Cemetery Man (Grotesque and Sublime Zombie Horror Comedy)

 

The last great hope for Italian genre cinema, Michele Soavi’s Dellamorte Dellmore (christened Cemetery Man by October Films upon it’s US release in 1996) feels like the end of an era on celluloid. This beautiful, haunting and elegiac story of love and loss in land haunted by the undead has been tough to find on these shores after Anchor Bay’s DVD went out of print. Praise be to Severin Films for bringing this sucker back from the dead to enchant a whole new generation. Francesco Dellamorte (an intense display of brooding by Rupert Everett) is the caretaker at Buffalora Cemetery. When not reading his collection of phone books and talking to his only real friend on the phone, he spends his evenings putting bullets in the heads of the recently deceased corpses that keep coming back to life. Enter the Woman (the outrageously beautiful Anna Falchi) to complicate things even further. All seems well until Francesco gets a visit from Death himself with a simple message: If you don’t want the dead to come back, start killing the living. Is it a real premonition or just a delusional fantasy? This movie offers no easy answers.

   

Without mincing words, Cemetery Man is a masterpiece. Soavi’s time spent with both Argento and Terry Gilliam shines through here, as the film is a perfect mixture of the grotesque and the sublime. The film has the intricacies of a dream, which makes the sudden outbursts of violence even more shocking and jarring. Credit must be given to the actors, who portray this vision with straight faces and sell the pathos beautifully. There are scenes that will turn you on and turn your stomach. Severin Films go whole hog with a ridiculous special edition 4K release of Cemetery Man that completely obliterates any prior release, most of which were completely devoid of color and gritty looking. This is a beautiful release of a beautiful film, thank you Severin for finally picking up the ball. Extras are so plentiful that I lost count, my favorite being a very insightful and touching interview with Michelle Soavi which explains exactly why he never followed up on the greatness displayed here. This is a work of genius and one of the best of the 1990s. See this thing immediately and remember…gnaa.

 

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Written by David, Comptroller of Your Last Scrap of Existence

Cemetery Man (2024 on Blu-ray)
Director: Michele Soavi
Distributor: Severin Films
5 / 5