Title: Cemetery Man / Dellamorte Dellamore
Year: 1994
Director: Michele Soavi
Leads: Rupert Everett, Anna Falchi

Favorite quote: “At a certain point in life, you realize that you know more dead people than living.“

Thoughts: I went into this movie all a-flutter with expectation. Not only would I be stealing Rupert Everett away from Silverback (another actor crush in a zombie film, bahahaha), I’d be taking a much-deserved break from the Return series. I’d heard good things about Cemetery Man, too.

So, I emerged baffled by the fact that I didn’t like it more.

There were several aspects of the film that struck me, objectively, as absolutely brilliant. For instance, the setting. The Buffalora Cemetery is absolutely gorgeous, and, taken on its own, is worth slogging through the movie for. The atmosphere in the graveyard is like…Harry Potter on acid. There’s a touch of magic and surrealism. The caretaker’s neverending, wearisome struggle against the dead was quite interesting, from a metaphorical standpoint. I also really got into the idea, embodied in one of the forms of She, of the zombie as an earth elemental. I loved both She and Valentina, actually; we all know how I feel about zombie love around here. (And on that note, the film is wonderfully evocative.)

The rest of the film just didn’t gel for me, though. And I’m perfectly willing to excoriate myself for my reaction. Shame on me. I’m a philistine.

However, I wasn’t the only one. May I also present to you, free of elaboration, my own short-hand notes of the comments Silverback made during our viewing.

- “3 Stooges with a lot more ridiculous angst and dead people”
- “this woman is a mutant”
- “the Boy Scout zombies should be singing the Lollipop Guild song, it would improve film dramatically”

I can say that I loved the cameos by Spaghetti Cat and Meatloaf. I also really, really want the Death puppet. I want to put it in the corner of my already overcrowded bedroom and use it as a clothes tree. See? Philistine.

Links: Cemetery Man at IMDB
Cemetery Man on Wikipedia