For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
– Edgar Allan Poe
The best comedy-horror films rest securely on the premise that the comedy works only because of the horror, and vice versa. Perfect symbiosis. And it’s always a balancing act. One misplaced joke or blood splatter and the seams are exposed.
Directed by Michele Soavi, Cemetery Man (1994) follows the macabre occupation—and preoccupations— of Francesco Dellamorte (Rupert Everett), a cemetery caretaker in a small Italian town. His domicile/lair is located on cemetery grounds. Dellamotre is assisted by Gnaghi (François Hadji-Lazaro), an Egor-like sidekick who does all the digging.
Poor Dellamorte not only has to bury the dead but is often required to kill them when they rise and stumble about as flesh-chomping zombies. He takes it all in stride, shoots a handgun with accuracy and sleeps soundly.
Trouble arrives with a woman, a beautiful, young widow (Anna Falchi). Dellamotre falls for this most fatale of femme fatales. He experiences true love, yet given his occupation and location, and the burden of slaughtering zombies, the romance is not without gothic trimmings. Eventually, it is Dellamorte’s turgid longing for a woman not of this realm that takes us to Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘Annabel Lee’.
A core difference between this film and the giallo genre is the low-level presence of irony found in the latter; with Cemetery, the grotesque is often overstated to the point where it remains cartoonish. Then, we are dragged back into the crypt with a clever, somewhat existentialist aside. Catholic iconography is everywhere, lending the presence of zombies and the occult an odd inevitability. Relics, relics everywhere. There is indeed life after death.
Rupert Everett, with his pale, vulpine face, and large, worried eyes, appears a natural habitant of the milieu. His performance is wonderfully paced and understated—which, given the subject, is another element of irony.
Cinematographer Mauro Marchetti displays a master class in strategic lighting, often doing a lot with a little. In that way, it is a little giallo-ish.
Few can conflate death and romance like Poe. Cemetery Man is a worthy disciple. However, it ends unresolved, confronting the sanctity of life, taking a breath, then standing on a precipice, bereft of direction.
Ah yes, a final irony.
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