To be honest, being scary is not The Body Snatcher’s strong suit. It was one of nine movies produced by Val Lewton for RKO Pictures during the 1940’s. Like the other movies produced by Lewton its aims were subtlety and suggestion.
But for solid characterization, story and atmosphere this movie more than compensates for its lack of scares. People might describe it more as historical fiction—they definitely have some solid arguments. But just as I wouldn’t put down historical fiction for coming off like a horror movie (such as The Seventh Seal, or even The Devils) I don’t want to put a horror movie down for being more like historical fiction.
The Body Snatcher is loosely based on a short story by Robert Louis Stevenson. That story is fiction but its characters talk about real people. The murderers Burke and Hare, and especially Dr. Knox, the man who hired them to supply his need for bodies where he taught medical school in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Dr. Knox was a man of science who believed the ends justified the means. He was unable to get enough bodies for his students…not by legal means. Like others then, he turned to “resurrection men”—grave robbers, to supply him with the bodies he could not get anywhere else.
The stories of Burke, Hare, and Dr. Knox were the basis for the
movies The Flesh and the Fiends (1959), The Doctor and the Devils (1985) and others. Neither of the first two pictures aimed for subtlety. But I don’t mean that as a put-down. Both were effective as straight-ahead shockers. Comparing The Body Snatcher to these movies is a classic case of “apples vs. oranges.”
The real Burke was hung. Hare, who testified against Burke, got off and was never seen again. (In The Flesh and the Fiends, he
is blinded by a mob, but there is no strong evidence to support
this). In court, Burke never mentioned Knox; Knox never went to trial and left Edinburgh for London.
All these real-life events hang over The Body Snatcher like a dark cloud. MacFarlane, a brilliant medical school instructor, has the same problem that Knox did; his students need bodies to learn medicine. MacFarlane’s assistant, Fettes, soon learns about
where these bodies come from. They are supplied by a strange
man named cabman Gray (Boris Karloff). Gray is pleasant to
Fettes. But something about him is unbearable to MacFarlane;
partly his business in stolen bodies, but something more than that. Clearly, Macfarlane and Gray have a history, one that MacFarlane wants to forget.
MacFarlane hates remembering his past life with Gray; Gray
will not let him forget
Fettes was forced to become MacFarlane’s aide because of money worries. Once he takes on this position, he is forced into a system that corrupts everyone—himself, MacFarlane and Gray. At the same time, he sees the partial truth in MacFarlane’s arguments. Fettes and Gray have urged MacFarlane to perform a delicate operation on a young girl with spinal injuries. To prepare himself, MacFarlane needs another body to study. Fettes is truly in a bind. He likes the little girl and her widowed mother(rare for him) and knows only MacFarlane can perform the surgery. But he believes that Gray is now using a different method to get his bodies—murder instead of grave robbing.
MacFarlane tries to justify what they must do. He wants more doctors to graduate and to help people. Like the little boy whose body Gray dug up and sold to them. (Gray also kills the dead boy’s dog, which guards the grave.) But when Fettes is sure that he recognizes one of Gray’s bodies, that only by murdering her could Gray have given them the body, MacFarlane tells him, just put it out of your mind.
Things are happening too fast for Fettes. When MacFarlane’s surgery succeeds and the girl can walk again, Fettes has even more problem deciding what is right and wrong.
But it is Gray who is probably the most complex, fascinating character. The killings he does are impossible to forgive. And yet Boris Karloff’s excellent portrayal makes you sympathetic for this man. Gray does seem to enjoy tormenting MacFarlane—actually putting his own life in danger at times. You ask yourself why Gray simply can’t leave MacFarlane alone.
The answer is a sad one, I think. Gray feels he has never gotten the thanks he deserved from his old friend. He tells MacFarlane, “I saved that skin of yours, once.” (During the Burke and Hare trial.)
Gray–feeling the bitterness about the way lives turned
out
Now MacFarlane has a respected position in the academic world, a comfortable home, social status. Gray, with no education and limited money, has stayed a cabman, a life of “knowing one’s place” in the British form of caste system.
“I was forced to do many things I did not wish to do,” he tells MacFarlane, summing up his life.
MacFarlane’s air of respectability
disgusts Gray. In truth, MacFarlane cares deeply about the
doctors he is training, about the field of medicine. He would never call himself a murderer. But in Gray’s heart, “we share the same skin…” He feels that they were friends once and MacFarlane has never given him what he deserved for keeping quiet during the trials. Also Gray suspects…correctly, that MacFarlane would continue buying bodies from him, even if he knew these people were actually murdered.
Sadder still, MacFarlane cannot change his attitude towards Gray. He hates remembering that once, they worked together to break the law. In the end, it will come down to Gray saying to him, “You’ll never be rid of me,” and MacFarlane treating Gray like a cancer that he has to cut out. Violently, if necessary.
Gray–a way of earning extra money he has grown used to
Like some other movies Val Lewton produced, using the same three directors, Jacques Tourneur, Mark Robson, and Robert Wise, The Body Snatcher has more sadness than scares. (I Walked With a Zombie is another example.) The music when the credits roll seems somber, not eerie. Ironically, these movies were made and released during World War II and probably were seen by soldiers far from home…and by their families who were missing them. Don’t see this one on a day when you’re looking for a lot of big scares and shock scenes. The Body Snatcher isn’t about that. It is about the characters and how the past keeps knocking at the door.