In 1994 the Italian film industry, having been a major player on the world’s screens throughout the 1940s until the 1980s, was on its last legs. Those in the know point to interference from legendary sleazeball and occasional politician Silvio Berlusconi and his attempts to monopolise production with his company RAI, plus rising production costs which forced international co-productions away from Italy and towards the much cheaper Eastern Europe. Cinecitta, Rome’s legendary film studios which once saw hundreds of films being shot in a given year, was down to dozens. The golden age of Italian popular, which had given us the peplum, the Italian gothic, the Eurospy thriller, the spaghetti western, the giallo, the poliziotteschi and the Italian gore film was over. Directors like Ruggero Deodato found themselves making films for television; even Dario Argento tried to make films in America (without much success).
With hindsight it’s very tempting to call Dellamorte Dellamore the last gasp of the golden age. There were Italian horror films made after it, of course – Argento himself makes one every couple of years, to varying degrees of exasperation from fans – but it feels like an elegy in places, at once inspired by and commenting on the rich vein of fantasy cinema that came before it. The director, Michele Soavi, had certainly paid his dues in the Italian horror film already – first off as an actor (he can be seen in several fan favourites, such as City Of The Living Dead, New York Ripper and Demons), and after working as a second-unit director for Argento (Tenebrae, Phenomena) and Lamberto Bava (A Blade In The Dark, Blastfighter) progressing to helming his own pictures with the excellent Stage Fright (produced by Joe D’Amato) and two Dario-produced pictures, The Sect and The Church.
Dellamorte Dellamore was adapted from a novel by Tiziano Sclavi, the man behind famous Italian comic series Dylan Dog (he must be a big fan of the letter ‘D’), which has sold over 3 million copies (and several issues of which were translated into English by Dark Horse Comics). Dylan Dog featured as its main character a paranormal investigator who bares a striking resemblance to English actor Rupert Everett, and in a wonderful bit of casting, the film-makers managed to convince Everett himself to play the role of Francesco Dellamorte in the film (incidentally Dylan Dog was also filmed a few years back, sans Everett and apparently rather awful).
The story concerns the titular character Dellamorte (who complains of his weird name – ‘St Francis Of Death’), employed as the ‘caretaker’ of the Buffaloro Cemetery – a sprawling gothic resting place which resembles what might happen if Terry Gilliam went full goth. Dellamorte’s job isn’t as easy as you might expect, however, as it isn’t all tending graves and weeding borders. In fact, the cemetery’s permanent residents are restless, and at night Dellamorte and his idiot assistant Gnaghi (total vocabulary – “gnagh”) are forced to put flesh-hungry zombies out of their misery and return them to their rest. Dellamorte attempts to alert the authorities to the issue, but he is a bit of an outcast in the town, and even his one friend, a municipal clerk named Franco, is unable to help him through the piles of forms and red tape he needs to process. The nightly routine carries on, Dellamorte and Gnaghi resigned to their roles, until one day things are shaken up by the arrival of a beautiful, mysterious woman (Anna Falchi), who is attending the funeral of her elderly husband. Dellamorte falls in love, and when the woman reappears they embark on what must surely be one of the strangest affairs ever committed to film (where else will you find a woman who finds ossuaries sexy?). Around the same time Gnaghi becomes obsessed with the daughter of the local mayor, and the men’s romantic longings set off an even stranger turn of events as the film heads towards an outrageous conclusion.
If you’ve not seen the film then you probably have some idea of whether you would like it or not. If you’re the type who complains about the lack of realism in films, I would advise you to stay well away. If, however, you straddle the line between being a poetic, romantic soul and a dribbling horror fiend then this is almost certainly your new favourite film. I discovered it via a friend’s Japanese laserdisc sometime in 1997 (there was a limited VHS release in the UK, apparently uncut, under the alternate title Cemetery Man, which passed me by completely), duplicated it onto VHS (in these post-Pirate Bay days that almost seems legal and laudable, hey?) and proceeded to induct various friends into the cult of the film over the next few years. In fact, I was so taken with the film that I appropriated the main character’s name for my DJ alias, and have stuck with it ever since. Now you can get it in a spanking DVD edition from those weirdos over at Shameless (which Keri reviewed here), and I suggest anyone with an interest does exactly that.
And now twenty years have passed, and with every diminishing return of Dario Argento or brand new Italian horror project that fails to set the world alight, Dellamorte Dellamore looks more and more like the last gasp of the Italian golden age. But what a beautiful send off to have.