A rare case in which I watched something on the recommendation of a coworker; a coworker who loves gory horror movies and has a special attachment to zombie films. I should know better...but actually this combination exploitation/art film is pretty compelling at times, and if I were more a fan of the genre I might have really been blown away by it.
Dellamorte (Rupert Everett) is the caretaker of a small city cemetery in Buffalora who with his trusted sidekick/assistant Gnaghi (François Hadji-Lazaro) fights to keep the dead dead, as they seem to have the unfortunate habit of (sometimes) coming back to life. This is a delirious mixture of horror and farce in many ways reminiscent of the early films of Sam Raimi (Evil Dead 2 in particular) and Peter Jackson{Braindead) but with added elements of a romance gone bad (dead) and a satirical attitude about local Italian politics. In the end it's a bit too much, the building surrealism taking the film literally to the edge of a cliff and then just not having the energy to come to a conclusion worthy of its at time astonishing inventiveness. Still, well worth a watch and more proof -- if any was needed -- that there was much more vitality left in Italian horror than in the American slasher pics of the same period.
Dellamorte (Rupert Everett) is the caretaker of a small city cemetery in Buffalora who with his trusted sidekick/assistant Gnaghi (François Hadji-Lazaro) fights to keep the dead dead, as they seem to have the unfortunate habit of (sometimes) coming back to life. This is a delirious mixture of horror and farce in many ways reminiscent of the early films of Sam Raimi (Evil Dead 2 in particular) and Peter Jackson{Braindead) but with added elements of a romance gone bad (dead) and a satirical attitude about local Italian politics. In the end it's a bit too much, the building surrealism taking the film literally to the edge of a cliff and then just not having the energy to come to a conclusion worthy of its at time astonishing inventiveness. Still, well worth a watch and more proof -- if any was needed -- that there was much more vitality left in Italian horror than in the American slasher pics of the same period.