2. Dellamorte, Dellamore (1994)
Francesco Dellamorte lives in a small Italian town called Buffalora where he works as the cemetery keeper with his mentally retarded assistant Gnaghi. Dellamorte is treated badly by the townsfolk who label him impotent, nevertheless he ekes out his depressing existence by reading out of date phonebooks and crossing out the deceased. Gnaghi likes spaghetti and television and can only utter the word 'Gna'. Dellamorte develops a problem with zombification of his corpses. After 7 days of deadness, they are resurrecting and Dellamorte has to kill them. A plea to the mayor to investigate is turned down. At a funeral, Dellamorte falls in love with an elderly rich man's young wife, as they consummate their relationship, the elderly man comes out of the grave and kills his widow. Gnaghi, meanwhile, is conducting a love affair with the mayor's daughter's head after she was killed in a motorbike crash. The young widow keeps incarnating in different guises to simultaneously frustrate and tantalise Dellamorte. One of these incarnations is terrified of sex. Dellamorte considers going so far as to chop off his genitalia but then his love interest gets raped by her employer and falls in love with him. This unhinges Dellamorte and he goes on a killing spree - including killing the young men who called him impotent. The young widow comes back as a prostitute and he kills her along with some of her co-workers. His friend Franco has tried to kill himself after killing his family. Dellamorte casually kills the hospital workers and screams that he was the murderer. A very surreal ending shows our hero choosing life, although it is a bit pointless, over death. Another Italian masterpiece from Michele Soavi. Probably the last great film of the Italian horror boom and definitely one of its most stylish and distinctive films. It manages to give an interesting slant to the zombie plot, and it excludes all of the worst excesses of Italian horror cinema - no animal entrails munching, no real life animal snuff, no beleaguered Third World natives with bowl cut hairdos and no silly Amazonian frolicking or acts of ultra sleazy violence. For a start, it has a really good actor - Rupert Everett - in the role of Dellamorte who is able to convincingly display a wide and often subtle range of acting skills. Dellamorte is a very complex character and he is really Buffalora's saving grace because if it weren't for him, the town would be overrun with flesh eating ghouls. He is unfairly ignored and ridiculed, particularly by that woman who keeps coming to life in various guises and breaking his heart. It did rubbish business at the box office but it is slowly but surely gaining a wider following. This following cannot be big enough!