Jason M. Jones

Hands down October is my favorite month of the year. The reasons are simple: the weather gets cooler, but not too cold to bear, and there’s Halloween, which means I have a reason to indulge in one of life’s great pleasures: scary movies. October 1st, I started what I plan to be an all month horror film fest here at our house by watching Vincent Price in The Masque of the Red Death directed by Roger Corman, and I figured that since we’ve hit October, I’d take a detour on this blog from writing about writing and focus on one of my favorite things: zombie movies. Of course, you can feel free to disagree with my assessments. That’s why it’s a “favorites” list and not a “best of.” I haven’t seen all the zombie movies out there, nor have I made any attempt to. Some fans might argue, “Hey, that’s not a zombie movie at all, they’re Deadites!!! There’s a difference!” or “That’s not a zombie movie. The people in this case are infected with a rage virus. It doesn’t count!!!” If you’re one of these people, you should save your breath. I’m aware of your issues. You don’t need to point them out. Please keep your comments to yourself. The rest of you should feel free to chime in.

So without further ado, let us begin…

10. Cemetery Man (1993; dir. Michele Soavi; Italian title: Dellamorte Dellamore) – I first caught this one midway through late night on HBO when I was a teenager, and watching it by myself in the dark around 3 a.m. was a surreal experience to say the least. I didn’t know what it was called and I couldn’t find out since TV Guide didn’t have a listing for that time of night, but I consigned the lead actor Rupert Everett to memory so I could investigate at the video store later, but I had no luck locating it at Blockbuster or the now-defunct West Coast Video. Cursing the mainstream aversion to obscure Italian-made zombie flicks, I didn’t get my hands on a copy and see the entire thing until 2007 when it was released on DVD. And why, you might ask, did I harbor such an intense desire over the course of ten years to find and own this film? Funny, my girlfriend asked me that same thing when I made her watch it…but she’s not a horror fan.

What I love most about Cemetery Man is just how incredibly bizarre it becomes after the first hour. For the first hour, we have a linear plot, and it’s a pretty enjoyable ride in and of itself. With wry humor (see clip below), Everett plays Dellamorte, the caretaker of the Buffalora cemetery, charged with killing the zombies (or “returners” as he calls them) when they come back seven days after death. His life is lonely aside from an (I’m not sure “mentally-challenged” is the most accurate term, but you get the point) assistant, Gnaghi, until he meets a widow (played by the rather gorgeous Anna Falchi) and falls in love while showing her one of the cemetery’s ossuaries. Of course, she’s killed by her zombie husband when she and Dellamorte are consummating the relationship atop his grave, and it’s at this point, Cemetery Man becomes the zombie film David Lynch might have made if Lynch made zombie films. First, Falchi returns as a zombie and Dellamorte kills her, but then she returns again, not as a zombie, but as two different living characters whom Dellamorte becomes obsessed with. The first version runs off with the mayor after Dellamorte has himself neutered to allay her fear of sexual intercourse, and then when the second one appears, he burns down her house with her and her roommate inside it because he finds out this version is a prostitute. In the meantime, the mayor’s daughter gets decapitated and Dellamorte’s assistant Gnaghi falls in love with her and starts to carry around her re-animated head, and then death himself appears to Dellamorte from a pile of flaming leaves and suggests that he  stop killing the dead and start killing the living if he wants to make a real difference.

Does that make sense? Not remotely. It follows a nightmare logic. The second half of the movie is hard to encapsulate in a sentence or two, but it is kind of awesome if you’re into zombie movies, particularly a scene where Dellamorte visits a friend in the hospital. I’d explain, but I’d rather not ruin it for you. All in all, it’s possible this might be taking place in a snow globe…? You’ll probably finish the film and say, “What in tarnation was that?” But then you’ll be compelled to watch it again regardless. Please note, however, that the film is not exactly “Frightfully Funny!” as it says on the DVD cover. It’s chuckle to yourself funny, not rip roaring laugh out loud guffawing funny.