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“I’d give my life to be dead.”
Money Night Extravaganza is heading to the graveyard! With Michele Soavi‘s Cemetery Man (aka: DellaMorte DellAmore.)
Forrest Miller, Conan Neutron, Kristina Oakes and J. Andrew World are joined by actress KT Baldassaro of MovieRunTime and Renee Ruin to discuss one of the great needlessly horny existential horror comedies of all time.
There is something so unique about this one. Carries some of the comedic sensibilities of Return of the Living Dead, but amps up the ennui, the artsiness and the dream logic to 10. If you’re looking for a movie that makes sense, and that has a coherence of plot, this is absolutely not the movie you’re looking for.
Somehow a fantastical gothic romance, necrophillia propaganda, a rumination on loneliness and sorrow and uproariously funny in the same movie. It shouldn’t work, but it does.
Rupert Everett stars as Francesco DellaMorte, a graveyard caretaker who must also put down the zombies who return 7 days after each death, before they go into town and eat the living.
He has a mentally disabled and very round assistant named Gnaghi who helps him dispatch the living dead.
Cemetery Man is a comedy that aims to both parody and enshrine everything Michele Soavi learned from working with Italian Horror/Giallo masters like Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci and it has got some incredible sequences.
Especially hilarious is a sequence where a biker gang crashes into a bus full of boy scouts killing everyone including the Mayors Daughter, this is all witnessed by a very confused horse, they then all return as zombies.
It might be important to know that Cemetery Man is based on the novel “Dellamorte Dellamore” by Tiziano Sclavi who also wrote the comic book, “Dylan Dog” and is considered an “unofficial adaptation” of the comic. Rupert Everett is great and it’s pretty funny that he didn’t even know about the character Dylan Dog featuring his face.
The only real failure of this film is that audiences want it to fit some sort of genre or label, when it truly is a story of its own. Part horror, dark comedy, nihilistic day dream, slapstick, art house it is a most bizarre and unique story that deserves a genre all by itself.
An icon of strange cinema.
I should be noted t it will absolutely negatively affect your viewing experience if you do not understand the reference points and framework of Italian horror. It’s really going to feel too disjointed and outlandish to appreciate. Director Michele Soavi, who was Dario Argento’s assistant for years, made this as his first film after he stopped working with Argento and you can absolutely see his influences on this piece as well as Federico Fellini.
It is somehow both high camp, and has elements of Hammer House Horror, yet has an undeniable heart to it!
“Past this tunnel is the rest of the world. What do you think the rest of the world looks like, Gnaghi? Can you imagine it?… You’re right. It’s beyond imagination.”
Quintessentially Italian and an unforgettable ride. 🤌
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