Dellamorte Dellamore
Italy/France/Germany 1994. Director: Michele Soavi
Cast: Rupert Everett, Francois Hadji, Anna Falchi, Barbara Cupisti
Aka: Cemetary Man

Francesco Dellamorte (Everett) works at the graveyard. His job: keeping the dead in their place. You see, about a week after they're buried the dead rises from their graves and when they do they're hungry. It's a messy work, but someone has to do it. No problem. To his help Francesco has the mentally retarded Gnaghi (Hadji). One day Francesco meets the beautiful widow Anna Falchi at the funeral of her husband and they begin a relationship. One night when Francesco and Anna make love at the graveyard the dead husband awakens and kills Anna also. Now Francesco has a big problem.

The film is based, of course, on the novel by Tiziano Sclavi, and apparently Sclavi also had actor Rupert Everett in mind when creating the character of Francesco Dellamorte. So I guess I can't say much else other than that Everett is perfect for his part. But it adds a lot having a real actor in a film like this, especially one as good as Everett (Matt Dillon was also considered), and not some second-rate American has-been. As for director Soavi, he is a graduate of the Dario Argento school of filmmaking, which means style over just about everything else, having worked as both second-unit and assistant director on some of the Master's better movies. But he is also very much a graduate of the Joe D'Amato filmschool where on-the-spot inventiveness and creativity is the deal. Presumably he also picked up a trick or two working as second-unit director for Terry Gilliam on his Baron Munchausen spectacle. So with Dellamorte Dellamore Soavi proves that he has not only managed to mix influences from the best of all possible worlds, but also that he has created his own unique vision and come up with a film that is much more maturely developed than his two previous movies, The Church and The Sect, which were near-masterpieces in their own right. To put it simple, it looks visually stunning and feels like a breath of fresh air. The mixture of genres - horror, comedy, fantasy, existentialism even - is a spot-on success and the film was rewarded for it at the box-office. And it has some of the greatest scenes ever in a zombie-film. Like the one where Gnaghi sits watching TV and his house in invaded by zombies. One zombie dressed as a nun sneaks up upon Gnaghi but Francesco comes to resque and after some struggle he manages to kill the zombie without Gnaghi ever taking his eyes off his TV-screen until Francesco accidentally blow it up. Great fun. The screenwriters has obviously had fun with the traditional themes and topics of the zombie genre while still being very faithful to it, making it a treat for fans everywhere. But do not worry, it's still the good old-fashioned bullet in the head that does the work.