Origin:

Dylan Dog was created by Tiziano Sclavi in 1986, and drawn by Claudio Villa. The first appearance of Dylan Dog was a non-humerous version of Phillip Marlowe, but this changed. After some experimentation Sclavi and Villa settled on Dylan Dog becoming a Londoner (his flat is at 7 Craven Road - the name of the road is a homage to the director Wes Craven): he also has an assistant called Groucho (who has an uncanny resemblance to the comic actor).

Sclavi saw actor Rupert Everett in the film Another Country and declared "he is Dylan Dog". So the first sketches that Villa made of the new Dylan Dog were done in the cinema watching Everett on screen.

Rupert Everett stars in this over the top but hilarious horror film about a cemetery curator who encounters zombies. Assisted by his mute companion, "Cemetary Man's" job is to kill them again.

Synopsis:

Achingly romantic and creepy-funny, this funereal fantasy from the director of La Chiesa (1989) is unlike any Italian film in memory. Rupert Everett plays Francesco Dellamorte, a lonely cemetery caretaker who just wants to get out of his small town of Buffalora. His assistant and sole companion, Gnaghi (played by famed French musician Francois Hadji-Lazaro) is an overweight cretin who speaks only in grunts, and the dead people outside are rising from their graves as zombies and trying to have him for breakfast. This situation, coupled with all his other problems, gives Francesco a real complex. His troubles are compounded when he meets a series of mysterious women (all played by the beautiful Anna Falchi) whom he loves before they die tragically. Soavi's film is based on a graphic-novel, Dylan Dog by Tiziano Sclavi, but Soavi's more obvious influences range from Jean Rollin's La Rose de Fer (1973) to Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands (1990). Barbara Cupisti (of Soavi's Deliria) has a small role, and the film also benefits from Manuel de Sica's memorable score and excellent pacing by editor Franco Fraticelli. This is a film to savor and it will go down as one of the most striking Italian genre efforts of the decade, despite some weak effects work by the normally reliable Sergio Stivaletti.

©Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

Prequels, Sequels and Follow-ons:

None