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Based on the actual murders and events from the 1820s in scotland! I really enjoyed the film. It strikes just the right balance of comedy and drama, which is hard to accomplish. The two main characters burke and hare ( pegg and serkis) are out of work, so they come up with creative ways to find and sell dead bodies to the local institutions for study. The grave robbing isn't working out, so they just start knocking people off. But when one of their bodies is recognized, it all hits the fan. Some other familiar faces. Tim curry, from rocky horror. Chris lee, from a thousand horror films. Hugh bonneville, from abbey. There's an interesting end to the story. It seemed so creative that i looked up the facts in wikipedia dot org. And by gum, that really is how it all actually ended! Watch the film. It tells a good story, which just happens to be true.

Restored by the UCLA film archive, with funding from various sources.

Slade and fresney have crashed their car, and are trapped with the tide coming in. So we flash back to the circumstances that brought them to this point. Competing newspapers, gang bosses. Hit men, jealous husbands, flirting wives. The only name i recognize here is regis toomey, as inspector o'haffey. He was the copper in so many huge films. When someone knocks off vaughn, the editor of the paper, there are so many suspects! It's kind of a noir, but not quite. Rather a jinxed production team! Director john reinhardt died young at 52. Story by raoul whitfield, who died young at 48. The lead, don castle, who played tim slade, died of an overdose at 47. Castle was in seven films that were released in 1947. Busy guy!

William powell, even before the thin man series of films. In this one, he's the dashing, cool and stylish philo vance, determined to solve a murder. No myrna loy yet, but he does have the energetic mary astor, who made some great films with humphrey bogart. When an antique collector is knocked off, everyone is trying to piece together exactly what happened. Eugene pallette is in here as detective heath, a copper. Read up on his wikipedia entry. He was not a good neighbor! A couple years later, powell and loy will be the socialite couple nick and nora charles in the thin man, drinking their way to solving cases, with the help of their dog. This was a rather tame project for michael curtiz... later, he'll direct casablanca and mildred pierce, huge, huge films! He won the oscar for casablanca.