Rent The Body Snatcher (1945)
3.8 of 5 from 74 ratings
1h 18min
- General info
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- Synopsis:
- Boris Karloff stars in one of his most chilling roles as the sinister 'resurrection man' of old Edinburgh. Medical student Donald Fettes (Russell Wade) is apprentice to Dr. 'Toddy' MacFarlane (Henry Daniell), greatest anatomist of the age. But, as Fettes learns, MacFarlane is not scrupulous how he obtains the bodies he uses for dissection: he buys them from sinister cabman John Gray (Boris Karloff), who robs the graves of the recently deceased. But Gray's grim work has attracted attention and the cemeteries are under watch. Unwilling to give up his lucrative trade, Gray finds another source of corpses - the bodies of people he has killed himself...
- Actors:
- Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Henry Daniell, Edith Atwater, Russell Wade, Rita Corday, Sharyn Moffett, Donna Lee, Ted Billings, Bobby Burns, Robert Clarke, Aina Constant, Mary Gordon, Carl Kent, Milton Kibbee, Ethan Laidlaw, Jim Moran, Jack Welch, Larry Wheat, Bill Williams
- Directors:
- Robert Wise
- Producers:
- Val Lewton
- Writers:
- Robert Louis Stevenson, Philip MacDonald, Val Lewton
- Studio:
- Odeon Entertainment
- Genres:
- Classics, Drama, Horror, Thrillers
- Collections:
- 100 Years of German Expressionism, Film History, Films to Watch If You Like..., What to Watch Next If You Liked Dracula
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Reviews (2) of The Body Snatcher
Let Sleeping Dead Lie - The Body Snatcher review by Count Otto Black
As somebody who lives in Edinburgh, I'm always amused to see it portrayed by Hollywood, and this movie actually does it pretty well, capturing the peculiar almost subterranean quality of the Old Town - the set designers must have been given lots of photos of the Cowgate to draw inspiration from. The real Edinburgh can even be glimpsed in a few seconds of the oldest archive footage they could find. The problem is, as always, the accents. And Russell Wade as the strangely passive "hero", who accomplishes extraordinarily little in the course of the film, is so painfully un-Scottish that he can't even pronounce "Edinburgh" correctly! He's also a terrible actor, and, as previously noted, a waste of space who gets in the way of the more interesting bits of the story with a lot of insipid padding involving a little girl's operation and a lukewarm semi-romance which is so irrelevant it never quite bothers to actually happen.
I'd give it a higher rating if Russell Wade wasn't in it, or his character was very minor, because the real story is all about the twisted relationship between Henry Daniell's hypocritical Dr. McFarlane, who pretends his selfishness is necessary for the greater good but is far too intelligent to fool himself, and Boris Karloff's incredibly sinister cabman John Gray, who supplements his income by supplying the good doctor with fresh bodies, no questions asked where from, and treats him with insolent over-familiarity despite the huge difference in their social status. What exactly is the backstory between these two? That's what we want to know, not whether some kid who can't act will recover from her operation! Which obviously she will because they always do.
At its heart, this is the tale of a man who becomes bad because he's too morally weak to be good, and what happens when he meets a man who is truly evil. As the real baddie, Karloff is simply magnificent. Gray isn't normally listed as a classic Karloff monster because he's not a proper monster, just a very bad man indeed. But he should be. If Gray had turned out late in the film to be an actual devil from hell, it wouldn't have seemed odd, because he really is evil incarnate. Even his occasional moments of "goodness" seem like a man whimsically trying on a coat that doesn't suit him just to see how funny he looks in the mirror. It's Karloff's movie, and he gleefully seizes it with both hands and never lets go unless he's off-screen. It might even have been a masterpiece if all the sentimental padding hadn't been there to get in his way. Watch it for Karloff's performance, which is one of his best, and, as portrayals of unashamedly despicable people so often are, far more entertaining than the good guys.
Oh, by the way, poor old Bela Lugosi is in it for about five minutes as a moron wearing a wig borrowed from the Three Stooges. He doesn't look happy, and you can't blame him. Even Hollywood couldn't pretend that Bela's accent was Scottish, so his character is "recently arrived from Lisbon". I bet that line gets a big laugh in Portugal.
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Lewton Horror (spoiler). - The Body Snatcher review by Steve
The final two productions from Val Lewton's B horror unit at RKO -with Bedlam in 1946- are not the psychological horrors of the earlier films which are usually located in contemporary America. They are historical dramas set in Britain. They are only in the horror genre at all because of the grotesque themes. Though this may not be quintessential Lewton it is still a magnificent and exciting film.
It is loosely based on a Robert Louis Stevenson story about a grave robber in Edinburgh after Burke and Hare. Boris Karloff plays a cab driver who supplies bodies to a teaching hospital. When supply doesn't meet demand he isn't above creating a few corpses of his own. The hubristic head of the medical school (Henry Daniell), is in too deep with the sinister murderer.
There are interesting and profound themes not normally found in horror. The script is superb, full of colourful, archaic language, rich period detail, and it looks amazing, borrowing the set of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The noirish pools of darkness are gorgeously sad.
The chilling, supernatural climax is a heart-stopper. The nucleus of the film is the deeply pleasurable head to head between Karloff and Daniell. This is the performance of Karloff's life, as the insidious, leering, morally forsaken killer. And there's a legendary moment for horror fans when Karloff 'burkes' Bela Lugosi in their last appearance together.
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