Review by Louis Fowler | Available from Anchor Bay | Buy at Amazon.com
OK. I am going to admit something here. It may shock those of you who know me. It may lessen me in some of your eyes. But—here goes: until last night, I have never seen the classic Italian zombie film CEMETERY MAN. That's right—I had never seen it. I know…for a hardcore zombie fan, I might as well have just admitted that I had never seen DAWN OF THE DEAD or THE BEYOND. Insert frowning emoticon here.
It's not that I didn't want to watch it—quite on the contrary. It had always been on my rental list and I even owned a previously viewed VHS copy in the late 90s (I had to throw it out due to the fact every time I started it, one minute in, it would completely screw up my VCR heads). But even through all that, I just never was able to watch it.
Until now.
Anchor Bay, who we just might as well call the "Jesus Christ of cult film reissuists" (I accept them as my personal digital video disc saviors), has once again gone into the breach and pulled out yet another winner—the transcendent (and aforementioned) CEMETERY MAN, one of the best DVD's to be released this year. Now that I have seen it, I can authoritatively say that if you're a zombie-film fan and you don't own this, you're a poseur in need of a beating... a zombie beating!
Zombie films as we know them typically follow a basic formula: a group of stereotypes, usually oversexed teens, are trapped in some sort of edifice, possibly a shack in the middle of the woods in the middle of the night, and are besieged by the walking dead, usually with sub-Savini gore-filled results, but not-much else. No real story or character development needed. Lately, it seems that the WB-friendly casts get more press than the actual film. And while yes, I am all for the Chad Michael Murrays of the world to have their brains eaten, at least give me some sort of new take on the damn thing! Give me a refreshing spin on the whole scenario. Is it too much to ask? As someone who watches at least two zombie films a week, it gets old very fast. Very fast.
That's why I nearly plotzed when, finally, Michele Soavi's masterpiece arrived in the mail. I had been reading up on it in all the usually horror trades, psyching myself up for what has been called "one of the best horror films" ever made. I tore that package open and within two minutes, I was on the couch, absorbing every minute of it.
The ultra-dashing Rupert Everett is Francesco Dellamorte, a lovelorn, impotent cemetery watchman whose main job is to stop the "returners" as they rise out of their graves. A returner, as you may have surmised, is a zombie. It appears that, inexplicably, six or seven days after burial, random corpses claw their way out and walk around, looking for flesh to feast on, as zombie are wont to do. Along with his child-like, possibly mentally handicapped assistant Gnaghi (Francois Hadji-Lazaro), they lead an empty-yet-seemingly-content life on the outskirts of society. Matters get complicated when Francesco falls for a young widow (the ever-so-busty Anna Falchi), whom, in a chance accident, also becomes a zombie—then things get even crazier. Gnaghi falls in love with a decapitated head, Francesco becomes a serial killer of sorts and, if that weren't enough, in the end, the film veers into existentialist territory, asking questions that the typical zom-film never would.
Of course the direction by Soavi is impeccable. He's an Argento protégé and it shows. It's gory when it has to be and, if this makes any sense, beautiful when it normally shouldn't be. Erotic without being Joe d'Amato-esque, blood-soaked without being Fulci, CEMETERY MAN is the perfect example of how perfect Italian horror can be. It's a true masterpiece and a testament to how, even in the most tired of genres, new life, so to speak, can be injected into it.
