Flyerplesys Perfectly adorable

Dirtylogy It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Teddie Blake The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Yash Wade Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

hillbillyhatfield This movie shows why Karloff makes the ultimate evil person. He just oozes nasty. I was hoping for a painful death for him because he killed the dog.A man who will kill a dog for no reason other than barking, their is no redeeming quality in him. Even with that, this is quite possible the best preformance of Karloff. This movie has it all, strong story, great dialog, superior actors, creepy atmophere. This is the measuring stick of great movies.

fotoflood-30458 lots of carnage in the camera and on docs floor. sad about Bela. carnage pure carnage these guys sure are picky about their reviews so i would take all of this with a grain of salt. its pure pornography given that it is val lewton. send your kids to school and teach your parents well.

zardoz-13 Boris Karloff exudes depravity as an unscrupulous grave robber in "Curse of the Cat People" director Robert Wise's third film "The Body Snatcher," an atmospheric adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's short story scripted by Phillip MacDonald and producer Val Lewton under the pseudonym Carlos Keith. Cast as Cabman John Gray, Karloff is thoroughly black-hearted. Gray gets into trouble early when he wields a shovel to kill a faithful canine standing guard over his deceased master's grave site. Vintage horror icon Bela Lugosi lurks about the periphery as a caretaker to Henry Daniell's dubious physician Dr. Wolfe 'Toddy' MacFarlane. The premise focuses on the dire shortage of cadavers for physicians-in- training to dissect. Deplorably enough, doctors must turn to dastards like Gray to obtain fresh bodies, exhumed without authorization as soon as they can without the authorities capturing them. The names of notorious Burke and Hare are referenced to narrow the time of the story down to the year 1828 when these two infamous fiends murdered 16 innocents and sold their remains to Dr. Robert Knox for dissection in his anatomy classes. If mention of these men weren't sufficient to cement the similarity to Stevenson's criminals, the use of the same setting Edinburgh, Scotland and Dr. Knox as Dr. MacFarlane's mentor drives the point home plainly enough. The action focuses on a little girl, Georgina (Sharyn Moffett), who is confined to a wheelchair because she was injured in a carriage accident and can no longer walk. Georgina hates MacFarlane's atrocious bedside manner, but she warms immediately to a financially strapped medical student, Donald Fettes (Russell Wade), who treats her with kindness. Initially, MacFarlane laments that he cannot operate because his teaching position prevents him from practicing medicine since he is engaged primarily in the teaching of it. Nevertheless, Dr. MacFarlane performs a procedure on Georgina, but she still refuses to walk. Meantime, Joseph (Bela Lugosi of "Dracula") decides to blackmail Gray because he knows that the latter murdered a blind street singer. Naturally, Gray doesn't let Joseph's threats unhinge him. Instead, he strangles Joseph to death. Meantime, the psychological paralysis that keeps Georgina from walking ends when she hears a horse and stands up on her own power. The guilt-ridden MacFarlane tries to bribe Gray so that he can be rid of the man, but Gray refuses to be bought off. Consequently, MacFarlane murders Gray himself, but he pays the ultimate price himself during a storm when the horses bolt and take the wagon with MacFarlane in it over a cliff. "The Body Snatcher" represented the eighth and final film that co-starred the two legends of horror Karloff and Lugosi.

Idiot-Deluxe "I wouldn't do it Toddy, I wouldn't be heavy-handed... it might become known that when the great Dr. McFarlane finds his anatomy school without subjects, he provides them himself, from the midst of his own household."The Body Snatcher is without doubt my favorite of the Val Lewton horror films of the 40's, a first-rate reworking based upon the well known case of Burke and Hare. With GREAT casting (Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Henry Daniell) and terrific looking sets, that make for a faultlessly convincing grim and moody 19th century Edinburg. The Body Snatcher is a true pleasure to watch again and again and has what is easily one Karloff's best performances (some say it IS his best) and is among the very best of vintage black and white horror films. Strong proof that Universal wasn't the only studio that could put together a good horror flick back then.With his cane and crooked smile and crowned with a top-hat, Karloff certainly cultivated a great "look" for his character and proves to be a scene-stealer in virtually every scene he's in; a potent malignantly evil presence in the film who's always plotting, scheming and blackmailing usually at the expense of Henry Daniell who, quite marvelously, plays the role of the depressed and overwrought Dr. McFarlane. These two are sparring with each other throughout the movie. I just don't know, but whatever the reason, perhaps he's empowered by that top-hat of his, in any case Karloff's dialogue and delivery comes off note-perfect in every scene.A word on the visuals, aside from the aforementioned sets, The Body Snatcher is suitably grim and murky with its gas-lit streets, night mists, thunderstorms and howling wind; there are several terrifically atmospheric night scenes, always involving some ill-deed of a kind - often in cemeteries. A British reviewer would probably make the quip "those bloody ghouls". Great shadow play, especially in those midnight cemetery visits.Once it's all said and done, one gets the sense that, if they did this good on a small budget, just think how amazing the movie may have been with a more lavish budget. A few good action sequences, in grim Gothic locales, probably would've notched this feature into 4 star territory, that and if Lugosi had more of a role, he's a decidedly secondary character in this one. That poor, poor Bela.....and he still had yet to endure the infamously terrible movies he would make with Ed Wood in the 50's.Summing things up, The Body Snatcher is a brilliantly made low-budget black and white, Gothic horror film released in 1945, loosely based upon the infamous duo of Burke and Hare. Great casting, great acting, great script, great sets, great photography, great everything. What I'm saying is this movie, The Body Snatcher, is well, great!Note: Pay close attention to what Karloff's doing in this movie, that shouldn't be too difficult, as he's very hard to miss. A brilliant film and one of only a few truly great horror films of the 40's. The 30's were much better for this kind of film.