37. CEMETERY MAN

37. CEMETERY MAN
(1994)
Directed by Michele Soavi

This is the third and final movie from the 1990's to make my list (the other two being "Dead Alive" (1992) and "The Blair Witch Project" (1999)) and you might properly surmise that I don't consider this a particularly fruitful decade for horror films. "Se7en" (1995) was dark and interesting and "Scream" (1996) was a clever and thrilling ride but these are rare exceptions in a time period that left monster kids with a choice between a steady stream of yawn-inducing formula driven teen-oriented Hollywood horror and straight-to-video efforts from the likes of Troma and Full Moon. The latter were more subversive, ridiculous and entertaining, of course, but none can really compare to the grand mess that is "Cemetery Man". Directed by Argento apprentice Michele Soavi, it has assloads of visual flair and black humor. Rupert Everett stars as Francesco Dellamorte, cemetery caretaker, and for some reason the recently buried dead are clawing out of their graves and need to be dispatched a second time to stay down. Dellamorte tends to the problem with jaded precision but then things get complicated when a grieving widow with an erotic attraction to ossuaries played by jaw-dropping beauty Anna Falchi comes into his boneyard. The proceedings get increasingly strange until reality is abandoned altogether by the baffling final sequence. Nestled between the zombies and violence are moments of disarming visual beauty. A truly original movie from a disappointing decade.