A playful and funny movie with sympathetic characters, Cemetery Man is a hard film to pin down just right. It really only got play in America because lead star Rupert Everett's My Best Friend's Wedding was a hit, but it was wrongly sold as a quirky horror flick like Evil Dead, which it isn't, really. Cemetery Man uses horror the way Edward Gorey or Charles Addams might, but the horrific things they simply imply, this film shows in all of its splat-stick glory like Peter Jackson and Sam Raimi did once. It's glib and comical, but the two leads inspire sympathy. It's a zombie movie, but only for about the first two thirds, after which it becomes a sort of playful meditation on how life, love and death tend to go. All of this sounds like a boring mess on paper, but it is such a surprisingly deft bit of film that it all cranks by smoothly and slaps a grin on our faces.

"Cemetery Man" is the American name applied to Michele Soavi's 1994 Dellamorte Dellamore, a film adaptation of the book written by Tiziano Sclavi, known for his million-selling comic Dylan Dog (from which the Dellamorte Dellamore book springs.) Instead of telling a story straight ahead start to finish, it tells three stories connected by the point of view of the two central characters, and it does it with plenty of blood and a good bit of hot hot sex supplied by the hot hot Anna Falchi, who appears as three separate people in this film.

This is visually a beautiful movie, with the sort of cinematography Dario Argento managed when he wasn't making a giant rock video, and touches of Sergio Leone in the way the characters hit the frame. Michele Soavi is actually a protégéof Argento, and in our opinion beats him at his own game, as twelve years on this flick still looks very fresh while Dario's stuff screams 80s at you with both smoke machines.

Okay, here's the skinny for those already familiar with the film: Anchor Bay's Cemetery Man region one DVD (available June 13) is in anamorphic widescreen (1.66:1.) It features an overall good and fairly sharp picture that has a fair amount of film grain, but not enough to ruin things. The blacks are black, and the colors are sweet. For the purists Medusa's Region Two PAL DVD still looks a little better (Dvd Maniacs compares the two here), but the image on Anchor Bay's DVD release is fine and light years better than the crappy old pan and scan release from Fox which bites hard into the excellent cinematography, and is much better than the Spanish and German ones floating around on ebay.

The audio comes in Dolby digital 5.1 and surround 2.0. There is still no commentary track from director Michele Soavi, the thing fans seem to want most, however the main extra feature and one specific to this DVD release is a feature called "Death Is Beautiful", wherein Soavi explains both where he and the film are coming from to very satisfying degree -- we found it to be surprisingly good and informative, far better than the usual pointless wank tacked on to the ass end of most horror and small gene films. Anna Falchi makes an interview appearance mostly to answer the burning question of "is she still that hot?" Yes. Yes she is. God yes. Sadly however Anna's real life sexpot raspy voice remains dubbed over by what we're convinced is Rita Rudner trying to imitate a porn star. Boo. The disc will retail for about $19.98.