Last year, I had the privilege of joining a film club that gathered monthly to watch horror movies inside a decommissioned morgue. The screen wasn’t the best, and the chairs weren’t as comfortable as the local Cineplex, but there’s something to be said about the magic involved in getting a bunch of people together in just the right mindset to enjoy macabre stories about the things that go bump in the night. I bring this up because there are plenty of scary movies that benefit from this added contract between the filmmaker and the audience, where viewers allow themselves to become fully immersed in a fictional world, no matter how bizarre it may seem.
And if there’s one movie that absolutely requires this kind of commitment in order to hit properly, it has to be Michele Soavi’s criminally underrated horror-comedy Dellamorte Dellamore – or, as it’s referred to in North America, Cemetery Man. A surreal exploration of love, death, and isolation adapted from the works of Dylan Dog creator Tiziano Sclavi and directed by a talented pupil of masters like Argento and Fulci, Cemetery Man has rightfully earned a reputation as the last truly great Italian horror picture.
With 2026 marking the 30th anniversary of the film’s North American release, I think this is the perfect moment to look back on Soavi’s idiosyncratic masterpiece as both a landmark in surreal horror storytelling and as one of the all-time best comic-book movies that isn’t technically based on a comic-book.
Of course, to fully understand the genius of Cemetery Man, it’s best to start this story with the rise of Tiziano Sclavi. An Italian writer who divided his time between short stories, novels, and news articles throughout the 70s before tackling comic books in the 80s, Sclavi became an infamous figure among genre fans when he created the iconic paranormal investigator Dylan Dog alongside comic artist Claudio Villa. Sclavi actually instructed Villa to watch the 1984 film Another Country so he could model their shared creation on English actor Rupert Everett, a decision that would affect the production of Cemetery Man years down the line.
Unfortunately, much like the yellow-shirted cowboy Tex and even the Italian adventures of Topolino (Mickey Mouse), Dylan Dog never quite broke through to the English-speaking world despite making his way across most of Europe (and even South America). While the character was popular enough to warrant a widely panned adaptation starring Brandon Routh back in 2011, real fans know that the only faithful adaptation of Tiziano’s comics is Dellamorte Dellamore.
After all, despite the film coming out after the success of Dylan Dog, the adventures of Francesco Dellamorte actually began as a novel that Sclavi wrote during the early 80s (but only published in the 90s), with the writer later cannibalizing many of his own ideas about a womanizing stoic who confronts undead monsters. In fact, Francesco later appeared in an issue of Dylan Dog loosely based on the then-unreleased novel, indicating that Sclavi never stopped thinking about this original horror yarn.
So once he made a name for himself in Europe, the writer decided to enlist the help of filmmaker Michele Soavi in order to bring his book to life as a standalone motion picture. Having already found success with his slasher feature Stage Fright, Soavi managed to convince a host of international patrons to back a strange little horror movie that might appeal to comic-book fans.
With money coming in from France, Italy, and even Germany, the filmmaking team was easily able to convince Rupert Everett to take on a role that had been meant for him from the very beginning. However, with the film being shot in Italy, it would be produced in the same “Tower of Babel” filming style that was popular in Europe before the turn of the millennium. Rupert spoke his native English while the rest of the cast spoke Italian, and everyone would later be dubbed in post-production as the project was handed over to international distributors.
Ironically enough, the main cemetery set was built over an abandoned Italian burial ground. Even the ossuary featured in the film was completely real, with Soavi later claiming that a crewmember regretted stealing bones from the site after encountering a vengeful ghost.
The finished film would hit Italian theaters in 1994 as Dellamorte Dellamore (literally translating to “Of Death, of Love”), with the story following cemetery caretaker Francesco Dellamorte (Everett) as he protects the grounds from the undead that occasionally rise from their graves. After an affair with a grieving widow (Anna Falchi) leads to her untimely death, Francesco and his intellectually disabled assistant Gnaghi (François Hadji-Lazaro) embark on a series of morbid adventures involving paranormal threats, small town politics, and the complications of love after death.
Later retitled and rereleased in America in 1996 as Cemetery Man (with new additions to the soundtrack, including Ozzy Osbourne’s rendition of Hellraiser), the movie was divisive among both audiences and critics. While some were enamored by the fascinating main character and the surreal atmosphere, others felt that the flick’s offbeat tone and anti-fascist agenda felt unpolished. Yet, over time, the movie developed something of a cult following as filmmakers like Martin Scorsese began to call it one of the greatest cinematic experiences of the 90s.
Of course, merely describing Cemetery Man doesn’t do it justice, as it’s the dreamlike experience of actually living through Francesco’s genre-bending adventures that makes the movie so memorable. Sure, there are zombies, but this isn’t really a zombie movie. There’s also plenty of romance (as well as some remarkably vivid sex scenes), but it’s also not a love story. And while you’ll inevitably laugh out loud at the overall absurdity of the plot, the constant existential anguish motivating our main character means that this isn’t a proper comedy either. It’s precisely this eccentric combination of contrasting aesthetics and influences that keeps me coming back to the film year after year – though it was only during my most recent rewatch at the morgue that I realized how much the experience benefits from a receptive audience.
At its best, Cemetery Man feels a lot like flipping through random issues of poorly translated euro-horror comics from the 80s, with each pulpy page offering gnarly visuals and erotic subtext while also seeming to cry out in anguish over a continent scarred by authoritarianism. This fever dream aesthetic might be off-putting to viewers who like their horror served with a side of logical worldbuilding, but I’m of the opinion that the emotional core of Francesco’s lonely existence firmly anchors the film in a relatable emotional reality.
Cemetery Man certainly has plenty of issues, such as low production value, problematic treatment of disabled people, and even the flick’s awkward approach to sexuality (and there is a lot of sexuality in this movie), but even these negative elements ultimately help to paint a grimy and nightmarish reflection of the real world. Hell, the final act here involves Francesco going on an American Psycho-style killing spree while reality unravels around him, so I think it’s safe to say that the film isn’t attempting to glorify our troubled main character.
Speaking of Francesco, Everett gives his career-best performance here as a complex individual who is just as much a budding Casanova in his romantic pursuits as he is Norman Bates in his social (and emotional) isolation. He may not be a traditional “good guy”, but I think anyone would lose their grip on sanity if they had to deal with Francesco’s grisly job.
There’s just so much to love here, from the gorgeous countryside visuals to the retro special effects (I’m eternally amused by the filmmakers’ attempts at creating ghost-lights by lighting cotton balls on fire and waving them around with fishing wire). That’s not even mentioning the hauntingly beautiful score by Manuel De Sica, which hits especially hard during that mind-boggling finale.
Part secret comic-book adaptation, part existential meditation on love/death, and part comedic takedown of Italy’s fascist past, Cemetery Man is just as much of an enigma as its seductive main character. The experience might be a little too weird for some folks, but I’d argue that the film is still worth revisiting 30 years later precisely because of how strange it is. So if you’re aching for more original horror, why not watch one of the only movies to ever truly capture the spirit of classic European horror comics?