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?)

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).

Vernon Sewell's only recently resurrected, morbidly marvellous, luridly lewd 'Burke & Hare' (1972) is further distinguished by the singularly sleazy turns from stalwart character actors Derren Nesbitt and Harry Andrews making the experience saucier than a cider-ripened pair of poorly pickled plums! A fleshly fiendish trawl through the iniquitous back alleys of 19th century Edinburgh, wherein the morbidly fascinating tale of these infamous body snatchers is garishly presented for our grisly edification, sparing no gloriously gory detail over how these maniacal miscreants invidiously plied their blasphemous trade, vividly exposing their grievous impropriety that led this diabolical duo of fiendishly feral flesh merchants to their inexorable, darkly-storied doom!!! Their vile transport from oafish zeros to the icy gallows is boldly told, and maintains a gruesomely tight grip like a hangman's noose! And it was utterly delightful to see exquisite scream dreams Yutte Stensgaard and Françoise Pascal...and, er, there's so much of 'em to see!!!!!!! This recklessly ribald, corpse-bartering shocker retains its delightfully seamy veneer, being a frequently bawdy, blood-thirsty bacchanal of gross impropriety, despicable immorality, boozy licentiousness and sordid, cold blooded murder, and is all the better for it, mayte! 'Hare today...gone tomorrow!' After watching the altogether nefarious nocturnal depredations of these asinine anti-heroes you might need a 'stiff' drink to revivify your fear-frozen marrow!!!!!!

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.