This film is kind of like a bridge between Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness, in my opinion. It is not as scary as Evil Dead II, but not as illogically funny as Army of Darkness. It's also similar to Shaun of the Dead (2004) in many ways, like the main character being British, the humor is similar, and there's a fat guy and skinny guy that are best friends and killing zombies. This movie is based on The Dylan Dog comics. Dellamorte is the caretaker of a Cemetery in Italy, where the died have a bad habit of rising a week after their death. The feel of the film is a mixture of neo noir, zany black comedy, horror, and a cynical look at love and life. The romance part of the film is similar to that of the original TV show Dark Shadows, in that the main character keeps finding different incarnations of his lost love. This
one has a huge cult following, but I liked it less and less as the film progressed. The film starts off as interesting and funny, and the main character is likable and easy to be empathetic with, but the character does a 180 in the last 15 minutes of the film, and though it is believable that he would be crushed and cynical at that point, I did not find it believable that he would make the decisions that seemed SO far out of his character, even if he was crushed. I also thought this was going to be more of an adventure film but the horror and comedic aspects of the film seem to be just a distraction from what the director intended to be the meat of the picture, which is his musings on love and death.So what I did dislike of the film was its indecisiveness with its plot (the plot seems to switch at times which makes it seem like you're watching several different movies with the same characters, which though interesting, I felt was poorly executed), its feel, and the convictions of its characters, but because both life and death are unpredictable it still kind of works. It is pretty funny at times, and the acting is well done. So I give it a 4/5, you can view the trailer below:
I normally don't like films by Lucio Fulci, they are usually far too graphic and gory for me, and this film was no exception. Fulci's most famous film is 1979s Zombie: We're Going to Eat you! also known as "Zombi 2". Fulci's horror movies are famous for their gore (think Dario Argento's typical violence taken up a notch). Fulci also has some films famous for their Gothic imagery though, and this is one of those (the other one being The Beyond). I liked the cinematography as a whole, very similar to an Argento film, and I liked the fact that they actually filmed part/parts of this film on location in New York, because typically if foreign low budget independent movies are set in US cities, they film them in a different country and just try to get away
with it (Inferno[1980] for example). The sets and music were also really good. The adult actors were good, but the little boy annoyed me though ( they also dubbed his voice with a voice that did not seem to fit his age or looks). Plot wise I thought the story was very confusing, the boy's nanny seemed to have some sort of connection to the murders and such, but that was never really explained. The husband also had a secret and it's confusing if his secret was an affair, or something connected to the murders, not to mention the ending didn't really make much sense either (also similar to an Argento film that way). Plus I found the "monster"'s costume to be really fake, it didn't really have a face, it was horrible. And of course as I mentioned before it was far too gory for my taste, I'm talking Dead Alive (1992)[aka Braindead] levels of gore here. Too many limbs everywhere and too much bizarre mutilation, and when all that is shown, the camera sits on it for WAY too long in my opinion, a la David Cronenberg style. I give this one my lowest rating yet, a 2/5. I should also mention that like most of Dario Argento's films, and old Spaghetti Westerns, this film is dubbed in english, even though some actors and characters in it did speak english. This one is available to stream on Hulu.com, you can also view the trailer below:
