'Cemetery Man' - Movie Review

The original Italian title was "Dellamorte Dellamore" which apparently means something like "of death, of love." I watched this because I'd read it was based on the same material as "Dylan Dog". It appears to be more accurate to say that it's based on material by the same author, Tiziano Sclavi (and the "Dylan Dog" graphic novel was drawn with Dylan looking like Rupert Everett). This deals with the undead, but beyond that the similarity is almost non-existent. As I said in my previous post, I didn't think I'd be able to find it ... but guess what, it's on YouTube.

I've never seen a Giallo film. So for me to say this has something in common with the Giallo genre is somewhat suspect. But it's definitely a bloody horror comedy film from Italy, with significant elements of eroticism, perversity, and plain old-fashioned craziness.

Rupert Everett plays Francesco Dellamorte, the caretaker of the graveyard in the small Italian town of Buffalora. (Of course, in an Italian-French-German production set in an Italian town, everyone speaks the language of the star ... English.) Francesco has a problem: the dead often rise from their graves within seven days of burial. But he patrols at night and puts them back in the earth. His helper Gnaghi (François Hadji-Lazaro) has only one word in his vocabulary, although Francesco comprehends entire sentences in that word. And he keeps crossing paths with a gorgeous woman (Anna Falchi) who loves him - as he loves her - but she keeps dying.

It was fascinating in a perverse sort of way, but it's camp for camp's sake without ever really going anywhere.