25. Cemetery Man

Were it not for George Romero’s seminal zombie films Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, I’d have absolutely no problem at all championing Michele Soavi’s 1995 film Cemetery Man as the greatest zombie movie of all time. A poetically beautiful meditation on life, love, and loss -- complete with a flying severed head – Cemetery Man   is a movie that rises well above the preconceived notions of genre cinema yet features enough horror staples to please even the most diehard gore fans.

Franceso Dellamorte (a young and not-quite-famous Rupert Everett) is the head caretaker at the scenic Buffalora Cemetery. Along with his mildly retarded sidekick Gnaghi, the two wile away the days reading the phone book, pondering the meaning of existence, and killing any of the newly risen dead with a well-placed gunshot to the brain. Things get more interesting with the arrival of voluptuous supermodel Anna Falchi -- whom Francesco falls in love with. Falchi plays three characters in the film -- all of whom torment Francesco at every turn. The surreal proceedings become even more bizarre with the appearance of death himself and Dellamorte’s own break with reality. All of this leads to an ending rife with meaning and subtext and almost completely out of place in the world of postmodernist ‘90s horror cinema.

The film (inspired by the Italian comic book Dylan Dog) is a technical marvel thanks to Soavi’s assured direction. Soavi learned his craft at the feet of Italian horror icon Dario Argento and Terry Gilliam (he did second unit work on numerous Argento films as well as Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen) and shows that the lessons he learned on those productions did not go unheeded. Unfortunately, this would be Soavi’s last big production -- like so many Italian horror icons, he works today primarily in television. While Cemetery Man had a domestic release in America (with the awful title -- the original Italian title of Dellamorte Dellamore was infinitely better), the film received no push from the studio -- and as such is one of the overlooked films of the past decade. (Mike Bracken)