The Body Snatcher (1945)

Lewton's second movie with Karloff is a much more substantial effort then Isle of the Dead. The Body Snatcher has a heft that the previous film lacked, this is no doubt do to its having a far more substantive source, a short story of the same title by Robert Louis Stevenson. Stevenson's story in turn was inspired by real events, Edinburgh's famed 'West Port Murders' of 1828, to which this story serves as a sort of fictional sequel. In brief the 'West Port Murders' were staged by two Irish immigrants named William Burke and William Hare who murdered a total of 17 people and sold there bodies for medical dissection. At the time there was a law which stated that only the bodies of executed murderers could be used for medical dissection, and a subsequent tightening of the requirements to actually execute a person lead to a substantial shortage of legal cadavers at UK medical schools. That unmet demand was filled in part by 'Body Snatchers' who either  robbed graves or otherwise absconded with the bodies of the recently deceased. Eventually the pair was caught, Burke was executed, but Hare was spared as part of plea agreement and vanished into such obscurity that there is no record of his death.

In the movie Dr. Wolfe "Toddy" MacFarlane (Henry Daniell) is the fictional former assistant of the real Dr. Robert Knox, the man who bought the bodies from Burke and Hare. MacFarlane is now a respected anatomy teacher in Edinburgh, and when one of his more promising pupils Donald Fettes (Russell Wade) threatens to drop out due to lack of funds MacFarlane takes him on as his personal assistant. While MacFarlane is an often cold man Fettes has a natural bed side manner, which results in his befriending a young widow (Rita Corday) and her crippled daughter (Sharyn Moffett). The widow wants Dr. MacFarlane to perform a potentially risky surgery that could prevent her daughters death and restore her ability to walk, only Dr. MacFarlane won't do it, there are too many unknown variables and he doesn't want his reputation besotted by having a patient die on him. However MacFarlane is pressured into conducting the eventually successfully surgery by Cabman John Gray (Boris Karloff), who had been the one to orignally take the widow and girl to Dr. MacFarlane's. In the story Gray had worked with Burke and Hare for Dr. Knox and had kept MacFarlanes name out of the controversy, largely for the amount of control that would give him over one society deemed to be his better. Gray continued to provide dissectable bodies for the doctor although he never killed any of them, that is until in the course of the movie he murders a young beggar women so that MacFarlane can experiment on her spine prior to performing the surgery on Sharyn Moffett.

In the course of the story MacFarlane and Gray come increasingly at odds, Gray murders MacFarlane's servant Joseph (Bela Lugosi) who tried to blackmail him, and then MacFarlane kills Gray in a struggle. Fettes is likable, but oblivious, a very passive character who occasionally tries to marshal his scruples against MacFarlane, but in the end he always caves, even agreeing to help the doctor to resume grave robbing after Gray's death. So there is not much to the very nominal lead, Daniell is interesting though playing MacFarlane kind of like Alan Rickman's Snape. Karloff is the funnest to watch, he seems to be enjoying himself as he gets to play menacing in a manner very different from his Universal Monster persona. This movie isn't really scary, but its exciting watching the characters try and fail to navigate moral gray areas. I even think the ending works, I'm kind of glad it leaves Fettes fate so open. ***1/2