Dellamorte Dellamore

Director: Michele Soavi
Writer: Gianni Romoli
Released: 1994
Cast: Rupert Everett, Anna Falchi, François Hadji-Lazaro, Mickey Knox

STEVE says: Sorry, did I say things could only go downhill after The Exorcist? My mistake. I didn't anticipate Dellamorte Dellamore being our second film.

Released in the States as Cemetery Man in 1996, I gave it a miss because the ads just made it look silly, and even back then I was sick to death of horror comedies. Five years later, my friend M'ike coerced me into watching his imported copy of the original Dellamorte cut, and I'll never be able to repay him. It was so incredible, so beautiful, so fucking amazing, I sat through the credits, rewound the tape, and watched it again. I watched it again the next day, and again the day after that, never tiring of it, never ceasing to find it enthralling.

And to this day, I still have no idea what it's really all about. To be honest, I don't want to know. It's like a Rorschach test: different people are going to see different things. But Martin Scorsese reckons it's one of the best Italian films of the 1990s, and if Marty likes it, I feel pretty secure in rating it as I do.

4.5/5