CAST:
Derren Nesbitt, Harry Andrews, Glynn Edwards, Yootha Joyce, Françoise Pascal, Yutte Stensgaard, Robin Hawdon, Alan Tucker, Dee Shenderey, Joan Carol, Paul Greaves, David Pugh, James Hayter, Thomas Heathcoate, Duncan Lamont, Katya Wyeth, Bob Todd, Reg Lye
COMMENTARY:
Edinburgh in the 1820s and two ne'erdowells, Burke (Derren Nesbitt) and Hare (Glynn Edwards),
are living in squalor with their wives when they hear of a way of
making easy money. When an elderly man in the boarding house they stay
in expires, they are given the job of taking the body to the undertaker,
but Burke has an idea, to take the corpse to the city's medical
college. This is because the doctors there pay a handsome fee for fresh
bodies for dissection and study, and their students can use them as
well, so after making an enquiry the two men have successfully completed
a transaction - not for the last time.
The story of Burke and Hare is, for some reason, a remarkably popular
one in film and television, with a version of the true, 19th century
events popping up on screens large and small almost every decade. The
best of these is undoubtedly the Val Lewton B-movie The Body Snatcher,
but is it significant that this one sticks least closely to the facts?
Compare it with this 1972 account, which adheres to the basic storyline
as it happened, but to lesser effect, neither as witty or as
atmospheric as the previous 1940s classic, perhaps because here the goal
is to make a comedy horror.
With the result that this Burke and Hare is more like a British sex
comedy strain of the tale, as half the running time seems to be taken up
with the comings and goings in a local brothel, a great opportunity, so
the filmmakers apparently thought, to spice up their production with
plentiful female nudity. Most of that nakedness is courtesy of imported
French star Françoise Pascal
as a whore who finds love with a naive medical student and leads, we
eventually find out, to the bad guys' downfall, although imported Danish
star Yutte Stensgaard takes off her clothes as well.
Every Burke and Hare needs their Doctor Knox, or they would be out of business, so step forward Harry Andrews
sporting a pair of spectacles with one black lens and a Scottish accent
to cover that role. There are quite a few dodgy accents here,
actually, from Nesbitt's sing-song Irish to Stensgaard's broad burr,
although to be fair she might have been dubbed, just not dubbed by
anybody from Edinburgh, or indeed Britain by the sounds of it. Pascal
gets to keep her French accent, however, even if her real life
equivalent was presumably from Scotland.
Anyway, Knox is only too happy to hand over cash to the evildoers
without asking any questions, and this is to their benefit as this is
one of the only renderings of their story that sees them as
significantly financially better off after their misdeeds allow the
pounds, shillings and pence to flow into their pockets. The idea that
this is all a bit of a giggle is somewhat at odds with a film that
portrays wifebeating and murder, and they don't sit too comfortably with
the tarnished charm of the bodysnatchers. If you know anything of the
actual events, you can spot the references to them, but it needn't harm
your enjoyment if you don't as this does have a certain energy about its
dodgy dealings that help it through its lame humour and bloodless
nastiness. Also, the theme song is by The Scaffold of "Lily the Pink"
fame, which sounds more like Chas and Dave: why sing a song about this
famous Scottish crime spree in a Cockney accent? Particularly when
they're from Liverpool?
REVIEW:HERE
IMAGES: MARCUS BROOKS
I'm fanatic to movies from sir Peter Cushing, am Guatemala and I liked all your horror movies from 60's and all material
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