Cemetery Man
Encyclopedia
Cemetery Man is a 1994 comedy
horror film
directed by Michele Soavi
. A co-production of Italy
, France
, and Germany
, the screenplay by Gianni Romoli was based on the 1991 novel by Tiziano Sclavi
. Sclavi is also the author of the comic Dylan Dog
, which covers similar themes and whose protagonist is self-admittedly a Rupert Everett lookalike.
The film stars Rupert Everett
, François Hadji-Lazaro, and Anna Falchi
. The film's story concerns the beleaguered caretaker of a small Italian cemetery
, who searches for love while defending the town from zombie
s.
) is the cemetery caretaker in the small Italian town of Buffalora. He lives in a ramshackle house on the premises, constantly surrounded by death, with only his mentally handicapped
assistant Gnaghi (François Hadji-Lazaro) for company, who expresses his ideas and opinions only saying "Gna". Young punks in town spread gossip that Francesco is impotent
. He can open up to his only friend, Franco, by telephone, but when they meet in person, have little to say. Francesco's only hobbies are reading outdated telephone directories, in which he crosses out the names of the deceased, and trying to assemble a puzzle shaped like a human skull.
The inscription over the Buffalora Cemetery gate reads "RESVRRECTVRIS" ("THEY WILL RESURRECT" in English), and indeed, Francesco has had his hands full of late. Some of the dead interred in the cemetery rise from their graves prior to the seventh day of their internment, reanimated and ready to assault the living. Francesco, as if trapped in a Sisyphean cycle
, is duty-bound as cemetery caretaker, to destroy the "Returners" before they overrun the town. Buffalora's mayor (Stefano Masciarelli) doesn't just disbelieve the cemetery caretaker's reports, but is so fixated on his campaigning that he seems unable even to hear Francesco's pleas for an investigation. Nor can Francesco surmount the complicated bureaucracy or mountain of paperwork to get assistance ("It's easier just to shoot them," says an exasperated Francesco). Accepting his fate, Francesco and Gnaghi spend their days tending the cemetery grounds, doing their best to counteract the decay of ages, and their nights planting bullets and shovels into the brains of the walking dead. "This is my business," he says before wearily dispatching a zombie motorcyclist. "They pay me for it."
At a funeral, Francesco falls hard and fast in love, with the beautiful young widow (Anna Falchi
) of a rich, elderly man. While consummating their relationship atop the grave, her husband returns, attacks, and bites the unnamed woman. Francesco's new love seemingly dies from the bite; however, the coroner later says she died of fright. Fearing the worst Francesco stays near her corpse believing she will rise as a Returner. When she does, he blindly shoots her, believing his love turned to a zombie. Later, she rises again as a true Returner. At this point, Francesco comes to believe that she was not really a zombie when he first shot her, making it him that truly killed her. After that, having lost his only love and destroying her, he begins plummeting into a deeper and deeper depression. Furthermore he is visited by the leering figure of Death
, who tries to recruit Francesco as a fellow reaper.
Francesco repeatedly encounters women, all played by Falchi and listed in the credits only as "She", who resemble his lost love. He goes to outrageous ends to be with them - when the object of his affection confesses to being terrified of the thought of men's penises inside her, Dellamorte visits the doctor to have his penis removed (although this does not happen, the doctor gives him an injection to temporarily be impotent) - but circumstance or fate always steals away Dellamorte's lovers. In this case, the woman he has gone great lengths to please is raped by the new mayor. She comes to find out that she enjoys sex and no longer has a phobia of men's penises. To this length she decides to marry the mayor still believing that Francesco is impotent. This is mirrored as Gnaghi becomes sweetly obsessed with the Mayor's capricious daughter Valentina (Fabiana Formica). This fixation would seem to end tragically when she is decapitated in a motorcycle accident. Instead, Gnaghi digs up her reanimated head, and an innocent romance begins.
Prodded by the twin specters of Love
and Death
, Francesco begins to wonder if the easiest way to stop the dead from returning might be to shoot them in the head while they are alive. His grip on reality slipping, and despair mounting, Francesco heads into town square at night with his revolver, shooting the group of young men in town who has made fun of him for years due to his rumored impotence. He later meets a third manifestation of "She" and ultimately sleeps with her. Upon finding out that she is a prostitute he kills her by setting her on fire with a room heater. She and two of her friends are killed in the fire. His friend Franco is accused of the murders after he kills his wife, child, and attempts suicide the same night by drinking a bottle of iodine. Francesco goes to visit his friend in the hospital, and after killing a nun, a nurse, and a doctor Franco tells Francesco that he doesn't know who Francesco is. When even these desperately demonstrative acts fail to change Dellamorte's situation - he cannot even get himself arrested when bluntly confessing his crimes to the police - he and Gnaghi pack up the car, and head for the Buffalora city limits. "Past this town is the rest of the world," Dellamorte muses, "What do you think the rest of the world looks like?"
However, upon exiting the last tunnel out of town, they find the road is destroyed and they cannot pass. Gnaghi is injured when Francesco slams on the brakes, and his head impacts the dashboard. Francesco gets out of the vehicle and walks to the edge of the road where it drops into a large chasm. Gnaghi gets out of the car and begins to seize and collapses to the ground seemingly dead. Francesco, realizing that the rest of the world doesn't exist and fearing that his assistant is dead, loads a gun with two bullets to finish them both off. Before he can shoot, Gnaghi wakes up and throws Francesco's gun off the cliff. He then asks Francesco to take him home, speaking clearly. Francesco replies "Gna.".
in Italian
, della morte (spelled as two separate words) meaning "of death" and dell'amore (again spelled separately) meaning "of love", the whole title could also be translated as "On the Death of Love" or "About Love's Death".
The protagonist's surname is also Dellamorte and towards the end of the film we learn that his mother's maiden name was Dellamore.
to little success. United States
distributor October Films
changed its title to Cemetery Man and saddled the film with a campy ad campaign, finally releasing it on April 26, 1996. In the US, Cemetery Man received mostly negative critical reaction, small theatrical distribution (opening on six screens), and a frequently delayed Region 1 DVD release. The film missed popular success, grossing only $253,969 in the US, but found a stateside cult following
over time, via home video. It currently holds a 64% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes
and has a rating of 7.4 on Internet Movie Database
. Renowned director Martin Scorsese
called Dellamorte Dellamore one of the best Italian films of the 1990s.
released the film on R1 DVD
on June 13, 2006 under the American title Cemetery Man. The release features an anamorphic widescreen
transfer, a making-of featurette entitled Death Is Beautiful, a theatrical trailer, and an 8-page collector's booklet. However, this DVD is currently out of print.
reported that director Michele Soavi
was planning a sequel
to his 1994 film. Soavi plans to shoot the film sometime near the end of 2011 or early 2012. He will produce the film himself and wants the film to be a great, strong, shocking Italian horror film.
Comedy film
Comedy film is a genre of film in which the main emphasis is on humour. They are designed to elicit laughter from the audience. Comedies are mostly light-hearted dramas and are made to amuse and entertain the audiences...
horror film
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
directed by Michele Soavi
Michele Soavi
Michele Soavi, sometimes known as Michael Soavi is an Italian filmmaker.-Career:Michele Soavi was born in Milan. As a teenager, Soavi enrolled in creative arts classes and developed into a talented actor. He took acting lessons at Milan's Fersen Studios, but his greatest talent was working behind...
. A co-production of Italy
Cinema of Italy
The history of Italian cinema began just a few months after the Lumière brothers had patented their Cinematographe, when Pope Leo XIII was filmed for a few seconds in the act of blessing the camera.-Early years:...
, France
Cinema of France
The Cinema of France comprises the art of film and creative movies made within the nation of France or by French filmmakers abroad.France is the birthplace of cinema and was responsible for many of its early significant contributions. Several important cinematic movements, including the Nouvelle...
, and Germany
Cinema of Germany
Cinema in Germany can be traced back to the late 19th century. German cinema has made major technical and artistic contributions to film.Unlike any other national cinemas, which developed in the context of relatively continuous and stable political systems, Germany witnesses major changes to its...
, the screenplay by Gianni Romoli was based on the 1991 novel by Tiziano Sclavi
Tiziano Sclavi
Tiziano Sclavi is an Italian comic book author, journalist and writer of several novels. Sclavi is most famous as creator of the comic book Dylan Dog in 1986, for Italian publishing house Sergio Bonelli Editore...
. Sclavi is also the author of the comic Dylan Dog
Dylan Dog
Dylan Dog is an Italian horror comics series featuring an eponymous character created by Tiziano Sclavi for the publishing house Sergio Bonelli Editore...
, which covers similar themes and whose protagonist is self-admittedly a Rupert Everett lookalike.
The film stars Rupert Everett
Rupert Everett
Rupert James Hector Everett is an English actor. He first came to public attention in 1981, when he was cast in Julian Mitchell's play and subsequent film Another Country as an openly gay student at an English public school, set in the 1930s...
, François Hadji-Lazaro, and Anna Falchi
Anna Falchi
Anna Falchi is an Italian-Finnish model and film actress.-Career:Anna Falchi was born Anna Kristiina Palomäki in Tampere, Finland, the daughter of an Italian father and Finnish mother. In 1978, at the age of six, she moved to Italy with her family. She started her career as a model...
. The film's story concerns the beleaguered caretaker of a small Italian cemetery
Cemetery
A cemetery is a place in which dead bodies and cremated remains are buried. The term "cemetery" implies that the land is specifically designated as a burying ground. Cemeteries in the Western world are where the final ceremonies of death are observed...
, who searches for love while defending the town from zombie
Zombie
Zombie is a term used to denote an animated corpse brought back to life by mystical means such as witchcraft. The term is often figuratively applied to describe a hypnotized person bereft of consciousness and self-awareness, yet ambulant and able to respond to surrounding stimuli...
s.
Plot
Francesco Dellamorte (Rupert EverettRupert Everett
Rupert James Hector Everett is an English actor. He first came to public attention in 1981, when he was cast in Julian Mitchell's play and subsequent film Another Country as an openly gay student at an English public school, set in the 1930s...
) is the cemetery caretaker in the small Italian town of Buffalora. He lives in a ramshackle house on the premises, constantly surrounded by death, with only his mentally handicapped
Mental retardation
Mental retardation is a generalized disorder appearing before adulthood, characterized by significantly impaired cognitive functioning and deficits in two or more adaptive behaviors...
assistant Gnaghi (François Hadji-Lazaro) for company, who expresses his ideas and opinions only saying "Gna". Young punks in town spread gossip that Francesco is impotent
Erectile dysfunction
Erectile dysfunction is sexual dysfunction characterized by the inability to develop or maintain an erection of the penis during sexual performance....
. He can open up to his only friend, Franco, by telephone, but when they meet in person, have little to say. Francesco's only hobbies are reading outdated telephone directories, in which he crosses out the names of the deceased, and trying to assemble a puzzle shaped like a human skull.
The inscription over the Buffalora Cemetery gate reads "RESVRRECTVRIS" ("THEY WILL RESURRECT" in English), and indeed, Francesco has had his hands full of late. Some of the dead interred in the cemetery rise from their graves prior to the seventh day of their internment, reanimated and ready to assault the living. Francesco, as if trapped in a Sisyphean cycle
Sisyphus
In Greek mythology Sisyphus was a king punished by being compelled to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, and to repeat this throughout eternity...
, is duty-bound as cemetery caretaker, to destroy the "Returners" before they overrun the town. Buffalora's mayor (Stefano Masciarelli) doesn't just disbelieve the cemetery caretaker's reports, but is so fixated on his campaigning that he seems unable even to hear Francesco's pleas for an investigation. Nor can Francesco surmount the complicated bureaucracy or mountain of paperwork to get assistance ("It's easier just to shoot them," says an exasperated Francesco). Accepting his fate, Francesco and Gnaghi spend their days tending the cemetery grounds, doing their best to counteract the decay of ages, and their nights planting bullets and shovels into the brains of the walking dead. "This is my business," he says before wearily dispatching a zombie motorcyclist. "They pay me for it."
At a funeral, Francesco falls hard and fast in love, with the beautiful young widow (Anna Falchi
Anna Falchi
Anna Falchi is an Italian-Finnish model and film actress.-Career:Anna Falchi was born Anna Kristiina Palomäki in Tampere, Finland, the daughter of an Italian father and Finnish mother. In 1978, at the age of six, she moved to Italy with her family. She started her career as a model...
) of a rich, elderly man. While consummating their relationship atop the grave, her husband returns, attacks, and bites the unnamed woman. Francesco's new love seemingly dies from the bite; however, the coroner later says she died of fright. Fearing the worst Francesco stays near her corpse believing she will rise as a Returner. When she does, he blindly shoots her, believing his love turned to a zombie. Later, she rises again as a true Returner. At this point, Francesco comes to believe that she was not really a zombie when he first shot her, making it him that truly killed her. After that, having lost his only love and destroying her, he begins plummeting into a deeper and deeper depression. Furthermore he is visited by the leering figure of Death
Death (personification)
The concept of death as a sentient entity has existed in many societies since the beginning of history. In English, Death is often given the name Grim Reaper and, from the 15th century onwards, came to be shown as a skeletal figure carrying a large scythe and clothed in a black cloak with a hood...
, who tries to recruit Francesco as a fellow reaper.
Francesco repeatedly encounters women, all played by Falchi and listed in the credits only as "She", who resemble his lost love. He goes to outrageous ends to be with them - when the object of his affection confesses to being terrified of the thought of men's penises inside her, Dellamorte visits the doctor to have his penis removed (although this does not happen, the doctor gives him an injection to temporarily be impotent) - but circumstance or fate always steals away Dellamorte's lovers. In this case, the woman he has gone great lengths to please is raped by the new mayor. She comes to find out that she enjoys sex and no longer has a phobia of men's penises. To this length she decides to marry the mayor still believing that Francesco is impotent. This is mirrored as Gnaghi becomes sweetly obsessed with the Mayor's capricious daughter Valentina (Fabiana Formica). This fixation would seem to end tragically when she is decapitated in a motorcycle accident. Instead, Gnaghi digs up her reanimated head, and an innocent romance begins.
Prodded by the twin specters of Love
Love
Love is an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment. In philosophical context, love is a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection. Love is central to many religions, as in the Christian phrase, "God is love" or Agape in the Canonical gospels...
and Death
Death
Death is the permanent termination of the biological functions that sustain a living organism. Phenomena which commonly bring about death include old age, predation, malnutrition, disease, and accidents or trauma resulting in terminal injury....
, Francesco begins to wonder if the easiest way to stop the dead from returning might be to shoot them in the head while they are alive. His grip on reality slipping, and despair mounting, Francesco heads into town square at night with his revolver, shooting the group of young men in town who has made fun of him for years due to his rumored impotence. He later meets a third manifestation of "She" and ultimately sleeps with her. Upon finding out that she is a prostitute he kills her by setting her on fire with a room heater. She and two of her friends are killed in the fire. His friend Franco is accused of the murders after he kills his wife, child, and attempts suicide the same night by drinking a bottle of iodine. Francesco goes to visit his friend in the hospital, and after killing a nun, a nurse, and a doctor Franco tells Francesco that he doesn't know who Francesco is. When even these desperately demonstrative acts fail to change Dellamorte's situation - he cannot even get himself arrested when bluntly confessing his crimes to the police - he and Gnaghi pack up the car, and head for the Buffalora city limits. "Past this town is the rest of the world," Dellamorte muses, "What do you think the rest of the world looks like?"
However, upon exiting the last tunnel out of town, they find the road is destroyed and they cannot pass. Gnaghi is injured when Francesco slams on the brakes, and his head impacts the dashboard. Francesco gets out of the vehicle and walks to the edge of the road where it drops into a large chasm. Gnaghi gets out of the car and begins to seize and collapses to the ground seemingly dead. Francesco, realizing that the rest of the world doesn't exist and fearing that his assistant is dead, loads a gun with two bullets to finish them both off. Before he can shoot, Gnaghi wakes up and throws Francesco's gun off the cliff. He then asks Francesco to take him home, speaking clearly. Francesco replies "Gna.".
Cast
- Rupert EverettRupert EverettRupert James Hector Everett is an English actor. He first came to public attention in 1981, when he was cast in Julian Mitchell's play and subsequent film Another Country as an openly gay student at an English public school, set in the 1930s...
as Francesco Dellamorte - François Hadji-Lazaro as Gnaghi
- Anna FalchiAnna FalchiAnna Falchi is an Italian-Finnish model and film actress.-Career:Anna Falchi was born Anna Kristiina Palomäki in Tampere, Finland, the daughter of an Italian father and Finnish mother. In 1978, at the age of six, she moved to Italy with her family. She started her career as a model...
as She - Mickey KnoxMickey Knox (actor)Abraham "Mickey" Knox is an American actor, screenwriter, film producer and novelist. He is associated with the Hollywood blacklist when he was forced to move to Italy to work. As an actor, he currently has 78 listed credits. Quentin Tarantino named his lead character after him in the film...
as Marshall Straniero - Fabiana Formica as Valentina Scanarotti
- Clive Riche as Dr. Verseci
- Alessandro Zamattio as Claudio
- Katja Anton as Claudio's girlfriend
- Barbara CupistiBarbara CupistiBarbara Cupisti used to be an Italian television and film actress who is well known outside of her native country by Horror fans. They will most likely recognize her from her films with director Michele Soavi.Since 2002 she started to direct....
as Magda - Anton Alexander as Franco
- Patrizia Punzo as Claudio's mother
- Renato Doris as She's husband
Title
The title Dellamorte Dellamore is a word playWord play
Word play or wordplay is a literary technique in which the words that are used become the main subject of the work, primarily for the purpose of intended effect or amusement...
in Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, della morte (spelled as two separate words) meaning "of death" and dell'amore (again spelled separately) meaning "of love", the whole title could also be translated as "On the Death of Love" or "About Love's Death".
The protagonist's surname is also Dellamorte and towards the end of the film we learn that his mother's maiden name was Dellamore.
Reception
The film was released in ItalyItaly
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
to little success. United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
distributor October Films
October Films
October Films was an American independent film production company and distributor founded in 1991 by Bingham Ray and Jeff Lipsky as a means of distributing the 1990 film Life Is Sweet...
changed its title to Cemetery Man and saddled the film with a campy ad campaign, finally releasing it on April 26, 1996. In the US, Cemetery Man received mostly negative critical reaction, small theatrical distribution (opening on six screens), and a frequently delayed Region 1 DVD release. The film missed popular success, grossing only $253,969 in the US, but found a stateside cult following
Cult following
A cult following is a group of fans who are highly dedicated to a specific area of pop culture. A film, book, band, or video game, among other things, will be said to have a cult following when it has a small but very passionate fan base...
over time, via home video. It currently holds a 64% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
and has a rating of 7.4 on Internet Movie Database
Internet Movie Database
Internet Movie Database is an online database of information related to movies, television shows, actors, production crew personnel, video games and fictional characters featured in visual entertainment media. It is one of the most popular online entertainment destinations, with over 100 million...
. Renowned director Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
called Dellamorte Dellamore one of the best Italian films of the 1990s.
Home media
Anchor Bay EntertainmentAnchor Bay Entertainment
Anchor Bay Entertainment is a U.S. based home entertainment and production company and is a division of Starz Media, which is a unit of Starz, LLC. It was previously owned by IDT Entertainment until 2006 when IDT was purchased by Starz Media. Anchor Bay markets and sells feature films, series,...
released the film on R1 DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
on June 13, 2006 under the American title Cemetery Man. The release features an anamorphic widescreen
Anamorphic widescreen
Anamorphic widescreen, when applied to DVD manufacture, is a video process that horizontally squeezes a widescreen image so that it can be stored in a standard 4:3 aspect ratio DVD image frame. Compatible playback equipment can then re-expand the horizontal dimension to show the original widescreen...
transfer, a making-of featurette entitled Death Is Beautiful, a theatrical trailer, and an 8-page collector's booklet. However, this DVD is currently out of print.
Sequel
In January 2011, FangoriaFangoria
Fangoria is an American magazine devoted to horror and exploitation films, which has a number of associated brands:* Fangoria Comics* Fangoria Films* Fangoria RadioFangoria may also refer to:* Fangoria , a Spanish electro pop band...
reported that director Michele Soavi
Michele Soavi
Michele Soavi, sometimes known as Michael Soavi is an Italian filmmaker.-Career:Michele Soavi was born in Milan. As a teenager, Soavi enrolled in creative arts classes and developed into a talented actor. He took acting lessons at Milan's Fersen Studios, but his greatest talent was working behind...
was planning a sequel
Sequel
A sequel is a narrative, documental, or other work of literature, film, theatre, or music that continues the story of or expands upon issues presented in some previous work...
to his 1994 film. Soavi plans to shoot the film sometime near the end of 2011 or early 2012. He will produce the film himself and wants the film to be a great, strong, shocking Italian horror film.