Cemetery Man DVD Review

Cemetery Man (Dellamorte, Dellamore)
Reviewed by Daniel Hirshleifer
DVD Released by Anchor Bay Entertainment

Written by Gianni Romoli based on a novel by Tiziano Sclavi
Directed by Michele Soavi
Runtime –105 minutes
Not Rated

Starring:
Rupert Everett as Francesco DellaMorte
Anna Falchi as “She”
Francois Hadji-Lazaro as Gnaghi

The Film:
I remember first hearing about Cemetery Man (or, as I prefer, Dellamorte, Dellamore) years ago; an obscure Italian horror film about a man who tends a cemetery where the dead come back to life, starring an English actor and an Italian supermodel. In fact, the first visual exposures I had to the film were pictures of Anna Falchi in the buff in a graveyard. And every single promotional poster I found made it look like yet another utterly generic Italian b-horror film. How wrong I was.

Cemetery Man is much more than just an exploitation horror film. For one thing, it’s based on a novel by acclaimed Italian comic author Tiziano Sclavi, best known for his genre-bending Dylan Dog. Secondly, the director, Michele Soavi, worked for a long time as the first AD to Dario Argento, easily one of the best Italian horror directors. However, the film does not play out as an Argento-inspired piece. Instead, it feels like a lost Terry Gilliam film (with perhaps a touch of Tim Burton at his most morbid).

Rupert Everett stars as Francesco DellaMorte (Rupert Everett, with a voice so gravelly that it doesn’t even sound like him), a graveyard caretaker. In this particular cemetery, the dead come back to life within seven days of being buried there. DellaMorte has an assistant, Gnaghi (Francois Hadji-Lazaro), a man-child who only says “Nah!” Early in the film, DellaMorte encounters a widow (Anna Falchi), and immediately falls in love. Quickly, he woos her and they make love beside her dead husband’s grave. Sadly, this happens to be the exact moment that her husband rises from the dead. The husband attacks and kills the widow, leaving DellaMorte in a terrible state. When the widow returns from the dead herself, DellaMorte shoots her without looking. Even though he is distraught, he still tends to the cemetery, killing zombies and reading old phone books. Eventually, he encounters the widow as a zombie, and after putting her down, he realizes the first time she “returned,” she wasn’t really dead, and he killed her. After this, Death himself appears to DellaMorte and tells him to stop killing the dead, but to kill the living instead. Around this time, DellaMorte also meets other women who look exactly like the widow.

To be honest, a capsule summary like that does absolutely no justice to the film. The movie is full of rich cinematic style, dark hilarious comedy, and brooding performances. Obviously Everett gives a good showing, but the real show-stealer is Francois Hadji-Lazaro as Gnaghi, who manages to be both repulsive and lovable at the same time. The gore in the film is excellent, and the graveyard is a work of art, giving a foreboding atmosphere to even the most innocuous scenes. However, the film is absolutely Italian, in the sense that the thematic content and individual images trump conventional storytelling. On the other hand, unlike many Italian horror films, the surreal nature of the events in the film push the audience to think more deeply about what they’re seeing. Cemetery Man has grown a fairly respectable cult among horror enthusiasts, and it’s well deserved.

The Picture:
From what I can tell, Anchor Bay’s transfer is almost exactly the same as Medusa’s Italian DVD release. The biggest difference is that the Anchor Bay is listed as 1.66:1, while Medusa’s is 1.85:1. The film is grainy, there’s no avoiding that. Despite that, the transfer looks good in general. At times, the contrast seems a little low, especially at night, but then again, Soavi might have been intending the film to look murky. I noticed a few slight compression artifacts, mostly in scenes where the background was out of focus, or wide landscape shots. I would easily believe that the film elements Anchor Bay got to work with were in poor condition from the start. On the whole, though, the transfer is passable.

The Sound:
The disc offers a Dolby Digital 5.1 mix and a 2.0 mix. Both mixes have the typical canned sound that most dub tracks have (this, like many Italian films, had all of its dialogue dubbed in after the filming was complete). The surrounds in the 5.1 mix are mostly used for the score, although sometimes a sound effect or two do make their way outside the front speakers.

The Extras:
Cemetery Man features only one significant extra; a 30-minute featurette entitled “Death Is Beautiful.” On it, we get anecdotes from Soavi, Falchi, and other contributors. Sadly, there is no sign of either Rupert Everett or Francois Hadji-Lazaro, whose views would have been most welcome. On the whole, while a lot of interesting information is thrown at the audience, this featurette suffers from “talking head” syndrome, with only a few film clips thrown in to break the monotony. The entire thing is subtitled in English, with the exception of Anna Falchi, who speaks English (and looks even better now than she did when the film was made). Other than that, we get a Michele Soavi bio, theatrical trailer, and previews of other films. An 8-page booklet with essay comes in the case.

Grades:
Film style: A-
Film Content: A- (Themes)/B (Plot)
Picture: B- (Not the best quality, but I doubt they had anything better to go on)
Sound: B- (Canned, but considering how they filmed it, that’s not surprising)
Extras: C+ (The featurette doesn’t feel like enough, especially since the presentation is bland)

Conclusion:
Cemetery Man is a singular work: a meeting of minds and talents that ends up being far more than the sum of its parts. It is easily one of the crown jewels of Italian horror cinema, and well-worth watching not just for genre fans, but fans of offbeat cinema as well. While the disc can’t possibly match the A/V specs of Anchor Bay’s best work, the content of the film more than makes up for the discs technical deficiencies. Highly recommended.