A proficient grave robber provides freshly exhumed corpses—or recently murdered bystanders, if necessary—to a medical school professor until things go awry for both.
Although he is best known for those two giant milestones in horror film history, Frankenstein (1931) and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Boris Karloff as an actor, without heavy, expression-concealing makeup, is better experienced in the three films that producer Robert Lewton made for RKO in the mid-’40s. Some of Karloff’s finest work.
The last of these and the most famous, Bedlam (1946), is the tale of a cruel asylum director (Karloff) who has committed a woman who is investigating the institution. The year before came Isle of the Dead, inspired by the famous Arnold Böcklin painting of that title. Karloff, as a Greek general, dies of a septicemic plague in 1912, grimly appropriate to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic—modern terminology for the old-fashioned “plague.”
The first-made of the trio of films and by far the best—in fact, one of the great, though unfortunately overlooked horror films of the ’40s—The Body Snatcher boasts a scary, yet subtle atmosphere and an actor, Henry Daniell, of such an established classically trained reputation that Karloff admitted to being intimidated at the beginning of filming. (Daniell died some twenty years later while filming My Fair Lady in 1964.)
The king of the horrors should not have been apprehensive, for as the director of The Body Snatcher Robert Wise said of Daniell, “Henry was as far from a complainer as any I’ve ever known. He’d walk onto the set, do his work like the pro he was, do it damn [well] . . . then quietly leave without being a burden to anybody.”
Karloff was both considerate and patient toward a then ill Bela Lugosi, technically one of only two co-stars—the other being Daniell—with whom he exchanges dialogue throughout the film. In the key scene between Karloff and Lugosi, the gravedigger presumably kills Lugosi . . . gently. This was the last of eight films the two actors made together.
The Body Snatcher is a reasonable transference to screen of Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1884 short story, based on real-life surgeon Robert Knox. For ten months in 1828 the Edinburgh doctor received some sixteen corpses, murdered expressly for Knox’s dissection table by William Burke and William Hare.
For the initial British release, censors cut five scenes due to sex and violence, and these included Karloff’s prelude to killing Lugosi, his offer to demonstrate how to “burke,” or suffocate, a person.
So it is in Edinburgh, in 1832, that The Body Snatcher takes place. In the opening scene, a young medical student, Donald Fettes (Russell Wade), passes a street singer (Donna Lee, who also appears in Bedlam) as he walks to the clinic of Dr. Wolfe MacFarlane (Daniell).
There he introduces MacFarlane to a mother (Rita Corday) and her paraplegic nine-year-old daughter Georgina (Sharyn Moffett). Having examined the child himself, Fettes refers her to his superior, who, however, says a dangerous operation would be involved and, besides, his time is filled with his students.
In the meantime, one night John Gray, a coachman by day and a grave-robber by night, has brought MacFarlane another freshly exhumed corpse, part of an agreement between them, money for corpses.
Gray, a former medical student who was convicted of grave-robbing when that crime became illegal in Scotland, holds a grudge against MacFarlane who escaped detection for his part in the crime. The two would later have a testy exchange in a tavern when Gray sarcastically calls him “my friend” and taunts him, addressing him as “Toddy,” a name he knows the doctor dislikes.
In perhaps the eeriest scene in the film, shot from a stationary camera, the street singer strolls down a foggy night street, beautifully singing a Scottish folk song, “When Ye Gang Awa’, Jamie,” though it sounds almost spiritual. Gray’s carriage follows, the horse’s hooves clip-clopping on the cobblestones. The carriage and the girl disappear in the fog. The girl’s song abruptly ceases. There is no accompanying musical score for none is needed.
That evening, after Fettes had earlier placed money in the street singer’s cup, he is surprised when Gray brings in her body and can only assume that he murdered her.
MacFarlane’s servant Joseph (Lugosi), who has overheard much of the goings-on in the doctor’s laboratory, goes to Gray and threatens to expose him unless he’s monetarily compensated. Gray seems more than accommodating—“Well, Joseph, you shall have money, why should you not?”—but then pounces on him and suffocates him with a firm hand over his mouth and nostrils. Before he rises from the body, Gray calmly pets his nearby cat.
After practicing on one of Gray’s bodies, MacFarlane operates on Georgina, but the child cannot, or refuses to, walk. Later, when she hears the rattle of a passing horse and carriage, she impulsively stands up to see over a wall.
When Gray brings in an obviously murdered body, MacFarlane seems to have had enough. “Gray, I must be rid of you,” he says. “You’ve become a cancer . . . rotting my mind.” Gray assures him that he will never be rid of him.
Later, MacFarlane visits Gray, intent on ending their wicked agreement. As the cat fretfully watches from the mantel, the two men struggle and the doctor kills Gray.
Without Gray, MacFarlane still needs bodies and he persuades Fettes to help him exhume an old woman. As they drive back through a storm in Gray’s carriage, MacFarlane imagines he hears Gray’s voice taunting him: “You’ll never get rid of me. You’ll never get rid of me.”
The doctor pulls up the horses and has Fettes get down and check the corpse. Beneath the shroud is the face of Gray. The animals bolt from a lightning flash, sending the carriage down a ravine. Fettes descends to the wreck and sees the doctor’s corpse alongside that of the old woman.
As in so many of the movies of the ’30 and ’40s, The Body Snatcher represents a frequent cross-fertilization, the reappearance of the same, familiar actors and artists. Uncredited are Mary Gordon, most famous as Sherlock Holmes’ landlady in the 20th Century-Fox/Universal films, and Milton Kibbee, brother of Guy Kibbee, the bald-headed, rotund member of Warner Brothers’ stock company of players.
The score of Roy Webb, which also helps to give Bedlam just that necessary tweak of terror, is always subtle, never overpowering the screen image, but original and scary enough to add some vinegary flavoring.
Philip MacDonald, who co-wrote the screenplay with Val Lawton, also authored The List of Adrian Messenger, the best of the Anthony Gethryn mystery series. The novel was filmed in 1963, starring George C. Scott and Kirk Douglas, another instance, like The Body Snatcher, of an American film with a British setting.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJO0BImGChY [/embedyt]
In a book called “Alternative Oscars”, the author gives the 1945 Oscar to Karloff for his performance he and indeed it is merited as Karloff has two great scenes of dialogue with co-stars Bela Lugosi and Henri Daniele. This is really a great film and Karloff is a great actor.
There never was a producer in RKO named Robert Lewton. His name was Val
The summary should add how shocking the lightning scene is, even now after seeing the movie a number of times.