"You know how things are--life goes on": Michele Soavi's Cemetery Man

(Originally posted at Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat by Sean T. Collins.)


Today's film is a favorite of mine, all the more so for its being a completely unexpected find. It's called Cemetery Man--also known as Della'morte Dell'amore--and it's got zombie nuns, serial killers, Hitchcockian doppelgangers, direct swipes from Rene Magritte, existentialist angst, surrealist plot construction, inventive and entertaining gore, and beautiful naked people. In other words, how could it not be one of my favorites?

Directed by Dario Argento protege Michele Soavi, this Italian-made 1994 film (it was shot in English, but the Italian-standard post-sync sound still gives it an odd dubbed look) stars, get this, Rupert Everett. Yes, that Rupert Everett--My Best Friend's Wedding, Madonna's ersatz girlfriend for a while. What is he doing in a low-budget Italian zombie movie? God only knows, but he's doing it really well. Everett stars as Francesco Della'morte, the aptly surnamed (it means "of death") caretaker of Buffalora Cemetery. Ground down to a little nub of cynicism and washboard abs by years of working with nothing but corpses and a mute manservant named Gnaghi, Della'morte spends his days burying the dead and his nights re-killing them, as some unnamed epidemic has taken hold in his cemetery, re-animating the dead by the seventh day after their death. From the very first scene, it's clear that Della'morte sees this bizarre and gruesome task as just another part of his workaday existence--to report it would mean losing his job, to say nothing of the mountains of paperwork involved.

Things change for our gruff, sexy, perpetually five-o'clock-shadowed anti-hero when a beautiful young widow, played by the almost comically lovely Anna Falchi, passes through the graveyard to bury her late husband, a much older man. Turns out the widow has something of a thing for death, which Della'morte plays to his advantage, and then, unfortunately for everyone, to his disadvantage. How? Well, let's just say having sex with someone atop her husband's grave in a cemetery where the dead routinely come back to life is maybe a bad idea. I won't say anymore--this film is so unique, and so filmic, that I don't want to spoil it for you. But suffice it to say that this movie starts as one thing, becomes three or four other things, and ends up as something entirely unexpected and deeply, deeply haunting.

Not something you expect from an Italian zombie flick, huh?

Article Author: Sean T. Collins

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