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Synopsis: There are strange things happening at the Beech Funeral Home. Mr. Beech's employees, Jake and Corey, have a sideline in black-market organs, while Mrs. Beech is slowly losing her mind as she hopes that their dead daughter will come back to her. Good help, it seems, is hard to find. All of which explains why newly arrived Dolores is such a windfall. Her knowledge of the funeral business is superb, and Mr. Beech has never seen someone so adept with the tools of the undertaking trade. He hires her on the spot. But Dolores has problems of her own: Her lack of references is troubling, to say nothing of her attraction to the body on the slab...
Notes from the Underground: One of the side effects of the rise of digital technology is the proliferation of underground films. Many of these films are made by talented amateurs, some of them are made by talented professionals, and still others are made by fans of one genre or another. Sorting out which is which can be challenging. I mean, there are well-respected films from the Dogme movement that look EXACTLY like films made by a couple of guys playing around with a camera on their weekends. It used to be that the valuable underground films would persist on the midnight movie circuit or in art houses or festival showings, while the dross--and there was/is a LOT of dross--would fall into unseen oblivion. The rise of both the DVD (a cheap medium) and the internet (a cheap means of marketing and delivery) has changed this paradigm. It is entirely possible for, heck, just about anyone to make a movie that will be seen by an audience larger than their immediate circle of friends. For myself, I think this is a good thing. It reduces the chance that a genuinely good movie will get lost because the system is stacked against them. It means that the entry barriers for new talent are lowered. But it also means that there is a lot of dross that has gained a new half-life in the marketplace. The ratio of signal to noise will necessarily become smaller.
All of which brings me to the subject at hand.
My first impression of I'll Bury You Tomorrow was that it was a particularly nasty little fan film. A little digging into the extras on the disc revealed that, no, there were indeed professionals involved. Some of the actors have professional credits to their names. On a second viewing, I was able to appreciate that the filmmakers have made the best of whatever pittance financed the movie. The actors ARE professionals, but they aren't necessarily at the top of their profession, if you get my drift. The main factor contributing to my mistaking this for a fan film is the use of digital video instead of film. The quality of the camera--this is surely not made with the same level of technology employed on the last few Star Wars movies, after all--makes the film look cheap and drains much of the intended atmosphere from the production. This is a fault compounded by the use of existing locations which constrain where the filmmakers can actually put the camera. Director Alan Rowe Kelly and his cameramen aren't going to win any awards for bold compositions or innovative blocking, either. All of which begs the question of whether or not these elements can be forgiven in the face of the film's limited resources. Certainly some judicious editing could have helped things. The film seems overlong. The first 40 minutes are particularly rough going, and there are too damned many characters.
In at least one respect, the film succeeds: the obvious role models for this production are certain films by John Waters, Ted V. Mikels, Al Adamson, H. G. Lewis, et al. I'll Bury You Tomorrow is as accomplished as any of the films by these directors (a good deal MORE accomplished than anything by Mikels or Adamson, as a matter of fact). I can imagine this film running in a grind house in Times Square circa 1973. This is watchable, after all, which is more than I can say for The Doll Squad or The Corpse Grinders. I'll even admit that it was heartwarming to discover another film directed by a man in a dress outside of the ouvre of Ed Wood (well, okay, there WAS Hedwig and the Angry Inch, too, but that's another kind of animal entirely). In spite of all this, the film I'll Bury You Tomorrow most resembles is Rob Zombie's House of 1,000 Corpses., though this film mercifully omits the bourgeois snottiness of that film's victims. Like the Zombie film, the ultimate intent is the thrill of a snuff movie. Our heroine movies in, wipes out all of the supporting cast, and movies on. Having desecrated funerary customs and taboos, the movie positions her to desecrate religious taboos at the end of the movie. If that's your thing, well, then enjoy. The bodies pile up in short order soon enough. Kelly and his collaborators get points for not regurgitating a stale slasher formula, I guess, but the alternative isn't my cuppa joe at all.
So...digital video, rudimentary blocking and camera placement, overlong by about 20 minutes, and the feeling of a snuff movie. From all of that you might suppose that I hated this movie. I didn't. I've seen much, much worse. For all the film's intent to transgress, it is surprisingly circumspect in its mayhem, suggesting an intellect with a modicum of taste that belies the material. I can't say I liked the movie, but it shows promise. And in this particular cinematic ghetto, one makes allowances.
6/16/05