Romance: Humans & Corpses in Film

Who doesn't love this?Cemetery ManThis seminal romance features a lovable mortician's assistant and his headless sweetheart. Director Michele Soavi's surreal, merry story of bodies (and lovers) rising seven days after burial became a cult classic starting in 1994.

Inthe filmUndertaker Rupert Dellamorte (Rupert Everett) lives on a rambling Gothic graveyard with his sidekick, Gnaghi (François Hadji-Lazaro). The two busy themselves burying and taking out the undead. When beautiful young Valentina (Fabiana Formica), the mayor's daughter, loses her head in a motorcycle accident, an enraptured Gnaghi anticipates her return. He digs her out of a Snow White-style glass coffin and starts a happily returned romance with her noggin.romance with her noggin.

Gnaghi and Valentina share harmony, eating spaghetti and singing songs, until tragedy strikes. Their love makes your head spin, but it lasts.

Indie gemNina ForeverNina Forever introduced the world to one of the mostghoulishly original love trianglesRob (Cian Barry) loses his girlfriend Nina (Fiona O'Shaughnessy) in a car crash. He becomes inconsolable and tries to end his life. He then connects with his co-worker, Holly (Abigail Hardingham), a sympathetic goth girl who sees his suicide attempt as romantic.

But a problem exists: when they try to make love, Nina's body claws itself from the bed... jealously possessive... and stops the act. That should sell anyone, butNina ForeverThis is more than a clever idea; it is a touching, romantic, and witty film about loss.

Obscure Roger Corman period pieceThe TerrorThis film is fun, gothic, and campy.notableIt is notable for being Jack Nicholson's early film appearance. He plays Lt. Andre Duvalier, a dashing French soldier who first sees his horse on a beach. Thirsty and hungry, he collapses, and Helene (Sandra Knight), a mysterious, beautiful woman, saves him.

Eventually, the girl is revealed to be reanimated, kept alive to get revenge on her husband (Boris Karloff), who killed her in a jealous rage after she met another man. Duvalier is infatuated, but his efforts to save her fail. At the film's end, after a passionate kiss, she melts away.

"Dance with me, you little toad."- says beautiful, disdainful seductress Eva (Alice Krige) to one of her four suitors inGhost Storyshortly before he takes her out, the men stuff her into a car and push it into a river. Decades later, Eva's shape-shifting persists, masquerading as a seductive femme fatale, haunting her now-elderly beauties (including screen legends Fred Astaire, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and Melvyn Douglas in final film appearances).

Krige's performance in 'Ghost Story' is deeply unsettling. She switches from misty-eyed to soulless in two seconds flat.Ghost Story.This riveting wintertime missive explores guilt, retribution, and how romance fails, especially when the recipient lives after the end.

Tim Burton creates a demented, sort-of children's film.Corpse BrideCorpse Bride.Corpse Bride presents a love triangle similar to that of Nina Forever.Nina Forever.This story has a more fantastical, gothic edge. Victor (Johnny Depp) and Victoria (Emma Watson) plan an arranged marriage. They fall in love despite their good intentions. Victor ends up in a one-sided afterlife romance with Emily (Helena Bonham Carter), the corpse of a bride.

Corpse Bride.Corpse Bride twists the human-corpse romance. The living do not love the dead; they only love the fallen. Victor tricks Emily into returning him to the living world, where he marries Victoria. Emily learns lessons, and everyone ends up happy.

To paraphrase.Psycho.Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) is the body of his late mother's best friend. Indeed,Hitchcock's 1960 tour-de-force.The film pushes the "Mama's boy" idea further. Bates kills his mother and her lover. He mummifies her, dresses her body, and sets it near the window on stormy nights, likely to breathe. He argues constantly with it.

Bates wears his mother's clothes and mimics her voice. He takes people out, immerses their remains in the family swamp, and assumes her role. This suggests a bad romance gone wrong.

House of Wax.The story follows a disturbed sculptor and museum owner. Jarrod seeks the perfect body to coat, preserve, and display. He starts by raiding morgues and ends by attempting murder. Jarrod treats his waxworks like lovers; he is proud of his corpsified Joan of Arc.

The film features poetic yet campy dialogue. "There is a pain beyond pain, an agony so intense it shocks the mind into instant beauty," he says to his intended Marie Antoinette before trying to boil her in oil.

Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece.Vertigo. Vertigo is the ultimate human-corpse love story. Scottie's (Jimmy Stewart) obsession with his dead love, Madeleine (Kim Novak), is so strong he thinks she still exists. He later learns she was not truly dead, but that is not the poetic point.

What makes.Vertigo. a departure.FIDELITY insists on the visceral insistence of a classic man-in-love-with-a-ghost story.onScottie does not hallucinate Madeleine; he interacts with her physically. Knowing she is not alive intellectually matters little. Not questioning her continued earthly existence (until the end) makes the story a study of ignoring the main issue while chasing dreams.

LikeMulholland DriveDavid Lynch'sLost Highwayclearly takes inspiration fromVertigo, and it earns top honors as an ingenious human-corpse love story.Bill Pullmanstars asa jazz musicianwho dismantles his wife (Patricia Arquette) during a hallucinatory killing spree. He gets a death sentence, becomes another man, walks free, and has an affair with his slain wife, who reappears as a blonde femme fatale.

Things are neither linear nor simple.Lost Highwayjumps through time, making it hard to tell who lives, who does not, or who is imaginary at any moment. One thing stays true: radiantly changed corpses and those who desire them exist in there. (That love scene shows this ambiguity beautifully and unforgettably).

Philip Kaufman's1978 adaptationof sci-fi classicInvasion of the Body Snatchersis a rare remake arguably better than the original..Ominous, beautifully shot, and filled with dread, the film shows aliens who "absorb" human features, bodies, and memories while people sleep. The aliens become doppelgangers; human corpses vanish.

Since everyone must sleep, everyone faces doom, including lovers Matthew (Donald Sutherland) and Elizabeth (Brooke Adams). Though they try to avoid sleep with lab substances and movement, exhaustion overtakes them. The scene where Elizabeth sleeps and is taken over is short, but when Matthew weeps for his dying love, the invasion's next-to-last survivor embraces her as she turns to dust; it is a heartbreaking moment.