An absolute waste of money

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Even though it never got boring I must say that halfway I knew that his movie was not going to have a storyline that would stick with me. Actually I am not sure if there is much story in it as the whole picture looked more surreal than anything else. Was it the protagonist's dream or nightmare? A place he cannot get out and one girl he just cannot get out of his head and she keeps returning in several disguises no matter how many times he kills her of. Lots of symbolism that might get over your head (it went over mine since I wasn't expecting that kind of movie). Too bad Rupert Everett's character was quite dull. I don't think he cracked a smile once, looking like sad animated character Droopy in pretty every scene. The character of Ghaghi was much more interesting to me. As disturbing as it was his love for the Mayor's daughter even when she became little more than an undead head was quite sweet. But when this angle was quite literally killed of by our tragic hero my interest in this flick was pretty much over.

The main problem with this thrown together piece of garbage is that it is merely a bunch of scenes where someone probably said 'Hey, you know what would be cool to see? X. Let's put X in it.' The film goes nowhere, makes no sense, and is pretty badly done. The special effects are also really bad, and not worth paying to see. (15% of their SFX budget was spent on fishing wire.) Reading these reviews here is like some kind of collegiate masters degree program in circle jerking. Everyone who is calling this some master work of art probably keeps their finger on the edge of their lip too much, nods their head, and speaks in a drowsy dismissive satirical upper class tone to everyone who disagrees so they won't be outed as the imbecile pseudo-intellectual sycophant they are. There is no plot to the movie, no coherency, and none of the ideas are followed to their logical conclusion or even exploited to retain the audience's interest; the script makes no sense and neither does most of the dialogue or events. The characters make no sense, and do not act in any consistent way. The police do not follow up leads, the idiot is or isn't actually smart, the hero is or isn't in love.. and the best friend we see twice is now a spree killer but only at the house the protagonist lit on fire to kill the 3 women the best friend actually killed during the fire? What? And this comes at the last third of the film? What? Who does that?Again their behavior is a result of an amateur writing with the 'You know what would be cool/funny?' or 'You know what all really good horror films have in common?' mindset, with no structure to the story at all. There is no continuity, and the only theme is it's set in a cemetery and one of the characters is a man. Otherwise, the film is nothing but an excuse to see the exquisite body of Anna Falchi(Anna Kristiina Palomaki) nude. And well, I can't argue there, that is the only reason this movie gets 3 stars from me, otherwise it is at best some first year art student's film project (hint; the student in question was majoring in booger sculpture, and not film). And this review contains no spoilers because nothing happens in the movie. This is a bad movie, and now only one of the only 3 I have ever walked out on. One being revenge of the nerds part 2, and some other film that was so bad I just went to another theater and forgot about it. It is really amazing to me though how peer pressure for 'horror aficionados' makes them all give great reviews for intrinsically bad movies just because they are horror films and they are fans circling the wagons or something. If you want to see a horror comedy Frankenhooker or Shaun of the Dead are better picks by astronomical leaps and bounds, and they actually have real stories, not a Tommy Wiseau type of after-the- fact reasoning that you are not looking deeply enough to discover the meaning. I won't because there is none. I don't dig through dog turds to discover meat scraps. The message of the movie is is this; if you are a name dropping director you know you probably have a good chance to sleep with the actresses you audition for movies so pick one you really like and write a terrible movie to cover it up. Final review; crappy movie + exquisite woman still can't save film. A horror comedy film where the best comedic acting was done by zombie boy scouts in 10 seconds is not that good.

Italian zombie movies come with their own set of rules and clichés. By 1994, the extreme gore and apocalyptic visions the genre is famous for were well-established. Michelle Soavi's "Cemetery Man" shows its disinterest in the tradition of the genre in its opening minutes. After a long pan out of the inside of a skull, Francesco Dellamorte causally, without care, shoots a zombie in the head, paying it little mind. "Cememtery Man" has zombies in it but is not a zombie movie. Instead, it's a surreal, absurdist voyage into the Freuadian psycho-sexual subconscious of its lead character.Adapted from a novel by Tiziano Sclavi, itself a spin-off of Sclavi's immensely popular "Dylan Dog" comic, the movie takes a semi-episodic look at the life of Francesco Dellamorte, the caretaker of a cemetery in the small Italian town of Buffalora. The dead buried in the cemetery have a nasty habit of returning to life. However, Francesco's concerns are elsewhere. He worries about loosing his job, keeping the zombie infestation a secret. He wonders if his life has meaning and if he'll ever get out of his dead-end corner of the universe. A plot line slowly forms, revolving around Francesco meeting the woman of his dream, only for her to die, and reappear again. The troubles in Francesco's life pile up, culminating in visions of Death itself, prompting him to murder the dead while they're still living.Soavi loads his film with symbols, layers, and deeper meanings. A first time viewer just has to let the dreamy "Cemetery Man" wash over them. Repeat viewers are allowed to examine the picture, discerning the purpose behind its images and stories. Francesco has no concern for the dead, apathetically slaying zombies. He has little regard for life either, even before his murder sprees start. He struggles to find meaning in his life, has few friends, and no future. The cemetery becomes his prison, the job and the town around inescapable. The events of the film are representative of his inner turmoil. The ending and snow globe imagery reflect this, showing Francesco as trapped in his own cycle of self-defeat. The script acknowledges that this is the protagonist own fault. Dim-witted Gnagi has no problem assembling the skull puzzle Francesco struggles with.The original Italian title is "Dellamorte Dellamore," translating as "Of Death, Of Love." The love of Francesco's life is a nameless woman that keeps returning to his life. Credited only as She, the woman sets up her own purpose earlier on, asking the man if she "can return." She is represented by billowing scarfs. The title is visually illustrated when her bright red scarf, representing of love, blows onto a pile of skulls. The nameless woman is less a character then another symbol of Francesco's self-inflicted torture. During their graveyard set sex scene, the woman stand behind a statue of a headless angel, the wings behind her. Later, the wings fall off the statue, beside Francesco's feet, marking them both as fallen. The first time She dies in Francesco's arms, he is unable to save her. The second time he lets her rotting zombie chew on him. The third encounter shows his suffering over a woman he barely knows isn't worth the trouble it brings. By her fourth appearance, Francesco has come to actively resent his love, another symbol of his endless frustrations. Love, like death, is never as simple as it's supposes to be.Don't think "Cemetery Man" is a pretentious study in symbolism. The movie has a darkly comic absurdist streak running through it. This is most evident in Gnagi, Dellamorte's sole friend and companion. The rotund Gnagi resembles Uncle Fester and speaks only one word, a grunting "Gna!" He grotesquely scarfs spaghetti and mindlessly watches television. He hordes dried up leaves in the same way Francesco hordes old telephone books. Like Stan, he shows his romantic interest in the mayor's daughter by vomiting on her. Despite perishing immediately afterwards in a motorcycle crash, Gnagi still gets to have a relationship with the girl. He removes her zombified head from her glass coffin, serenading her with his violin. The girl('s head) is charmed by the bizarre Gnagi and happily takes up resident in his blasted-out TV. Humor is all over the place in this film, from the oddball motorcycle riding zombie, the girl willing to have her undead boyfriend chew on her, the mid-film absurdist take on Tod Browning's "The Unknown," the mayor's morbid political grubbling, to Rupert Everett's sarcastic line readings. For all its melancholy and existential wandering, "Cemetery Man" is a very funny movie.It's also, visually, quite a beautiful one. Soavi has always been a fantastic visualist but he tops himself here. The cemetery is another world. Torquise balls of swamp fire dance through the air. Fog billows among the grave stones. The gates and walls of the graveyard seem to close in on the characters as the story goes on. The tombs are painted in blues and violets. Soavi places his camera in creative locations. It slides between floorboards, under coffin lids and even peers out of a floating head's mouth. Inside of showing the aftermath of a violent shooting in a simple A-to-B fashion, the camera spins upside down. "Cemetery Man" is equally moody and creative in story and visual presentation.The ending is inscrutable at first. However, I finally gleamed its meaning on this rewatch. Francesco realizes his greatest treasure had been beside him the whole time and, still unable to escape his own world, devotes himself to his stalwart companion. Rupert Everett is perfectly cast in the lead, Francois Hadji-Lazaro makes one word mean so much, and Anna Falci is achingly desirable. "Cemetery Man" is a unique, beautiful film, Michele Soavi's masterpiece, a one-of-a-kind treat for adventurous horror fans.

This plays as if Argento, Kafka, Dali, Leone and Romero went to the pub one night, got hammered on absinthe and collectively said: "You know what would be a good idea for a film...?" CEMETERY MAN is an Italian black comedy zombie flick that effortlessly succeeds at being weird, bizarre, unconventional, erotic and generally unnerving throughout. It is at times crass and gross, arty and visually sensual, confusing and uneven. But it remains consistently quite compelling and utterly impossible to pigeonhole.Rupert Everett plays the caretaker of a provincial cemetery where the dead come to life and it's his job to put them back in the ground by delivering extreme head trauma with bullet, blade and blunt instrument. Add three women in his life, played by the same actress but apparently different characters, a semi-mute and mentally deficient assistant who is in love with a talking severed head in a bridal veil, a dumb and clueless cop, a gang of biker delinquents, serial murder and the grim reaper himself. Then chuck in some metaphysical philosophy on the nature of existence and what constitutes the world, life and death, along with a dash of surrealism, a pinch of necrophilia and a large dose of graphic violence and gore and there you have it. Or there you don't exactly, because these elements only scratch the surface without touching upon the multiple undercurrents, plot threads and shrouded meanings running beneath.It was a financial failure and critically ill-received on release. Prime cult fodder, then, and that status gave it a reputation and saved it from obscurity. Whether you enjoy it or not is in the lap of the gods. I can imagine a lot of people had their expectations subverted because without some foreknowledge it isn't going to be what most would expect. The wide-open-to-interpretation ending will please some and confound others. If you are on the lookout for something twisted, off key and original, give it a shot. Just don't expect a conventional zombie-fest.