Dellamorte Dellamore (1993)

I originally saw this film (also known as "Cemetery Man") at a horror festival; it was then shown once on Channel 4 some ten years ago which is how I got my first copy.  Since it has not been shown since and since it seems to be unavailable on DVD, I bought my disc in Spain, where it is known under the lovely title of "My Sweetheart is a Zombie".  It's an Italian flick directed by Michele Soavi, once an assistant to the great Dario Argento, and only seems to be available in a dubbed version which is just about fine since the lead actor is Rupert Everett whose own voice is on the track.  I believe he was chosen for the part because of his strange resemblance to the hero of an Italian comic, "Dylan Dog" written by the same author as the novel on which this film is based.

But enough about the background.  This is one superior horror movie and quite unlike the average run-of-the mill scarefest.  Everett plays the caretaker of a cemetery where the dead come back to life within seven days of being buried and can only be dispatched by a bash or a shot to the head which keeps him pretty busy.  This all takes place in a matter-of-fact but mildly amusing mode.  His accomplice is his assistant, an obese and nearly mute retarded fellow, played memorably by one Francois Hadji-Lazaro.  There is also a rather gorgeous love-interest played in three separate incarnations by Anna Falchi.  Everett is so wrapped up in death that when Death himself appears to him, suggesting that it is not his place to interfere with the newly dead and that he should go out and kill his own victims, Everett obliges -- but in such an offhand and casual way that we never lose affection for his character.  A sub-strand involves the infatuation between Hadji-Lazaro and the recently deceased Mayor's daughter, who was decapitated in a motorcycle crash, and how he keeps her talking head in his demolished TV set.  You have to see this to appreciate how sweet, rather than gross, this romance is.

Like the best Italian horror films, this one is shot with an arthouse sensibility and despite the lashings of gore, the movie is far from one for the mindless fanboy crowd.