Dellamore Dellamorte Review (1994)

DELLAMORTE DELLAMORE (aka CEMETERY MAN)

Review by Danny Frankenstein

"Love Never Dies"
 
If you ever wondered what would happen if an Italian art-film director, a sleazy pulp novelist, and a necrophiliac philosopher walked into a cemetery together — Dellamorte Dellamore is the answer. Directed by Michele Soavi (Argento’s wayward protégé) and starring a Rupert Everett with cheekbones sharp enough to cut marble, this 1994 oddity is part zombie flick, part sex comedy, and part existential meltdown. Basically, Evil Dead and 8½ had a weird baby and left it in a crypt to raise itself.
 
Everett plays Francesco Dellamorte, the cemetery caretaker whose main job is re-killing the corpses that won’t stay dead. His sidekick Gnaghi is a lovable lunk who falls in love with a severed head (hey, who hasn’t?).

When Francesco meets Her (Anna Falchi, the dictionary definition of “buxom Italian horror goddess”), the poor guy tumbles headfirst into a black-comedy spiral of lust, death, and absurdity. It’s Harold and Maude meets Return of the Living Dead on espresso and despair.
 
Note: the whole thing is based on the 1991 novel by Tiziano Sclavi, the same twisted genius who created Dylan Dog, Italy’s best cult horror comic.
In fact, Rupert Everett was the visual inspiration for Dylan Dog — meaning the movie is basically a meta Italian horror story starring the guy the comic was modeled after.

Try explaining that to someone who thinks “meta horror” started with Scream.
 
The movie looks gorgeous — all rotting marble, candlelight, and soft-focus rot. It swings wildly from slapstick to tragedy faster than a reanimated corpse doing the mambo.
There are scenes that feel like Fellini on cough syrup and others that could’ve been storyboarded by a teenage goth girl after too many viewings of Twin Peaks.
By the time the world folds in on itself in a snow-globe apocalypse, you’ll be muttering, “What the hell did I just watch?” — but you’ll be smiling while you say it.
 
Bottom line: Dellamorte Dellamore is the most beautiful, melancholy, perverted love letter to death ever put on film. It’s funny, tragic, horny, and philosophical — like a poetry slam in a morgue.

It makes no sense, but it doesn’t need to. It’s got zombies, sex, and Italian existential dread — the holy trinity of Euro-horror.