It Came from Late Night Cable: Cemetery Man

By Lisa Fary

I love late night cable and On Demand. The best stuff shows up there. Not “best” like Academy Award Winners; “best” like bizarre, bad, and often poorly acted. The stuff that never quite made cult status, but is campy as hell.  (See: Mindwarp, Zombie Lake, Swamp Thing). There are also some diamonds out there, too; movies I’d never seen or heard of, but are amazing. (See: Videodrome, Near Dark, Night Breed).

Cemetery Man isn’t a diamond. Not even a cubic zirconia. 

In this Italian film, Rupert Everett is Francesco Dellamorte, caretaker of the village cemetery. The villagers joke that Dellamorte is impotent, and constantly call him “Engineer”, which I’m guessing is a shot at his intelligence, since the only book he’s read is the phone book and he’s been working on the same skull puzzle for years (it only has like seven pieces!). 

What no one knows is that Dellamorte also has the task of re-killing the cemetery’s residents (which we get to see him do in the first few minutes. While dripping wet and barely contained by a bath towel). At night, they dig themselves out of their graves and Dellamorte and his mute assistant have to run around re-killing and re-burying them. 

The movie goes along like that for a bit with interludes wherein Dellamorte attempts to bed a widow and his assistant wants to marry the mayor’s daughter’s re-animated, dismembered head. 

Then it gets weird. 

Cemetery Man doesn’t have a single storyline; there is no final zombie uprising or anything like that. The story is mostly chapters of Dellamorte’s love life, which gets so screwed up that killing zombies is a familiar comfort by comparison. 

The Italian title is Dellamorte Dellamore (Of Death Of Love), which makes far more sense than Cemetery Man. Yes, Dellamorte is the cemetery man, but the film is more about everyone’s search for love and issues with death than about straight up zombie mayhem.  Throughout, there’s also the question of what exactly is real vs. what is happening just in Dellamorte’s head. 

When the camera pulls back in the final shot, it completely changes the movie (think St. Elsewhere series finale). I’m still conflicted about it. 

Cemetery Man may not be a late night cable diamond (or CZ), but there is a lot going on there. It’s a weird little movie with an unexpected depth. 

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Lisa Fary’s early exposure to classic Battlestar Galactica in 1979 is largely responsible for her lifelong interest in science fiction and her childhood ambition of being an intergalactic space cowgirl. She thinks diagramming sentences is a fun alternative to Sudoku.

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