The Doctor and the Devils is one of several movies based on a true story; a brilliant anatomist, Dr. Knox and two murderers, Burke and Hare, during the years 1827-1828. The killers supplied
Knox with bodies he used in teaching his students at an Edinburgh, Scotland medical college. To mention some other movies based on this story: the 1945 Val Lewton production The Body Snatcher, the grim Flesh and the Fiends (Mania) from 1960, and Burke and Hare (1971.)
You will find many reasons why this story has been re-told so often. First the memorable characters. Dr. Rock (Knox) is a man with much arrogance; he believes that he is right to defy outdated, hypocritical laws. You can argue that he doesn’t know
where the two killers get their bodies–from people they’ve
just murdered. Or, that he does know, but stubbornly refuses to deal with the question.
He is a complicated character. Many times he is emotional—watch him when he lectures. At other times he can be ice-cold. Yet you realize he cares deeply about the poverty that overwhelms his city—far more than most do in his privileged social class.
Fallon and Broome (Burke and Hare) are also fascinating, completely lacking in conscience. The only important question to them; can they get away with killing? Right and wrong mean nothing.
The excellent screenplay by Ronald Harwood, (adapted from an older work by the great poet Dylan Thomas) changes the name of Dr. Knox to Dr. Rock, and Burke and Hare to Fallon and Broom. Apart from that, it sticks closely to the true story. (Remember that The Body Snatcher was based on a short story—a work of fiction by Robert Louis Stevenson. It took place years later, and had fictitious characters who had once worked with Knox, Burke and Hare.)
Trying to compare the two movies is basically apples vs. oranges. The Body Snatcher is effective as a dignified historical drama, produced by a man convinced that suggestion is scarier than what you actually see. Forty years later, The Doctor and The Devils had much more freedom to sketch out the brutal, dead-end lifestyles of the Edinburgh lower classes. The film-makers could show more violence, brutality that reflected day to day reality.
Jenny and Alice–a bleak existence; no reason to believe it
will change
You have to taste the ugliness to get its full effect. Yet the movie is never uglier than it needs to be.
Watch the scene where Fallon and Broom find out Doctor Knox pays seven sovereigns for a fresh corpse. For them, it’s an opportunity to make money they could never get another way. This is serious money. Never mind that all of it will be spent on gin,
whores and bets on cockfighting.
Dr. Rock examines a body Broom and Fallon have brought
him
For most of us, suggestion would not be enough to show the lives of the 19th century urban poor. Class divisions are like gaping canyons. Dr. Rock’s assistant, Dr. Murray is in love with hooker Jennie. But Jennie is no dreamer, (“fine young doctor’s lady I’d make…”) even though she realizes Murray is truthful about loving her.
Dr. Murray and Jenny
Dr. Rock must admit his share of the blame for not dealing with an obvious situation. It is unlikely that Broom and Fallon could have gotten their bodies any other way but murder.
Yet, unlikely as it sounds, you still respect Rock in living life true to his code. He spells out this code clearly during his first lecture. First he describes himself as a materialist, a man who does not believe in the soul, because the soul has no shape. The heart
to him is not the seat of love, only an organ pumping blood.
Dr. Rock (Timothy Dalton)–A teacher his students
respect
Yet he also calls himself a man of sentiment, and a moralist. He tells his student that doctors must understand more than science; they must care as well. As the story unfolds, you see that Rock puts his money where his mouth is. At least twice in the movie, he mentions the endless river of the Edinburgh poor, saying for example, “They were men and women, once.”
He ends his opening words to his students as follows: The science of anatomy contributes to the great sum of all knowledge—The ends justify the means. (His face in close-up.) You may not be sure at first, but it becomes clear that Rock’s motivation is not money nor his ego.
You don’t get as much of a look inside Broom and Fallon, two men with no compassion whatever. For Broom, it’s simply about the money. He is the one who first realizes that murder makes more sense than grave-robbing. He mentions this to Fallon, and Fallon is the one who does most of the killing.
You get a few hints as to Fallon’s motivation. He describes working as an orderly during wartime. Fallon claims that the surgeon encouraged (or ordered) him to kill many of the
mortally wounded and basket cases in the battle hospital.
I think Fallon is telling the truth about his experiences. But he uses these experiences as a way to rationalize, even to excuse, killing old or seriously ill poor people.
As Broom learns, there is more to Fallon; Fallon enjoys the killing even more than getting money for it. Broom can feel the suspicions growing; a trail of evidence starting to point at them. When he tells Fallon, Fallon is already focused on two new
prospective victims, the whores Jennie and Alice. “There’s a madness in you,” Broom says to Fallon. Broom decides to testify against him; he has no alternative if he wants to survive. Fallon is convicted and hanged.
Ironically, a big reason that you sympathize with Dr. Rock is his willingness, his willingness to learn from his experiences.
He is arrogant and smug, but encounters with people do change him. After he saves the slow-minded Billy Bedlam’s life, he meets Billy’s sister Alice. She wants to give Rock a ring to thank him. She says she knows it is not worth much, but “It’s of value to me.”
She walks away and Rock says, (without a trace of sarcasm): “Aren’t people extraordinary?”
Other times, you see his arrogant side. When someone brings up the subject of Broom and Fallon, Rock snaps at them, “Do you expect the dead to walk here? They need assistance. Broom and Fallon provide that assistance.”
Yet later on, Rock learns first-hand that these bodies too, are people. When Fallon brings him his final body, Rock recognizes Alice.
You get a brief look at Dr. Rock’s family. His sister Annabella is a pious but shallow woman who feels disgraced by her brother’s opinions and his life’s work. Annabella considers Rock’s wife worse than a free spirit, more like a pornographer, because of the anatomical drawings she sketches. Looking back, Annabella sees her life wasted. She had no chance to marry and only limited opportunities to entertain. As a young woman she had expected far more. Dr. Rock cannot accept her narrow-minded outlook but
does realize what she has missed in life.
Many critics felt the romance between Dr. Murray and Jennie hurt the movie overall, that it felt out of place, or unlikely or unnecessary. I can’t completely disagree. But their relationship shows you how deep class distinctions went in those years. It is one thing to talk about the amount of money people have, but what really hits home is the scene where Murray offers Jennie
money, simply to go and talk. He doesn’t realize that this money equals a week’s wages for her.
Sadly, this movie did poorly at the box office. Sadder still; it gives a glimpse of what its director, Freddie Francis, could have done in the 60’s and 70’s if he had worked from better scripts. Francis is remembered as an award-winning cinematographer, and as a director of Hammer and Amicus films. But by the time
Francis began directing, Hammer’s best days were already behind
them.
Probably no one could have made a good movie from
screenplays like Dracula Has Risen From the Grave,. and many more on that level.The Doctor and the Devils was one of the few excellent scripts that Francis got to film, probably the only one. He made the most of it.