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, 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.