THE BODY SNATCHER (1945) Blu-ray
Director: Robert Wise
Scream Factory/Shout! Factory

Boris Karloff is waiting to "Burke" you on Scream Factory's Blu-ray of the Val Lewton period horror THE BODY SNATCHER.

The names of Dr. Knox and the resurrection men Burke & Hare are still spoken of in hushed tones years after the West Port murders in Edinburgh when young starving medical student Donald Fettes (Russell Wade, SHOOT TO KILL) becomes the new teaching assistant to Dr. Wolfe MacFarlane (Henry Daniell, SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE SECRET WEAPON). A former protégé of Knox, McFarlane it turns out also makes occasional use of resurrection man/cab driver John Gray (Boris Karloff, FRANKENSTEIN) when the town council cannot provide enough cadavers for medical study. Despite his reservations, Fettes continues working for MacFarlane who may be the only doctor capable of operating on the spine of young Georgina (Sharyn Moffett, MR. BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS HOUSE) despite the doctor's apparent indifference to the pleas of the girl's mother (Rita Corday, THE FALCON STRIKES BACK). Fettes believes himself to be complicit in murder when the corpse he requests from Gray for study on Georgina's operation turns out to be that of a street singer (Donna Lee), and Gray makes known the extent of his strange hold over MacFarlane when he resolves to be done with the man and his crimes.

Up until the climax, THE BODY SNATCHER is the least ambiguously supernatural of the Val Lewton productions, drawing inspiration from the short story by Robert Louis Stevenson ("The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde") which was itself a fictional follow-up to a grisly true crime cast later dramatized in John Gilling's THE FLESH AND THE FIENDS, Vernon Sewell's BURKE & HARE, a John Landis film of the same name in 2010, and Freddie Francis' THE DOCTORS AND THE DEVILS based on a previously unproduced screenplay by Dylan Thomas. Directed by former RKO editor Robert Wise (THE HAUNTING), THE BODY SNATCHER is noticeably lacking the more skilled direction that Jacques Tourneur brought to CAT PEOPLE and I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE or even Wise's former assistant Mark Robson to THE SEVENTH VICTIM while Robert De Grasse's monochrome photography apes but never quite equals the chiaroscuro work of Nicholas Musuraca on the former Tourneur film. What distinguishes THE BODY SNATCHER is its skillful scripting – by Philip McDonald (Hitchcock's REBECCA) and Lewton under the pseudonym Carlos Keith – of the relationship between MacFarlane and Gray. While the latter is more outwardly sinister, and even MacFarlane's housekeeper/unacknowledged wife Meg (Edith Atwater, SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS) acknowledges her husband's weaknesses while projecting all of his negative qualities onto Gray, he is also the more insightful of the two men. It may seem that Gray is sarcastically chiding MacFarlane about his lack of understanding basic humanity for all his knowledge of the technical workings of the body, but MacFarlane does reveal himself to be rather hypocritical about beliefs about furthering medical progress when he refuses to operate on the little girl ("I'm a teacher, not a practitioner"). His failings are not only responsible for Gray's persecution of him but also enable it, and he is able to hound the doctor to the end of both of them (even if one departs corporeally before the other). Karloff gets a lot to work with her, chances to be malevolent, sarcastic, and even charming – it may or may not be genuine fondness for children that has him cheering up Georgina – as well as singing a ditty about Burke & Hare as a preamble to demonstrating their method of snuffing victims on blackmailing orderly Joseph (Bela Lugosi, THE RAVEN). Atwater and Corday both turn in fine work but Wade is a bland secondary leading man in a rather bland role. The production design by RKO regulars Albert S. D'Agostino and Walter E. Keller is as typically lavish on a budget as the other Lewtons – possibly recycling some sets from the studio's bigger productions – while the photography of Robert De Grasse (like Musuraca soon relegated to television) only captures the Lewton look in its broad strokes but is otherwise of a high standard.

After its theatrical release and 1952 re-release, THE BODY SNATCHER was relatively hard to see apart from late night television until a mid-1980s release on VHS from Media Home Entertainment offshoot Nostalgia Merchant and a 1986 laserdisc release from Image Entertainment. The film was reissued on VHS by Turner in 1991 followed by a remastered transfer on the Image Entertainment six-laserdisc THE VAL LEWTON COLLECTION in 1995 with an audio commentary by Wise. The Wise track – which did not run the full length of the film and was filled out by commentary from Steve Haberman on the DVD – was ported over to Warner's DVD double feature with I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE included in the five-disc 2005 VAL LEWTON HORROR COLLECTION and the six-disc 2008 reissue which added the documentary VAL LEWTON: THE MAN IN THE SHADOWS – included on Criterion's Blu-ray of CAT PEOPLE – to the set (alongside SHADOWS IN THE DARK: THE VAL LEWTON LEGACY which was included on the disc of THE SEVENTH VICTIM in the Lewton sets. Derived from a new 4K restoration, Scream Factory's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.33:1 pillarboxed fullscreen Blu-ray is simply stunning to behold. Blacks are bottomless, woodgrain stands out in the sets (sometimes more convincingly than the soundstage stone exteriors), and the contrasts greatly aide De Grasse's attempts at chiaroscuro lighting. The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono track has some light surface noise but dialogue, music, and effects are always clear (the better to appreciate the use of sound in Wise's take on the Lewton walk). Optional English SDH subtitles are also provided.

Besides the Lewton documentary "Shadows in the Dark: The Val Lewton Legacy" (53:27) from the DVD set, also ported over is the audio commentary by director Robert Wise with film historian Steve Haberman appearing after the Wise contribution ends about two thirds into the film. Wise discusses his work as an editor at RKO which included Orson Welles' CITIZEN KANE as well as shooting some additional footage to bridge continuity over the massive cuts to THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS and his desire to direct, the opportunity of which came after assistant Robson's own turn when documentary filmmaker Gunther von Fritsch's slow work on CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE left them behind schedule. He discusses working on that film and how it lead to THE BODY SNATCHER, noting that the concept and the casting of Karloff was quite the opposite of Lewton's preferences for horror and was the idea of executive producer Jack J. Gross (ISLE OF THE DEAD) who had been brought in by RKO against Lewton's wishes. He goes onto describe how Lewton maintained involvement over every aspect of the production in spite of his feelings, from the pseudonymous screenwriting to helping Wise visualize the period in pre-production before the sets were built. Haberman comes on roughly forty-eight minutes to provide not only historical context to the Burke & Hare case but also the Stevenson source story, and the author's own feelings about the work which he refused to reproduce in any of the collections published during his lifetime, and the many changes made to it in the adaptation. "You'll Never Get Rid of Me: Resurrecting THE BODY SNATCHER" (11:55) is a short featurette with Gregory William Mank who underlines why he feels that the film is one of the finest horror films of the 1940s and showcases one of Karloff's best horror performances (even arguing that the film has Lugosi's best latter day role). Also included is a poster/lobby card gallery (4:37) and still gallery (5:28). Although the back cover notes the inclusion of a theatrical trailer, it is not included (although it was featured on the DVD). (Eric Cotenas)

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