DELLAMORTE DELLAMORE (1994)
At this point in history there are few surprises to be found in the annals of zombie cinema. But watching something like Michel Soavi's horror comedy, also known as Cemetery Man, is a reminder that it doesn't have to be such a predictable genre. In fact it can be completely off the wall if things are done a creative way. Falling somewhere between Lucio Fulci's City of the Living Dead and Peter Jackson's Braindead in terms of the overall tone and content it's a pretty madcap experience to say the least. But these shorthand comparisons don't really do it justice since the film is more than the sum of its parts. And what a grotesque and yet beautiful assortment of parts they are.
Francesco (Rupert Everett) tends the graves in a strange Italian town where nothing is quite as it should be. The major problem is that his job doesn't just involve burying people six feet under, but also killing them a second time. For reasons that are never explained (and that nobody in the film seems that interested in looking into) some of the corpses rise again as 'Returners' seven days after the funeral. Sometimes there is no obvious time limit on this. Sometimes the Grim Reaper himself shows up to chastise him for shooting them, although there are no sinister repercussions. Sometimes the locals actually want to be eaten alive by their dead friends.
It's a bizarre and often incoherent story to say the least, but that's ultimately part of the fun. If baroque and frequently stomach churning B-movie sequences are your idea of fun of course. There's a corny and often darkly comedic overtone to the whole story as it veers between horror, town politics, and romantic melodrama. Francesco's main hobby is reading the phone book in between his excursions into the night to stop the walking corpses. A lot of people seem to know about this problem, but nobody seems to care. Maybe it's trying say something about red tape in provincial villages or make a connection between gun fanatics and impotence. Maybe it's just a lot of weird and twisted nonsense.
Outside the local post office (one of the few things to exist outside the cemetery) a biker gang laughs at Francesco's alleged sexual inadequacy. But this strange rumour turns out to be totally baseless when he falls in love with a young widow (Anna Falchi). In fact this is the first of several brief affairs he has with women who all have the same face. That is before each liaison ends in increasingly bleak ways and Francesco's madness increases. Is there really a connection between sexual passion and filthy graves? I'm not convinced. There is a certain sort of Gothic fantasy to the situation as things progress but that's probably less to do with the smell of death and the way it's all been photographed.
The film is visually stunning throughout whether it's showcasing the subterranean spaces of Francesco's dwelling or the nocturnal spectacle of the graveyard. The production design exudes a spooky aura in scenes filled with bones and glowing candles. Extreme close-ups and camerawork that glides between the tombstones lends it all a rotting texture. Supernatural lights dance beneath the trees and Memento Mori statues speak in riddles, adding a nightmarish and surreal quality to it all. Of course this is a horror movie from Italy so it's also brimming with sudden bursts of violence thanks to some intricate special effects. But it's never completely dour, after all this is a film in which detectives fail to notice anything wrong as people fall in love with severed heads.
Nobody in this whole oddball story acts like a real person, whether it's the local mayor (before and after he dies) or Francesco's almost mute assistant Gnaghi (François Hadji-Lazaro) who throws up seeing a girl he likes. Of course the girl thinks this is kind of cute and rides off without complaining... still covered in vomit. Francesco himself is partly sarcastic zombie killer and partly doomed romantic. On learning that one potential lover is afraid of sex he rushes to a doctor and demands to have the offending organs cut off there and then. The only logical turn of events in the whole story is when he finally decides to leave town, but of course there's no such thing as escape. It's a rich tapestry of absurd moments so in a way it makes perfect sense.
There are many of these kind of scenes in a film that's more an experience than a narrative. But it's always compelling rather than just being opaque. Perhaps it's because of Rupert Everett's deadpan delivery, or maybe it's just because each development is so unpredictable. There's a sense of escalation rather than just a series of strange dreamlike sequences, as can sometimes be the case with Italian horror. In a way it's just a melancholy meditation on the nature of obsessive behaviour, but in a way it's a zany thriller about unexplained phenomena. It's gross and nonsensical and perhaps that's the best way to approach a genre that is often so desiccated and dull.
4/5
BONUS REVIEW
THE CHURCH (1989)
Meanwhile the Knights Who Say Ni are causing trouble in an altogether less coherent Michel Soavi feature. It's still amazing to look at in many sequences and there's a great sense of dread throughout. But something is lacking here thanks to an underwritten narrative that lacks focus. The film-makers admit they didn't really have an ending in mind and it shows. But I have to say this is all still fairly hypnotic if nothing else thanks to more great production design. The plot is something to do with a church being built over a mass grave during medieval times so that evil can never escape. But explaining this one is a less than straightforward task.
After a brutal opening set piece in which knights murder a whole town just to get one witch, a cathedral is built so that its holy aura will make sure any Satanic influences stay buried. Of course this secret doesn't stay covered up after an incident involving a possessed librarian, a goat demon, and a man putting a jack-hammer into his own guts. What is the evil and what exactly is its motive? It's hard to say despite a lot of lurid images and some crazy scenes involving a photography crew being trapped inside the building. Monsters appear in many shapes and sizes but all that's clear is that a priest (Hugh Quarshie) has to find an architectural secret to stop things getting worse.
It's a problem that he's not really the main character, and that the story doesn't really have a protagonist. Asia Argento shows up as a descendant of one of the medieval peasants but it's never clear why. Barbara Cupisti plays an artist working in the church but she gets less and less to do as things go on. The movie gets more fantastical as it progresses but the narrative gets less engaging. In way it's strange that this was once touted as a third entry in Lamberto Bava's Demons series, but maybe that would have made sense of this after the church visitors are locked inside. However the third act doesn't deliver on the action potential of that idea. The results are interesting, and it looks and sounds great (thanks to a Goblin cover of Philip Glass) but overall it's a real mixed bag.
3/5
