If a body meet a body coming through the rye
Coming up in September: Burke and Hare with Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis as the title characters. (And directed by John "that werewolf-movie guy" Landis.) I am going to see this the day it hits the theaters. You should join me. The link goes to an article with four excerpts from the film. It looks dopey but enjoyable. Even if it's entirely dumb, I want to see it.
The article, I was delighted to note, never refers to Burke and Hare as "body-snatchers" or "grave-robbers". They were neither. What they were was murderers. Neither of them is ever known to have robbed a grave or stolen a corpse from its coffin or its grieving relatives. Burke and Hare killed people, mostly by suffocation and mostly at the lodging house run by Hare, in order to create corpses to sell to the medical school at Edinburgh University. A Doctor Knox at the medical school bought bodies from them, taking care that he and his underlings didn't ask too many questions. Knox escaped any punishment or culpability in the trial. As far as I am any judge, though, he was as big a villain as the murderers, besides which I just plain despise him for his passive white-collar evil. The film does have an inaccurate moment with the gruesome twosome robbing a grave, but I think it had to include at least one such scene in order to pass the Academy of Bogus History.
I am delighted that the backgrounds in the film look exactly like Edinburgh as I remember the historical district--Old Town, the Royal Mile and what's now the shopping district near Edinburgh Castle. I was there in 2004 and did a lot of walking, mostly at night, while jet-lagged and giddy; it was a blissful time. I'll tell you more about it someday. This film makes me want to go back there. Near Princes Street, there are a ton of tiny alleys and roofed-over passageways ("closes") and staircases up the hillside to the next cross-street. You can still see the alley down which Hare lived with Burke and their respective girlfriends and hangers-on; likewise you can walk up the closes and stairs which got a lot of attention at the subsequent trial, when witnesses testified that, say, Victim #11 was last seen staggering drunk on that corner with Burke guiding her home.
Up the close and doon the stair,
But an' ben wi' Burke and Hare.
Burke's the butcher, Hare's the thief,
And Knox the boy wha' buys the beef.
--rhyme current in Edinburgh after the trial, much like "Lizzie Borden took an axe..." after the Borden murders. "But an' ben" means "out and in".
During the inaccurate-grave-robbing scene, there's a headstone in the background for John Grey. That's the character played by Boris Karloff in The Body Snatcher, which is veeery loosely inspired by both the Burke and Hare killing spree and R.L. Stevenson's The Body-Snatchers. It's a Val Lewton production, it came out in 1945 and it's one of the best performances Karloff ever gave. He does all the things he was famous for--tons of darkness, menace and predatory violence. And he does things you virtually never see him do elsewhere. His character, John Grey, the Burke equivalent--is funny. He's charismatic, even playful, and small children like and trust him at once. He's gentle with his old horse and pet cat. Grey is always grinning at his private jokes, and by the twinkle in Karloff's eye, he was having a good time. And then you cross him and all smiles stop. Oh, and apparently there are other people in this movie, including Henry Daniell as the Dr. Knox equivalent character, an excellent foil. His sort of evil is weak and self-serving and dressed up as a good deed In the Name Of Research; he contrasts with Grey's cheerful violence very nicely. But all anyone talks about in this film is Karloff, and I can see why. The only other performance that I've seen use genial villainy quite so well is Robert Newton's turn as Long John Silver. Man, now I want to watch it all over again.
At least I'll watch this scene. Have a look yourselves:
"Grey. Do you know anything about the human body?"
"I've had some experience."
The article, I was delighted to note, never refers to Burke and Hare as "body-snatchers" or "grave-robbers". They were neither. What they were was murderers. Neither of them is ever known to have robbed a grave or stolen a corpse from its coffin or its grieving relatives. Burke and Hare killed people, mostly by suffocation and mostly at the lodging house run by Hare, in order to create corpses to sell to the medical school at Edinburgh University. A Doctor Knox at the medical school bought bodies from them, taking care that he and his underlings didn't ask too many questions. Knox escaped any punishment or culpability in the trial. As far as I am any judge, though, he was as big a villain as the murderers, besides which I just plain despise him for his passive white-collar evil. The film does have an inaccurate moment with the gruesome twosome robbing a grave, but I think it had to include at least one such scene in order to pass the Academy of Bogus History.
I am delighted that the backgrounds in the film look exactly like Edinburgh as I remember the historical district--Old Town, the Royal Mile and what's now the shopping district near Edinburgh Castle. I was there in 2004 and did a lot of walking, mostly at night, while jet-lagged and giddy; it was a blissful time. I'll tell you more about it someday. This film makes me want to go back there. Near Princes Street, there are a ton of tiny alleys and roofed-over passageways ("closes") and staircases up the hillside to the next cross-street. You can still see the alley down which Hare lived with Burke and their respective girlfriends and hangers-on; likewise you can walk up the closes and stairs which got a lot of attention at the subsequent trial, when witnesses testified that, say, Victim #11 was last seen staggering drunk on that corner with Burke guiding her home.
Up the close and doon the stair,
But an' ben wi' Burke and Hare.
Burke's the butcher, Hare's the thief,
And Knox the boy wha' buys the beef.
--rhyme current in Edinburgh after the trial, much like "Lizzie Borden took an axe..." after the Borden murders. "But an' ben" means "out and in".
During the inaccurate-grave-robbing scene, there's a headstone in the background for John Grey. That's the character played by Boris Karloff in The Body Snatcher, which is veeery loosely inspired by both the Burke and Hare killing spree and R.L. Stevenson's The Body-Snatchers. It's a Val Lewton production, it came out in 1945 and it's one of the best performances Karloff ever gave. He does all the things he was famous for--tons of darkness, menace and predatory violence. And he does things you virtually never see him do elsewhere. His character, John Grey, the Burke equivalent--is funny. He's charismatic, even playful, and small children like and trust him at once. He's gentle with his old horse and pet cat. Grey is always grinning at his private jokes, and by the twinkle in Karloff's eye, he was having a good time. And then you cross him and all smiles stop. Oh, and apparently there are other people in this movie, including Henry Daniell as the Dr. Knox equivalent character, an excellent foil. His sort of evil is weak and self-serving and dressed up as a good deed In the Name Of Research; he contrasts with Grey's cheerful violence very nicely. But all anyone talks about in this film is Karloff, and I can see why. The only other performance that I've seen use genial villainy quite so well is Robert Newton's turn as Long John Silver. Man, now I want to watch it all over again.
At least I'll watch this scene. Have a look yourselves:
"Grey. Do you know anything about the human body?"
"I've had some experience."