In Edinburgh, Scotland during the period of November, 1827 to October, 1828, the duo of William Burke and William Hare murdered 17 victims, selling the corpses to Doctor Robert Knox for medical dissection. These notorious real-life events would later be referenced in Robert Louis Stevenson's short story, "The Body Snatcher", which inspired a 1945 film of the same name with Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. The murders were then adapted for a 1948 British film to be titled “Crimes of Burke and Hare”, but censorship lead to some major changes, and the film was released as THE GREED OF WILLIAM HART starring Tod Slaughter. Two more Burke and Hare retellings were shown in the early 1960s: THE FLESH AND THE FIENDS starring Peter Cushing as Knox and George Rose and Donald Pleasance as the duo, as well as a British TV version (THE ANATOMIST) with Alastair Sim as Knox. The early 1970s brought on yet another take, released with the blunt-as-can be title BURKE AND HARE (aka THE HORRORS OF BURKE AND HARE) and directed by veteran Vernon Sewell (THE BLOOD BEAST TERROR, THE CRIMSON CULT).

Burke (Derren Nesbitt) and Hare (Glynn Edwards) run an old men's boarding house with their lazy wives (Dee Shenderey and Yootha Joyce, the original “Mrs. Roper” on the Britcom “Man About the House”). The notion of lining their pockets with extra money leads Burke and Hare to the backdoor of the medical university where Dr. Knox (Harry Andrews) lectures, as they sell him the body of a lodger who had just passed on. Seeing that Knox pays well for fresh cadavers, when another border becomes sickly, instead of bringing him to a hospital, Burke and Hare snuff him out themselves, and again make an easy profit. This quickly becomes too much of a good thing, as the duo perfects a way of suffocating victims – just about any poor soul who comes into contact with them, or that they suspect no one in the villgae will miss. Their wives are at first suspicious about where all the money is coming from, but the realization is that their greed makes them all for their husbands' homicidal ways of earning a decent living.

Although FLESH AND THE FIENDS is considered far and wide the definitive cinematic take on the subject, BURKE AND HARE remains a flawed but worthy effort by Sewell, and many hold this in higher regards than some of his awkward 1960s horrors. One of the biggest issues is whether the film wants to be a sexploitation comedy or a straight horror film, and we are given an early tip-off with the bawdy pop tune theme (“Burke and Hare, beware of ‘em… Burke and Hare, the pair of ‘em”) which is later repeated during a montage of corpse selling and young romance. When the film was produced, female nudity was a common and pretty much given attribute in British genre pictures, and this one has more than a few flashes of tits. Any time sex is involved, its showcased as the kinky whorehouse antics of the tied-up and costumed kind, or as a reckless night of drunken frolic, such as when Burke seduces a pair of homeless prostitutes; he’s more interested in selling their beautiful bodies than actually paying for them.

Shot at Twickenham Film Studios, the art director on the film was Scott MacGregor, who also worked on a number of early 1970s Hammer films and here does a nice job re-creating the poverty stricken streets and brothel houses of 19th century Edinburgh. Nesbitt and Edwards have pretty good chemistry as Burke and Hare, and even though at times their characters seemed to be played light (making them more likable – especially Burke – if that’s possible), they have several horrific scenes, such as when they ambush the passed-out Daft Jamie (David Pugh) in the dark, intent on snuffing him out. Although Harry Andrews is a fine actor, his rendition of Dr. Knox (who is introduced telling a tasteless dinner table joke about a man’s inadequate nether regions) shows that he didn’t really take the film seriously, and he compares unfavorably to Cushing’s authoritative interpretation more than a decade earlier.

One of the biggest reasons to seek out and indulge in BURKE AND HARE is the presence of Yutte Stensgaard, the Hammer starlet best known for her underrated performance in LUST FOR A VAMPIRE. Along with actress Françoise Pascal (as Marie, the doomed prostitute who ends up as one of Knox’s subjects) and several others, Stensgaard shows off her beautiful figure by doing several topless scenes, and unlike in LUST FOR A VAMPIRE, we get to hear her real voice. Speaking of Hammer, a number of character actors associated with the horror specialists can be seen in small parts, including Duncan Lamont (FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN), James Hayter (HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN), Robin Hawdon (WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH), Katya Wyeth (TWINS OF EVIL) and Caron Gardner (THE EVIL OF FRANKENSTEIN). Longtime Benny Hill sidekick Bob Todd (SCARS OF DRACULA) plays a policeman, with his trademark bald scalp covered by a hat.