The Body Snatcher (1945)

Boris Karloff and Henry Daniell. Henry Daniell usually plays a stuffy villain as this time his stuffiness is shifted toward being a gifted physician named Dr. Wolfe 'Toddy' MacFarlane who desperately needs cadavers for the training of his students. That's where John Gray - Boris Karloff - comes in. Stevenson's story is a comment on the times. Daniell and Karloff are constantly at each other in very believable situations both verbally and physically. Karloff's character seems to be devoid of feelings while Daniell's is increasingly being painted into a corner. John Gray constantly annoys Dr. MacFarlane by calling him Toddy ALL the time in that incredibly sinister Karloff lisp that has a slightly insincere smile to him. Karloff is a master of evil and Daniell plays off of him to perfection. Karloff also calls Dr. Donald Fettes by his last name which gets on the doctor's nerves as well.

Pay particular attention to the final X-Files style psychological ending that makes modern slash and gore films look like drivel.

This film noir horror flick is every bit as good as the best movie versions of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde by Stevenson.

Fmovies: What can you say about Boris Karloff? He attacks this role with evil zest. I have not seen a lot of his work, but I was extremely impressed with his portrayal of Cabman Gray, the medical school's grave robber. (among other things) The modern horror genre simply focuses on gore, and doesn't allow characters like Gray, or actors like Karloff flourish, and that's too bad.

Val Lewton has produced some of the most important horror classics of all time. His collaborations with the great Jacques Tourneur are the most noteworthy in his filmography, but some of the others are of note also. Like this one for example. The Body Snatcher is a psychological horror film, a study of guilt, and an expose on how people sometimes have to do bad things in order to do good, even though those bad deeds may well consume them. This is shown through the story of Wolfe MacFarlane, a doctor and teacher of medicine that employs cabbie John Gray to steal corpses from the local cemetery so that he can use them to show his students how to operate on a patient. However, this arrangement has put the cabbie/gravedigger in a position of power over the upper class doctor, and that is something that John Gray intends to capitalise on...

Boris Karloff stars as the grave digging John Gray, and does an absolutely excellent job with it. Karloff has to prove nothing to nobody after his portrayal of Frankenstein's monster, but his embodiment of exactly what you would expect a grave robbing, amoral lower class man to be like is right on cue. Fellow legend Bela Lugosi makes a welcome, if brief appearance also and the other lead role is taken by Henry Daniell. I haven't seen this man before...well, I didn't think I had - he's actually been in many well-respected classics including The Philadelphia Story and The Great Dictator. He does a great job as the lead; his performance bodes well with the film, and just like Karloff he's very believable in his role. The real star of the show, however, is the lush black and white cinematography which capture's the movie's many beautiful settings. Val Lewton has become famous for capturing this sort of atmosphere, and The Body Snatcher is one of the films that does it best.

The use of 'less is more' is right on cue in this film, and there is one sequence in particular involving Boris Karloff, a dark alley and a street singer that will be of particular note to film fans. In short; The Body Snatcher is a great horror film, and one that anyone who considers themselves a fan of great horror will not want to miss!

The Body Snatcher fmovies. A later Val Lewton film, from his costume picture period, The Body Snatcher, from a Robert Louis Stevenson story, directed by Robert Wise, is a fine if somewhat moralistic and sentimental horror tale. It lacks the alogical, almost surreal qualities of Lewton's earlier movies, where much is left unexplained, even inexplicable, and a great deal happens off-screen; and even then one can't be sure of what really occurred, as events are often related anecdotally, or merely suggested. In his first few horror exercises Lewton cared as much for gentility as fright, often basing his stories on legends and superstitions, as much of their power came from the vagueness of reality, and the capacity our imaginations have for creating and even shaping our experiences.

By the time The Body Snatcher came around Lewton was moving somewhat closer to mainstream horror. Legends still matter, and the feeling of the dead hand of the past on the present as a Lewton theme is very much alive. In this film it is the notorious case of the grave-robbing Burke and Hare of 19th century Edinburgh, and their effect on a distinguished physician who has continued to do business with one of their former confederates. As the decent-minded but less than morally fastidious doctor, Henry Daniell is outstanding, and surprisingly sympathetic; and he has here perhaps his longest and most sustained role in a movie. He certainly has more screen time than in any other picture I've seen him in. Top-billed Boris Karloff gives Dr. Daniell more than a run for his money as the grave robbing, yet intelligent, observant and not altogether evil cab-man Gray. Karloff's performance is physical as much as anything else, as he uses his body here more eloquently than in any other part outside the Frankenstein series. He knows how and where to stand in relation to others, managing, as always, to look taller than he really is. With his big hat, scarf and long coat, he seems to have walked out of a Dickens novel. Karloff's performance reminds me of how much acting has as much to do with body language as anything else; and that there is a degree of posing,--not fakery--but standing still and letting a character project from the way an actor holds himself as from speech or facial expression.

The movie itself falls just a bit short of being great by it less than brilliant script and the enforced sentimentality of the subplot about a crippled girl. I agree that this was a good idea, and could have made the film all the more powerful, but the scenes around her are stilted, and the actress who plays the girl is none too convincing. It was a good try, though, and almost works, especially in her last scene, but the writing and staging were a little off. I can't help but respect Lewton and Wise's intentions, but they overreached themselves, and I feel bad about it. The climax in the carriage with the corpse, however, and the ghostly repetition of "never get rid of me!" is still impressive, and saves the film in the end.

THE BODY SNATCHER who supplies fresh corpses for an Edinburgh doctor in 1831 soon adds blackmail & murder to his iniquitous deeds.

This was one of a short series of horror films in which Boris Karloff starred for producer Val Lewton, the others being ISLE OF THE DEAD (1945) & BEDLAM (1946). Lewton had the knack of producing films full of atmosphere & menace on a very low budget and THE BODY SNATCHER is no exception, getting most of its chills from the wonderful acting and the literate, intelligent script - although the climax is genuinely terrifying.

Karloff is chillingly perfection in the role of the sly coachman who augments his salary with a little grave robbing. A gentle man who is kind to crippled children, yet can murder without a second thought, Karloff paints the cunning portrait of a very human monster. Every step of the way, however, he is equaled by Henry Daniell, a wonderful British character actor who never received due recognition for his skills. Playing a brilliant anatomist who feels he must continue to use Karloff's gruesome deliveries for the light they shine on solving medical problems, Daniell delivers an elegant portrayal of a deeply conflicted man who is pulled ever nearer the center of the vortex.

In a relatively small role - his last with Karloff - Bela Lugosi is memorable as a greedy servant who tries blackmail at the worst possible time. Russell Wade as a medical student and Rita Corday as a young patient's widowed mother help move the plot along, but wisely no romantic subplot is allowed to develop. Edith Atwater does very well as Daniell's housekeeper, a woman with many secrets.

Movie mavens will recognize elderly Mary Gordon, unbilled as the pathetic mother at Greyfriars graveyard.

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At one time, the bodies of executed prisoners supplied the medical schools of Britain with all the corpses they could use for the purposes of dissecting & lecturing. But judicial reform nearly dried up the flow of bodies from that source, while the proliferation of new schools and anatomy theatres made the shortage acute. The medieval laws still on the books made the legal acquirement of bodies almost impossible. The ghastly vocation of body snatching thus arose to fill this void.

Body Snatchers - also referred to as grave robbers, resurrectionists, or Sack 'Em Up Boys - would haunt cemeteries by night, looking for the recently deceased to disinter. Often the caretakers in the graveyards would be in financial league with these hooligans, as well as the doctors at the medical schools. Prices paid for the bodies could be quite exorbitant, considering the risks that were taken. Leaving dogs or spring-loaded guns at the graveside were just some of the elaborate precautions taken by the friends of the deceased, who often kept vigil by the graves until enough time had passed to make the corpse no longer desirable. Eventually, it became quite difficult to count on the graveyards to furnish enough fodder for the grisly trade.

'The ruffian dogs, the hellish pair, The villain Burke, the meager Hare... Nor did they handle ax or knife To take away their victim's life... No sooner done than in the chest They crammed their lately welcome guest...'

Arriving in Edinburgh in 1827, William Burke met fellow Irishman William Hare, who was keeper of a low lodging house. Scurrilous rascals both, when an old pensioner died there in November of that year, Burke & Hare sold the body to a surgeon for 7Â

Robert Louis Stevenson has had a rough going in modern literary tastes. When he died in 1894, he was rightly regarded as one of the finest writers and stylists of his day - for grown-up readers! However, the enmity of a one time friend , W.E.Henley, diminished his reputation. Henley said that Stevenson was too superficial, and was basically a writer of pot-boilers. This view was somewhat softened into a "boy's" writer of adventure stories (TREASURE ISLAND and KIDNAPPED were the titles that usually were pushed as boy's novels).

Actually Stevenson was far from a writer for youths. TREASURE ISLAND has the perplexing, exasperating figure of Long John Silver as it's anti-hero, chum and protector of Jim Hawkins, but mutineer, pirate leader, and murderer. KIDNAPPED does the same with Aleck Breck Stewart, whose weaknesses (such as gambling and drinking) ruin a political mission. He was hardly a simple adventure novelist, anymore than the real Jules Verne was simply a French chap with an outlandish imagination regarding scientific progress.

The movies have done well by Stevenson. TREASURE ISLAND and KIDNAPPED have been made several times, as was THE MASTER OF BALLENTRAE. His novella DR. JECKYLL AND MR. HYDE was made more frequently than any other title of his. In 1931, it earned it's star (Fredric March) the Best Actor Oscar. Even some of the lesser known works have gotten into film: THE WRONG BOX (one of two novels written with Stevenson's stepson Lloyd Osbourne) became a marvelously funny comedy about a scramble over a legacy. THE EBB TIDE was a film with Ray Milland, Lloyd Nolan, Oscar Homolka, and Barry Fitzgerald, and a good television version was made with Robby Coltrane in it. The tales of Prince Florizel of Bohemia from THE NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS became TROUBLE FOR TWO with Robert Montgomery, Rosalind Russell, Frank Morgan, and Reginald Owen. Finally there is this nice gem, THE BODY SNATCHER. It is based on one of Stevenson's best short stories, a moody, psychological drama about the evil that is committed supposedly in the way of greater good.

In most of these films the scripts start out with the novel or short story, but branch out into their own scenarios. Gray, the murderous but sympathetic cab man in the film is (in the story) a drunk who MacFarland actually hates. When he kills Gray for his corpse (for medical study) MacFarland is actually settling a score. The conclusion of the story is similar to the film, except that Gray's mysterious resurrection to confront the frightened MacFarland does not lead to his death, but to his total demoralization. He flees into his own oblivion at the conclusion.

Stevenson was very into history including crime and the vagaries of the law.

It has been noted in the other posts that this story owes much to the crimes of the West Port murderers of 1827-28, William Burke and William Hare (in the film Gray sings a tune about them to the drunken (and doomed) blackmailer Joseph). But this is not unusual for Stevenson. The final blow to Alan Breck Stewart's mission in KIDNAPPED is the hue and cry against him as a suspect in the Appin Murder of 1752, which led to the judicial murder of James "of the Glen" Stewart. The latter story is told in the sequel novel CATRIONA. DR.JECKYLL AND MR.HYDE is based on the story of Deacon Brodie, a wealthy cabinet maker and town councilor of Edinburgh in the 1770s and 1780s, who was a burglar at night, and who was eventually hanged on a a scaffold he had built for the city. Even