Tomb
See if you can identify this zombie/romance/dark comedy before the end of the column
The scene: the mayor of a small Italian town is visiting the local cemetery to dig up the grave of his teenage daughter in order to photograph her corpse for a campaign poster.
Classy.
He hasn’t even figured out the exact approach he wants to take with his ghastly corpse-billboards and is brainstorming freely with his campaign manager while the cemetery custodian digs up the coffin. The mayor doesn’t seem particularly distraught upset or irrational; in fact he’s in rather good spirits as though he’s just realizing how his offspring’s premature death could improve his chances of re-election. This is what we call “dark comedy” and it’s about to get weirder.
I admit to being a trifle curious about what kind of effect this bizarre campaign strategy would have on the voters. Is there a chance it could work? Would people actually say things like “I think I’m going to vote for the guy who put that dead girl on his posters. He’s a real go-getter”?
Well I guess we’ll never know because when the coffin gets unearthed the girl’s head is missing. The mayor sees this as a drawback to using her as a model. Even if he’s flaunting his loss to the public there are limits. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde “To lose one’s daughter may be regarded as a misfortune; to subsequently lose her head looks like carelessness.” If a mayoral candidate can’t keep track of his own daughter’s head how can he keep track of water rates and zoning legislation? He’s lost my vote!
“What’s the meaning of this?” gasps the mayor. The custodian gives an offhand shrug and lights a cigarette. All is not lost however as the daughter’s voice rings out from a ramshackle building in the centre of the graveyard. “Daddy-kins! Daddy-pie!”
Overjoyed at the sound of the familiar voice the mayor enters the building and finds his daughter sitting with Gnaghi (François Hadji-Lazaro) a chubby mute commoner. The daughter Valentina (Fabiana Formica) greets her father sweetly and introduces him to Gnaghi announcing that they intend to get married and asking for his blessing. The mayor does not approve.
Oh did I mention that Valentina’s head is a zombie? This particular cemetery has a bit of a zombie problem. Long story. Anyway Valentina’s head is perfectly lucid and polite and she lives in Gnaghi’s broken TV set where she sings to him while he plays a homemade violin. Gnaghi had a little crush on her when she was alive so he dug up her head after her fatal traffic accident and they’ve been seeing each other ever since. It’s kind of sweet really.
The mayor doesn’t see it that way and makes unkind comments about Gnaghi. “I’m not such a great catch either Daddy” mutters the head. When the mayor says that the couple will never marry while he still has breath in his body Valentina solves the dilemma the zombie way — by flying out of the TV set and biting her father on the neck. See you should never back-talk zombie heads even if you’re related to them.
Later the mayor becomes a zombie himself and tries to scale the wall of the cemetery. He’s interrupted by the custodian who wearily tells him to stop causing trouble. When the zombie snarls “I am your mayor” the custodian casually puts a bullet in his brain and mutters “ex” with laconic disdain. Just another day in the life of cemetery custodian Francesco Dellamorte (Rupert Everett) the hard-working gravedigger who’s been single-handedly dealing with zombies for years now as part of his daily routine.
This sequence comes in the middle of the film Cemetery Man (a.k.a. Dellamorte Dellamore ) (1994) but rest assured that the rest of the movie is equally peculiar. The DVD has been out of print for years but oddly enough it can be seen on YouTube. Look for it.
