TGGeeks We had the immense pleasure of screening this film on 35MM during the Horrible Imaginings Film Festival in San Diego. The print was immaculate. We found this to be one the most artistically beautiful movies in a long time. This gorgeous Italian film from 1994 stars Rupert Everett (as Francesco Dellamorte) and is entirely in English. The filmmaking style is unlike anything I've ever seen before and deals with a cemetery caretaker who must kill the deceased when they return as zombies. The style of this movie clearly took me back to the heyday midnight monster (or in this case zombie) movies. At times the movie comes off as almost hallucinatory in its imagery, but all the while gives us a rich looking movie accompanied by a spectacular music score. It's basically comprised of what could be considered story vignettes, all threaded together by Francesco's responsibility to rid his little community of Buffalora of its zombies. If you're a fan of artful movies, or even zombie movies, then this is a film you definitely need to see!

calvinnme What can you say about a movie that brilliantly intertwines zombies inexplicably rising from the dead in one particular cemetery, one misfit man who has the lonely mission to kill them and then goes insane doing it, and the mixture of horror and religious symbolism as only the Europeans can do it? The final scene of the movie has you questioning whether any of these people ever existed at all, even within the context of the film. In this last scene, Dellamorte (the cemetery man) decides to just drive away from the existence he has had up to now and start over somewhere else. However, when he leaves the tunnel that connects the town with the main highway he finds ... nothing. The world just ends as if you were on the set of "The Truman Show". You'll certainly never look at a snow globe the same way again.Did Dellamorte hallucinate the whole movie? Did the audience dream the whole movie? Are we all just characters in someone else's imagination? For you Buffy fans out there, you'll love the mixture of someone on a lonely thankless path to save the world and a tragically ended romance due to the protagonist's focus on his mission.

Mikel3 ********************************************************** ************** Warning Spoilers ************************** ********************************************************** As a zombie film I found the movie lacking. Luckily it seems to have deeper layers to explore and only in that and some of the visuals is it worth seeing. I just hope the writers intended the deeper meanings and I'm not seeing what was never meant to be there. My initial thoughts while watching this film were that Dellamorte's experiences were different guises of what humans experience as love. For instance the all consuming "love" of the teenager infatuated with the dead motorcycle guy. She couldn't deal with the thought that he may have loved another woman and not her. These feeling were manifested in her being literally eaten alive by his zombie self and her accepting it as her fate in order to please him. There were crimes that were committed and not blamed on Dellamorte. As if no one could come to grips with the fact that love can kill, especially scorned love or rejected love. Instead the inspector looks for another killer, because Dellamorte (who represents the focal point of love here) could not possibly be the killer even if all evidence points to him. Dellamorte even gets angry that his murders are being stolen from him. Nobody can see love as the killer or at least nobody wants to see love that way. In the first incarnation of She (Anna Falchi) we see what is probably Dellamorte's first real encounter with love/Sex. His first is a woman who shares his obsessions with death and uses it to bring out their passion. But this sort of passionate first love is fleeting and can't last it will eventually burn out and usually does quickly. The emotional specter of her own passionate first lover is there to haunt them and literally rises from the grave to kill her. Then there was the love that a man might feel is emasculating and a folly. This is shown by the second incarnation of She (Anna Falchi). Dellamorte is willing to cut off his genitals for her because the thought of making love is so frightening to her. His reward later is to find she has fallen for another man. This after driving him to try and commit the ultimate act to retain her love. He was willing to make this extreme sacrifice for her, ruining any possibility of other lovers for him. But instead of loving him back she falls for the man who abused and raped her. He was emasculated in two ways physically and mentally by her actions. Luckily thanks to the Doc one was only temporary. Or there was the guise of love that is really only greed. In the third incarnation of She, Dellamorte wishes to hear her say she loves him when they first meet. She does so to please him and then supplies him with a night of passion and joy, but not without a price. In the morning he finds that it's time to pay for her "love" with money. I believe there was one scene where Dellamote even said that his mother's name meant "Love" and how ironic that was to him. Of course I have only scratched the surface here trying to explain my reasoning. I think others who have seen the film may find other examples of the role the faces of love plays in the story. It's worth seeing if you take it at more than it's face value as a zombie film only.

trashgang I had seen this years ago and didn't understand what all the fuss was about but I picked it up again now that it is available on Blu Ray. On part of the effects it looks great and it do has an Italian feeling. The parts with Gnaghi (François Hadji-Lazaro) are the funny parts, just watch when he's digging up a corpse but ends up with the head. But the main lead is for Francesco Dellamorte (Rupert Everett) the guardian of the cemetery of Buffalora. But there's a problem with the cemetery. The death come back alive, it's never explained why or how they do come alive again but in fact that's what it's all about. Killing the zombies. But this flick became a classic due the gore attached and the effects who looked stunning done by Sergio Stivaletti (did a lot of Italian gore flicks). The crash with the bus and the motorcycle is the real stuff. But it's also famous for the reason that Dellamorte mostly falls in love with the death and the people visiting the cemetery. Most notorious is the love scene with Valentina (Fabiana Formica) in her first role ever making it out on a grave both in full nudity. For me this isn't a classic, but I agree that the effects alone are worth watching. It's a bit too slow in some parts for me, there are better Italian flicks out but at the end of the day who am I to complain. Not really horror and the zombies doesn't look dangerous at all and still you keep watching...Gore 1,5/5 Nudity 1/5 Effects 4/5 Story 2,5/5 Comedy 0,5/5