Cemetery Man - 1994

 Also known as Dellamorte Dellamore.

This is a long promised review going back to the beginning of the blog with the Demons series, see the rundown of the series here. Demons was an early pick as to a long running series, and I guess it was finishing Witchcraft that made me think of it.  

Both of these series also sort of represent specific "ends of eras" to me in a way as well: Witchcraft is like the fun 80-90s series which clearly depicts for me when those types of things stopped being fun or at least the type of fun I go looking for.  Then Demons here represents the end of Italian horror, and sort of Italian influence in general?

France and Italy were historically the two most important European regions in cinema.  Just, as a statement, they were.  But what happened to Italy?  One could say technically Benigni and some others are still alive as far as big name known Italian directors, but really, what was the last BIG Italian art film, or even BIG Italian crossover hit?  France continues with directors like Gaspar Noe and Claire Denis.  But not Italy, in a way, Italy lost relevance around the same time Italian horror basically stopped.

Its easy to see why this is called Demons 95 or Demons 7 or whatever.  Michele Soavi is back, as are the living dead, this time coming alive around cemetery man Rupert Everett.  There is a cool depiction of the character of Death, and there are some awesome kills and blood sequences.  So it fits the bill. 

This is perhaps the latest of any Italian horror I've seen, and it is also the last of the classic feeling horror, not leaning into the tropes which would now predominate anything like this.  Its still dialogue and character focused, its still innocent in scope and free of CGI.  There's even nudity!  I liked this a lot, and I give it 4 stars.