I'LL BURY YOU TOMORROW

Produced by Gary Malick, Tom Cadawas, and Alan Rowe Kelly
Written and Directed by Alan Rowe Kelly
Edited by Jack Malick and Harry Douglas
Director's of Photography - Gary Malick and Tom Cadawas

Delores Finley - Zoe Dealman Chlanda
Percival Beech - Bill Corry
Nettie Beech - Katherine O'Sullivan

Now this is what I call horror movie! Too many of the titles I've seen recently trying to pass themselves off as true independent horror have been nothing more than excuses to pull in some coin. The filmmakers fail because they don't take the genre seriously. Those movies are nothing more than live action cartoons with all the blood and guts but none of the backbone. Watching any of these interchangeable wonders after viewing Alan Rowe Kelly's I'LL BURY YOU TOMORROW makes me see just how lackluster those efforts truly are.

I can shoot quotable adjectives all day long, but that won't get you to seek out this movie. When was the last time you sought something out based on the review of a glorified fanboy? Probably never. Even if you did go looking, you won't find the movie on your video shelves, at least not yet. Kelly is still searching for a distributor, which perplexes me greatly. I get 10 adlibed backyard productions to review that have special edition DVD treatment, but this rabid piece of shot-on-film intensity can't even lock in distribution. Is there any justice in the world?

I don't even have to look at other reviews to tell you what every other critic out there will say about BURY YOU. They'll all talk about the 1970's style of brutality or the distinctly European flavor of weirdness. It's safe to say that for once neither myself nor them will be exaggerating. BURY YOU possesses an off-kilter sense of carnal freakishness akin to Italian filmmakers like Lucio Fulci or Joe D'Amato.

Zoe Dealman Chlada portrays Delores Finley, a young woman with a strong attraction to dead bodies that sometimes touches upon necrophilia. To satisfy her lust, she makes her way from town to town working at local funeral homes. It's not long before things fall apart and Delores is back on the road looking for a new home.

Delores happens upon the Beech family, Percival and Nettie, morticians with their own set of psychological problems. Ten years prior to Delores' arrival in town, the Beech's lost their daughter and haven't been the same since. The golden-haired Delores is a dead ringer for the departed Beech girl, and Mrs. Beech, often floating through life in her own state of reality, can't differentiate between the two. Soon both parties see the advantages of having Delores around, including a long since forgotten feeling of family.

Chlanda brings a raw ferocity to Delores. The role calls for her to appear meek and mild but underneath she's a volcano ready to erupt into a violent rage at a moment's notice. Delores must rely on her charm to win friends and influence people but once they are under her wing she's a purely vindictive predator. Kelly lets on the audience into Delores' head early and the effect works well, especially during a cat-and-mouse foot chase where the excitement is built upon the hopelessness of Delores' prey.

The cast is rounded out by stock Italian players: the creepy gardener with a hankering for hottie Delores, the local cop who knows something is rotten in Denmark, friends who grew up with the Beech daughter and make for excellent butcher knife fodder, etc... There's a stilted nature to some of the cast's performances that feels similar to a number of Italian Giallo thrillers that I've screened recently, some of which can be edited down, that also lends to that European flavor.

Just because Kelly relies on stock characters doesn't mean his story is such. I'LL BURY YOU TOMORROW is purely character driven and doesn't rely on cliched story telling. At 2 hours in length, Kelly could probably edit the film down to a tighter, leaner 100 minutes and remove some of the stilted performances that bog down the movie. What he has in almost perfection, what he can have is one the best horror movies of the decade.
I'll Bury You Tomorrow