Burke & Hare

Two men go into business supplying medical colleges with cadavers by robbing graves.

What you might recall about this film more than anything else is its theme song, which is certainly rather fun and moving. Bringing this tale to life is important and a great addition to horror cinema. Sure, it had been done before as "The Body Snatcher" and "The Flesh and the Fiends"... but it is my understanding that this was the first to be so explicit in the title.

The film also asks another question, perhaps philosophical or ethical: do dead bodies have value? Certainly murder is a terrible crime, but what of people who died naturally? Certainly their owners do longer need them -- why not be taken for medical science? (We now have donor cards and the like, but indeed, how were surgeons to learn their craft without practice?)

Like so many early 1970s British horror movies, I first saw BURKE & HARE at a drive-in as part of a double bill. I don't remember what else was showing that night but this was the movie that I came to see and it wasn't the first feature. I knew director Vernon Sewell from two earlier films, THE CRIMSON CULT and THE BLOOD BEAST TERROR and from being mentioned in David Pirie's landmark study of British horror cinema, A HERITAGE OF HORROR. Neither of those two movies were particularly good but they were entertaining, well made and boasted powerhouse horror casts (Peter Cushing, Robert Flemyng, Christopher Lee, Barbara Steele, Michael Gough, and Boris Karloff). This one didn't have the cast but it was about Burke & Hare.

I am fascinated by the Burke & Hare saga. Though he was hanged in 1829, Burke's skeleton is still on display in Edinburgh. I am also a huge admirer of John Gilling's 1959 version of the story THE FLESH & THE FIENDS. I have seen all 5 of the major cinematic versions of the story and this one is the weakest of the set which is too bad because there was real potential here. The problem is that the producers wanted to have their cake and eat it too.

They combined a horror movie with a period sex romp in the vein of FANNY HILL. The bordello scenes look like a completely different movie. The lighting is different, the music is cheerful, and the editing between the two storylines is haphazard. This is a shame because the B & H scenes are well staged and well acted by Derren Nesbit & Glynn Edwards. Yootha Joyce and Dee Shenderey are also very good as the women behind the men. Harry Andrews looks the part of Dr. Knox but lacks the depth of Peter Cushing's characterization'

I read that director Sewell envisioned a different film altogether as this lacks the tight editing of his other movies. What he thought of BURKE & HARE is probably best summarized by the fact that he quit the business after this one. Producer Kenneth Shipman, taking advantage of the new relaxed standards, made sure that there was plenty of female flesh on display (which Sewell had originally cut down quite a bit). Throw in some kinky behavior witnessed through peepholes and you have what looks like a spread for PLAYBOY magazine (or maybe it's PENTHOUSE since they're British).

While I can't really recommend the film it's not without its good points. This Redemption DVD looks absolutely gorgeous and is the uncut version. There's even a Blu-Ray edition with bonus features. Director John Landis obviously borrowed the film's overall comic tone for his 2010 BURKE & HARE with Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis which is very similar...For more reviews visit The Capsule Critic.

Fairly maligned but, in retrospect, reasonably enjoyable version of the notorious body-snatching double act – played here by Derren Nesbitt (a regular in director Sewell's work) and Glynn Edwards (surprisingly, for a title role, played by a prolific character actor rather than a star or even a familiar face); both men are now married and their spouses get wind of their nefarious activities before long. The end is also closer to the truth, with Hare turning State's Evidence (eventually dying blind and destitute), leaving Burke to hang alone, and Dr. Knox (a typically full-blooded Harry Andrews, with an eye-patch over his right eye and given to cracking dirty jokes for his colleagues' amusement!) – the eminent surgeon they sold the bodies to – being expelled from his profession but subsequently setting up a traveling medicine show! Oddly enough, the rivalry between Knox and the other surgeon-lecturers is all but inexistent here!

The style is agreeably redolent of Hammer Films (nicely book-ended by recreations of period illustrations dealing with the case), though like the brand-new John Landis rendition, the tone is bawdily comic rather than the sleazy seriousness adopted by two more British treatments of these events (unfolding in 1820s Edimburgh) by notable directors – John Gilling's THE FLESH AND THE FIENDS (1959) and Freddie Francis' THE DOCTOR AND THE DEVILS (1985), both of which I had reviewed soon after their first viewing. For the record, the screenplay is the handiwork of Ernle Bradford; his major claim to fame was penning the bestselling chronicle of The Great Siege of Malta of 1565 and, not only is a street in my hometown named after him, but he was to die on our shores in 1986!

The brothel scenes (ostensibly demonstrating Knox's students' leisure time, as well as provide convenient victims for the titular duo, but all-too-obviously mandated by the new-fangled permissiveness) feel rather like padding – incidentally, former Hammer starlet Yutte Stensgaard appears briefly as one such prostitute (which she unconvincingly plays drunk much of the time!). One unexpected asset, however, is a rollicking folk-tune sung by The Scaffold during the film's opening and closing titles.

I do not know if the copy I acquired is culled from the film's DVD edition (through Redemption) but it came accompanied by an interesting 12-minute 'lecture' featuring an unusual-looking (displaying tattoos and piercings galore!) female Professor who, amongst other things, parallels the real-life Dr. Knox's dabbling in body parts so that others may live with the literary figure of Baron Frankenstein attempting to re-animate composites of dead tissue (especially since both came by them illegally).

Briefly, this is not a patch on the Boris Karloff version.

The introductory 70s music/soundtrack is pathetic and cheesy.

Some elements are macabre (no surprise there), but, gratingly, these are mixed with some feeble quasi-comic elements and some cheap 'Confessions of a Window Cleaner' style sex scenes with prostitutes.

This could have been 6.5 for a decent remake. Harry Andrews plays Dr. Knox and rises above the material and script. Derren Nesbitt Gestapo Officer in Where Eagles Dare) and Glynn Edwards (Dave from Minder) are also above average.

Overall disappointing. Feel free to watch it as a curio, but make sure you have something else to do at the same time such as ironing, mending something or reading a newspaper.

How to tell the true story of notorious grave robbers Burke and Hare? As a bawdy sex comedy of course! Throw in an extremely silly theme song that tells of the lads escapades and you soon begin to wonder just what in hell they were trying to achieve with this one. At points it takes its material seriously but quite a lot of the rest of the time, it's a knockabout comedy, with the central characters a pair of lovable rogues who go about killing people. I know time is a healer but it makes you hope that in several years time film-makers don't think enough time has passed to make a musical comedy called Fred & Rose.