Thursday, June 21, 2012

Cemetery Man

Michele Soavi – 1994 – Italy

This minor cult classic is an Italian-made, English-language zombie comedy that was made a full decade before the “zom-com” became a full-fledged sub-genre starting with Shaun of the Dead (2004).  Rupert Everett is the ominously named Franceso Dellamorte (“of death”), the caretaker of a country cemetery where hungry corpses climb out of their graves soon after being buried.  There is no explanation about why this happens or why the phenomenon seems to only apply to this one cemetery rather than becoming a global epidemic as in most zombie movies.  The film is like a mix of Dario Argento and David Lynch, with its surreal juxtaposition of black humor, gruesome carnage and dark eroticism.  It’s not wacky like so many movies with the same loose premise, but mysterious and dreamlike, with color so muted it’s easy to remember the film as being almost black-and-white.

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