Cemetery Man (1994)

Directed by Michele Soavi

Movie Review by Al Fleshrot

Summary
Francesco Dellamorte and his dim-witted pal Gnaghi work and live in the town cemetery. The cemetery has a problem keeping the dead buried - 7 days after death the deceased become zombies and dig out of their grave. Francesco keeps a revolver and puts the zombies to rest permanently when they rise. Things get interesting when the most beautiful woman Francesco has ever seen arrives to bury her late husband. They have a brief romance, culminating on the late husband's grave! He rises as a zombie and attacks his widow, but Francesco takes him out with a well placed cross to the skull. The widow is bitten in the process, and subsequently (according to the coroner) dies from fright. Later she rises again, and Francesco realizes in horror that she wasn't dead the first time he shot her. But before she can make a meal out of him, Gnaghi takes her out with a blow to the head. Meanwhile, a horrible accident between a bus full of boy scouts and some joy-riding motorcyclists results in a mass burial - including the mayor's young daughter with whom Gnaghi is infatuated. Francesco and Gnaghi have lots of work to do putting back down the boy scouts. The mayor's daughter was decapitated in the accident, so Gnaghi takes her head from the grave and keeps her in his cellar room. All the while, Francesco's mental stability has been wavering, and the turning point comes when a statue of the grim reaper tells him to stop killing the dead (because that's his job!), and to kill the living instead. This spawns a murder spree where Francesco shoots some motorcycle guys in town, burns down an apartment - killing the three girls within, and shooting some doctors and nurses in the hospital. Despite the overwhelming evidence against him, Francesco is repeatedly dismissed as a suspect by the detective! Finally he returns to the statue in the cemetery and tells it that he's getting out the of business, whereupon the statue asks Francesco where he will go. Francesco takes Gnaghi in the car and speeds out of town - soon going further than ever in his life. But they enter a long tunnel and on emerging from the other side find the road ends abruptly, overlooking a treacherous drop. And thus the movie ends, with Francesco realizing the rest of the world is dead.

Review
This is a good movie, but I call it a hybrid because it's main focus isn't really the zombies, but the cemetery man Francesco Dellamorte. Moreover, the zombies aren't running rampant attacking humanity - they just rise from the grave in this particular cemetery and are easily dispatched. In fact, the zombie bite doesn't cause the victim to become infected. The zombie scenes are quite entertaining - plenty of head bashing with shovels, a cross, and of course the trusty revolver. Francesco files the points of each bullet, resulting in nice cranial explosions when he shoots zombies in the head. The special effects are pretty decent - though you can actually see wires on some of the props (a fly in one scene, and some hovering blue lights). Once the movie transitions, it's not zombies anymore but the living that Francesco goes after. At that point it's unclear whether he's hallucinating, dreaming, or literally going on a killing spree! His dead lover reappears several times - once as the mayor's assistant and another as a student / hooker - and seems to know him. This lends to the dream/hallucination idea. And of course the grim reaper statue that talks to him is another clue. I loved the first half of the movie due to the comical zombie action, and the second half is good but bizarre.

Best Zombie Kill
The mayor shows up at the cemetery to do a photo op next to his recently deceased daughter's grave. But then he hears her voice calling, and finds her in the cellar with the half-wit Gnaghi - or rather her head, which is sitting inside the broken TV! She asks permission to get married to Gnaghi, but the mayor says not until his last breath. So she states that can be arranged, and the head flies through the air and repeatedly bites the mayor in the neck. Frencesco arrives and puts a bullet through the floating head, and the mayor convulses a few times and dies.

Best Zombie Death
Francesco and the widow are engaging in some extracurricular activity on top of the late husband's grave, coincidentally at the same hour he decides to rise. Suddenly he appears behind them, and the widow backs away in terror. The zombie bites her in the arm, but before it can do more harm Francesco attacks with a large cross he ripped from a nearby grave. Even though he is facing the zombie, one of the cross arms actually pierces the zombie through the back of the head and comes out through the mouth.

Memorable Scene
The mayor's daughter jumps on the back of a motorcycle with her boyfriend, and a group of them head up a winding road for a joy ride. Unfortunately a bus full of boy scouts meets them head-on around a curve. The crash is nasty as the riders smash into the front of the bus and get squashed. The mayor's daughter gets run over and her head pops off her body - flying through the air! Then the bus swerves off the side of the road, sending the scouts down a trail of death.

Al Fleshrot wants your brains

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