing lurking in their filmographic past; I think I've heard that Everett's still proud of it, but honestly, I don't know.  Falchi is pretty, I guess (not exactly my type), but other than that doesn't bring much to her role(s), except nudity, always appreciated. (oh, and she also brings along possibly the most agonizing imaginable way to dump a guy in her third incarnation)

The tone of the film is mostly comic, but in a good way (one girl, being devoured alive by her re-animated lover, chastises an interrupting Dellamorte "Mind your own business!  I'll be eaten by whoever I please!").  Gnaghi's own romantic interest is an inspired, amusing choice.  The script (by Giovanni Romoli) is often very funny, based, from what I hear, on a comic book.  (American? Italian?)

The zombies here are not the kind of zombies I've seen in just about every zombie movie out there - for one thing, if they bite you, it really really really hurts, and it bleeds a lot, but you don't turn into a zombie.  I always expected that to irk more zombie fans than I've ever noticed it doing.  The zombies are closer to, say, Dawn Of The Dead's pasty-faces than Day Of The Dead's bone-protruders, so they may disappoint on that level, too.  I didn't care, I was having too much fun with what was going on (especially with a group of marauding zombie boy scouts) (are there boy scouts in Italy?).  Even Death Incarnate makes an appearance; he gets a great entrance and looks awesome.  Is this guy the all-time best cinematic Death Incarnate?  This guy's WAY better than Brad Pitt.

Italian horror is an acquired taste, one which I'll be the first to admit I've far from completely acquired.  But Cemetery Man is like the big "crossover" Italian horror film, the one that has impressed the most people I know who otherwise have even less appreciation for the genre than I do.  The comic tone is probably largely responsible for that.  Yeah, that end's a little too artsy/enigmatic/pretentious to suit the meat-and-potatoes bulk of the film (I'm almost glad I didn't see it that second time).  So what?  It doesn't distract from the rest of this memorable film.

Directed by Michele Soavi.  Also known as Dellamorte Dellamore and Demons '95.  

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