2. Cemetery Man (1994)
Dellamorte is a graveyard caretaker. He has little magic or joy in his life. He has a mentally deficient assistant called Gnaghi - who can only say the word 'Gna'. Gnaghi loves spaghetti and watching TV. Poor old Dellamorte is really having a terrible time of it. Bodies in the graveyard are returning to life seven days after they were buried. Dellamorte has to re-kill them to stop them from over running the small Italian town in which he lives. A town that shuns him as a joke and constantly acts cruelly towards him. One day, at a funeral in the grounds, Dellamorte falls head over heels in love with a young widow of an old man he is burying. She returns his affection and when they eventually get down to having sex - beside the husband's grave - she incurs a bite when he reanimates during the act. Dellamorte shoots her whenever she reanimates herself. Gnaghi falls in love with Francesca the mayor's daughter. Fortuitously for him, Francesca is decapitated in a motorbike accident. He digs up her head and begins a love affair with it. Dellamorte's young widow comes back to life leading Dellamorte to deduce that it was he who killed her the first time round - she wasn't really dead. He sinks into a depression and Death visits him, asking him why doesn't he shoot the living? Dellamorte meets a new young woman who is assistant to the town's Mayor. She claims to be terrified of sexual penetration. Dellamorte considers having his nuts lopped off but the woman is raped by the Mayor and falls in love with her rapist. No room any more for Dellamorte. Descending into lunacy, Dellamorte goes on a killing spree - killing the men who spread rumours of Dellamorte being impotent, killing a prostitute and her friends. What is most bizarre is the fact that Dellamorte's friend Franco kills his own wife and kids but also takes the rap for Dellamorte's murders. He tries to kill himself by drinking iodine and Dellamorte goes to the hospital to see him. Sitting by his friend's bedside, he kills a nun, nurse and doctor. Nobody seems concerned. Dellamorte tries to flee the town with Gnaghi only to find that the rest of the world doesn't exist. What will become of our corpse blasting friend and his acolyte? Cemetery Man director Michele Soavi is an extremely talented Italian horror director. He stands shoulders above lumpen hacks like Bruno Mattei and Umberto Lenzi. Rare to Italian genre cinema, he has genuine originality and creative power, the other directors tend to plagiarise each other's works or steal ideas from better films. Soavi's talent was clear to see with his directorial debut - Stagefright: Aquarius - a highly tense and thrilling slasher movie which is probably about the best slasher you could hope to see. Cemetery Man benefits from a great lead actor - the highly talented Rupert Everett. His role is a tricky one - to find the right balance between sarcasm, humour, tragedy and madness. The film is a very original take on the zombie genre, and it is the film's quirkiness that will stay with you as the downtrodden Dellamorte is shunned by the town he does so much for by saving them from the living dead. The film can be appreciated on a number of different levels - comedy, horror, drama - and the gothic ambience of the grave yard makes a great location for the film. Soavi shows in the movie that he can stand shoulder to shoulder with Dario Argento and Mario Bava as truly great Italian horror directors. There has been some recent talk of a sequel and Soavi will have considerable input into it. Could this start the renaissance of Italian horror movies?