Dellamorte Dellamore (aka Cemetary Man) Review
The following review is based on a DVD provided by the good folks at Diabolik DVD. Those guys are swell.
Michele Saovi's Dellamorte Dellamore is a film that, in certain circles, virtually everybody knows by reputation though surprisingly few have ever had the chance to actually see it. Saovi's zombie comedy stars a young Rupert Everett and starlet Anna Falchi – a woman certainly not shy about flaunting her assets – and plays out with a curious blend of art house philosophy, zombie gore, flagrant sexuality, and a dark, biting sense of humor. Though it works more as a series of sketches than a coherent story it deserves every bit of its reputation as a landmark cult film and its continued unavailability on these shores is puzzling to say the least.
Rupert Everett is Francesco Dellamorte, the custodian of the Buffalora Cemetary. Dellamorte is a man with a problem. The bodies he buries simply refuse to stay dead, clawing their way back out of the earth on the seventh night after his death, forcing Dellamorte to patrol the cemetery grounds late at night, trusty revolver in hand, to return the walking corpses to whence they came. Things become even more difficult for Dellamorte when he falls in love with a young woman – played by Falchi – who swears her eternal love only to be promptly struck down by the zombified corpse of her dead husband thus providing a solid example of why having sex on the grave of your dead spouse is a bad idea, particularly in a legitimately haunted graveyard. And, true to form, the widow also refuses to stay dead, returning to Dellamorte first as a zombie and then twice more in quasi-reincarnated form.
Dellamorte Dellamore has pretty much everything a cult fan could ask for. Everett plays the title role with a dry sense of humor and sense of resignation that lets you know he's been at this zombie hunting business for a long time, long enough for it to become tedious when really all he wants is a good nights sleep. The zombie effects are plentiful and creative, ranging from your conventional walkers, to land surveyors, a power tripping politician, bikers, and a dismembered head. Dellamorte's grave digging compatriot provides both battle support and comic relief and Falchi is not at all hard to look at.
But what really sets Dellamorte Dellamore apart from a host of other films are the philosophical underpinnings. The title, which translates to Of Death Of Love, holds true as Saovi continually contrasts the competing forces of death and love, destruction and creation, despair and hope. The film is not always entirely clear with its answers but it certainly asks some interesting questions and it has an awful lot of fun while doing so. It has some problems maintaining its narrative and it becomes clear very early that Everett is one of the only native English speakers in the cast – many performances have the awkward rhythms of people being coached in a language they don't understand – but the film aims admirably high and is executed with so much style that it is easy to forgive the weak points.
Though the film is still unavailable on DVD in North America and most other territories – there are rumblings of a release coming from Anchor Bay at some point – there is a quality Italian DVD available from Medusa Video. Though none of the special features feature English options the film itself is presented in anamorphic widescreen with an excellent transfer and includes both the original English soundtrack and the Italian dub.
