Francesco Dellamorte (Rupert Everett) is the janitor of the cemetery in Buffalora, a small town in the province of Milan.
He lives with Gnaghi (Francois Hadij Lazaro), an obese and handicapped (or maybe just externally handicapped?) big boy, in a house by the cemetery.
The work of the two friends does not stop at digging graves: usually, within seven days of death, due to a strange epidemic (or something else) the dead come back to life hungry for human flesh.
One must kill them again by shooting them in the brain.
One day a newly widowed woman (Anna Falchi) appears in Dellamorte's life.
She is beautiful, sensual, dark, macabre, and also strikes a chord with his seemingly hard heart....
Cemetery Man is probably the most important Italian horror film of the 1990s and the most interesting of the last two decades.
Inspired by Tiziano Sclavi's novel of the same name, it is a delicate and valuable metaphor of the love-death pair, within the framework of a theater of the absurd that combines different genres: horror, sentimental, comedy, and grotesque.
Rupert Everett is not chosen at random for this part: Tiziano Sclavi for the physical characterization of his Dylan Dog was deeply inspired by him.
It bears mentioning, for the umpteenth time, that the film has nothing to do with the comic book, although it may remind us of it. Then again, the basic story is by the same author.
It has often been questioned whether the film was intended to be gender (as they say) or authoritative.
At the same time, director Soavi somewhat defined his work as. a no man's land Because people either want to laugh or be afraid.
Cemetery Man Is all of this together.
The first part is a horror story about "returners," to use Dellamorte's definition.
They are zombies that can be eliminated by smoking a cigarette or answering the phone.
The references are all for the Italian school, especially with the flying head of the mayor's daughter, a clear homage to Zombie 3 by Lucio Fulci.
They are zombies driven yes by the desire for human flesh, but they also feel emotions.
They can also be sensual, like Falchi.
A man can have many women.
But the woman of one's dreams is perhaps a chimera.
One must be careful, because Death may want it.
But if a person lives by killing the dead, can he love a living one?
Or perhaps he will have a unique connection with her only through death?
These are questions, like so many others, that Dellamorte asks.
He does not find the answers; on the other hand, he has dreams.
But even here doubts arise, hopes become utopias, like the great desire to change lives.
From death to life: for zombies it is possible but not for their janitor.
The more he questions himself, the more he tries to overcome his limitations, the less he will find inner peace.
Luckily there is Ganghi, a big kid who is probably the one who faces life the most.
He does so with eyes that are not innocent, but disengaged.
It is not a problem if his girlfriend is a little girl and just a zombie head or if she gives off an unpleasant smell.
He loves her and does not seek perfection like Dellamorte.
His gna Are very telling how to make a skull.
And when he (perhaps) dies he actually lives on.
Perhaps he experiences a different shock, perhaps he becomes an adult, perhaps he takes the role of Dellamorte.
The ending is as enigmatic and allegorical as a Sclavi comic strip.
The performance of the other actors is functional: Falchi is beautiful and absent, Masciarelli is a mayor ready to politicize everything.
Stivaletti does his job excellently, inserting splatter elements where necessary and doing little makeup when needed.
Majestic photography: memorable the night of sex between Falchi and Everett in the cemetery charnel house, or the returning motorcyclist or Death rising from autumn leaves.
Good music.
We do not cry masterpiece, rightly so, but after this film, for a variety of reasons, Italian horror has not been able to repeat itself at excellent levels.
Sadness for us horrorphiles, thanks to the great Michele Soavi.
Review by Zick
