RKO Pictures, 1945

starring: Boris Karloff, Henry Daniell, Russell Wade, Bela Lugosi

directed by: Robert Wise

the plot: The Anatomy Act, allowing for the legal dissection of cadavers for medical training, was not passed until 1832. This film, clearly inspired by the Burke & Hare West Port murders, takes place in Edinburgh a year earlier. A committed surgeon, Dr. MacFarlane (Daniell), hires sinister cabman John Gray (Karloff) to dig up graves and provide fresh corpses with which to train his eager students in the art of dissection. Gray soon turns to murder to keep a supply of bodies for Dr. MacFarlane.

why it’s good: Based on a short story by Robert Louis Stevenson, this film is often confused with Don Siegel’s sci-fi classic “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1956) and its three insipid remakes. Boris Karloff was a true star with a long career that stretched from the silent film era to “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” in 1969, the year of his death. But few would ever have accused him of great acting. He was marvelous as Frankenstein’s creation in the two James Whale films of the 1930s, and showed a flair for comedy in the original Broadway production of “Arsenic and Old Lace,” but he was chiefly employed for his tall, frightening figure and distinctive, lisping voice. As Gray the cabman and corpse salesman, he’s magnificent, oily and reptilian, and the cheerful concentration of his good manners is soaked in greed and sheer evil (a scene in which he casually kills a sweet little dog guarding its master’s grave is more shocking than those in which he murders people). Henry Daniell, another stock character actor, matches Karloff in a fine, nuanced performance. There is a solid and effective subplot about a star pupil (Wade) trying to get a crippled child to walk again, and a recurring innocent girl street-singer motif that’s truly inspired. Sadly, Bela Lugosi is wasted in a throw-away part, as he usually was after 1940.

why you should own it: Robert Wise will be remembered more for “West Side Story” (1961) and “The Sound of Music” (1965) than for his more worthy “The Haunting” (1963), “The Sand Pebbles” (1966) and “The Andromeda Strain” (1971). Wise was frequently dismissed as a director with no style, but like the diverse Michael Curtiz and Howard Hawks before him, he let the material dictate the look and feel of the film. “The Body Snatcher” was only his fourth feature, but the lessons he learned editing “Citizen Kane” (1941) are in full flower here. Credit must also be given to producer Val Lewton, who forged a very distinctive, moody approach to horror with director Jacques Tourneur. The horror here is frequently found in shadows, fog and inspired camera angles, as in Tourneur’s “Cat People” (1942). Warner Video packaged “The Body Snatcher” with Tourneur’s lovely “I Walked with a Zombie” (1943) as part of the Val Lewton Collection in 2005. Historian Steve Haberman and Wise offer a fine commentary on “The Body Snatcher,” which includes trailers.