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Cemetary Man
(***1/2)
My only dislike for the movie "Cemetary Man" is its title. How bland, how American sounding. The original title for this 1994 Italian horror film is "Dellamorte Dellamore". Literally, it means "Of Death, Of Love". It's so much more descriptive of the movie, and yet it doesn't give anything away. To say "Cemetary Man" sounds like a campy spoof.
The story is around a watchman in an Italian cemetary. For some unknown reason, some people come back from the dead after a few days craving human flesh. He found out that if you crush their skulls they "die" a second time. He uses a big hand gun. The watchman is Fransesco Dellamorte (Everett). With the aid of his trusty yet dim helper Nagi (Lazaro) he goes about his life in a state of death, knowing really no living people.
That is, until She comes along. We don't learn her name, but her face comes to bewitch and haunt Dellamorte for the rest of the film. She is stunning, played by Anna Falchi. She is also surrounded by death, and she and Fransesco cling to one another in true love quickly.
Then he loses her. When he loses her, he starts to lose his tentative grip on reality. He didn't know what life was before her, and now he knows it only too briefly before it's pulled away tragically. This is where the fun starts.
Soon Dellamorte is faced with a series of mind boggling dilemmas as his one true love seems to come back again and again and again, slowly driving him mad.
So what is the meaning of life to him? He kills the living dead every night when they come back, why not kill the "dying living"?
Director Michele Soavi instills a certain philosophy into the whole thing. It's nothing truly useful, but the sheer thoughtfulness of it makes the whole film a treat. Dellamorte kills zombies rather than dealing with the paperwork it would take to declare to the government that zombies happen. If he tells anyone he loses his job...so he'd have to leave. What's outside of his hometown?
I dunno, Cemetary Man is probably one of the best horror movies I've seen come out in the last 15 years...it's a film with the courage to stand up and take itself seriously, yet at the same time it plants tongue firmly in cheek to let you know that it's all in fun.