Francesco Dellamorte (Rupert Everett) is drifting through life. No college degree — no high school degree, even. He admits that he’s only ever read two books in his life. One, he didn’t finish, and the other was the phone book. Did he finish that?
A dead end life inevitably leads one to a dead end job. In Francesco’s case, that’s as caretaker for the cemetery in the Italian town of Buffalora. His assistant is Gnaghi (François Hadji-Lazaro), a sensitive idiot whose only spoken words are the first syllable of his name, spat out like a child saying, “Nyaa!”
It would be a normal and dull job if all the pair had to do was bury the dead and keep graves clean, but, in Buffalora, the dead have the habit of coming back to life and clawing their way out into the light. So, every night, Francesco and Gnaghi have the unenviable task of smashing the brains of the undead and sticking them back in their graves.
Such is the setting for Michele Soavi’s Cemetery Man, an adaptation of a novel by Tiziano Sclavi (screenplay by Gianni Romoli), and which bears intentional similarities to Sclavi’s Dylan Dog comics.
A black comedy, Cemetery Man is an exploration of loneliness, found and lost love, and absurdity. The events of the movie could have been portrayed as downright horrifying, but all the blood and guts works as background. This is a horror movie that relies on story, and the spectacle supports that, rather than the other way around.
The clue to the film’s intentions is in its original, Italian title. Dellamorte dellamore translates to, if Google is to be believed, to Of the death of love. Perhaps a title like that would presage poor box office in the overseas market, but it is much more descriptive of the film, and has a flare that makes Cemetery Man feel generic.
Francesco’s love interest is played by Anna Falchi, billed only as ‘She.’ She is a recently widowed fox who mourns daily at her husband’s grave. Francesco doesn’t get out much, so he thinks it’s just fine to flirt at the cemetery. And, as we all know from watching a 
lifetime of movies, grieving after a personal tragedy is one of those times when women are most receptive to sexual advances. Well, it’s no more unbelievable than zombies.
Tragedy strikes and She is taken away. But, no worries. She continues to resurrect, not as a zombie, but as other, identical looking women, leading Francesco into a loop of chasing, and then losing, his one true love.
Meanwhile, things get busier in the cemetery, as folks keep dying. Some of them at Francesco’s hand. No worries for him, though. The local cop, Straniero (Mickey Knox) is thick as a brick, ignoring clues and facts that stare him right in the face. It’s all part of the absurdity.
Things move along quite well until the second act, which is always the toughest act in storytelling. It’s where a story can lose its thread, and begin wandering aimlessly, marking time until the climax. That happens in Cemetery Man, especially since Soavi included a voiceover from Francesco that is both sporadic and superfluous, a grave cinematic sin, but the doldrums don’t last long. Soavi brought his film back from the brink by stepping up the absurdity. It didn’t make the film any more humorous, but a logical resolution was never going to happen with this story.
Everett, at first blush, seems the wrong man for the role. He’s erudite and handsome, which doesn’t fit with the idea of a poorly-educated, lovable loser. But, his casting was essential for the Dylan Dog aspect, as his look was the basis for the comic character. He’s a talented actor, and he seizes the role with gusto. Both he and Hadji-Lazaro inhabit their roles fully. Soavi couldn’t have asked for a better pairing for these two characters.
Soavi was on a hot streak at this point in his career. This was his fourth feature. Two earlier films, StageFright and The Church, I’ve seen, and Cemetery Man is a wonderful addition to this oeuvre. Soavi was stepping out from under Dario Argento’s wing, and had quickly developed his own style of filmmaking, and his own sense of the mystic and horrifying. Soavi was no stranger to general horror tropes, or what one finds in Italian horror in general. But his movies are unpredictable in a way many other Italian horror films are not. That is, Soavi didn’t rely on confusing the audience with complicated plots and twists designed to obfuscate rather than clarify. Sure, the plot of Cemetery Man is nonsense, in that it can’t happen, but it doesn’t leave one scratching their heads.
Stylistic, weird, and fun. This film fits lines such as, “You know, you’ve got a real nice ossuary,” and, “Mind your business! I shall be eaten by whoever[sic] I please!” Check it out.