Despite the rather tongue-in-cheek title, Bury Me Dead offers little of interest as a piece of entertainment. It has an intriguing set-up to a mystery, then drowns itself in excessive flashbacks and sappy melodrama to the point that we are begging things to wrap up long before they ever do. When it finally does so, it feels like we wasted two hours of our lives on this one when the reality is it barely hits 60 minutes. This movie is drab and dull, disappointing in nearly every way.
The premise is that wealthy Barbara Carlin (June Lockhart) has apparently died in a fire. But at the funeral, Barbara shows up, secretly contacting the family lawyer, Michael Dunn (Hugh Beaumont), claiming that this was an attempt on her life. Naturally, her reappearance comes as a shock to those around her, especially her step-sister Rusty (Cathy O’Donnell). Rusty is also the prime suspect as when their father passed, she discovered that she was actually not his real daughter but an orphan raised by him. His passing left her nothing in the will except a small allowance and she would benefit greatly from having Barbara out of the way.
Of course the mystery is not going to be that simple nor is the revelation of who the killer all that obvious. The film spends a great deal of time in flashback, dropping hints and clues to the identity, almost more time than it does in the present. But in all of that it fails to be entertaining and engaging. Instead, it bounces from one melodramatic moment to the next, never quite landing any of the humor it tries to inject into the mix. This is a forgettable film at best, despite some novel casting, such as Hugh Beaumont, known more famously as Ward Cleaver from Leave It to Beaver. The ending, and the ultimate revelation, is the best part of the movie but it just takes too much time to get to that point. This would have worked better as a one-hour episode of television. 1947 - 68 minutes
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