My Top 10 Favorite Scary Movies: The Body Snatcher (1945)

"[Val] Lewton contributed a great deal to the screenplays of his films, from the original story-lines, which were often his, through the various drafts and revisions; and he always wrote the final shooting scripts himself." (Val Lewton B Unit | Ephemera Quotes)  Credited under the pseudonym Carlos Keith, "The Body Snatcher" shows Lewton's love affair with literature. Where he usually compromises with a title card with a quote from Hippocrates or making up one via Dr. Judd ("Cat People"), it was only a matter of time for a cheap and creepy literary adaptation. 

Based on a short story written by Robert Louis Stevenson based on real events from 1820s Edinburgh, Dr. Wolfe McFarlane (Henry Daniell), ex-surgeon and medical professor, takes on one of his students as an assistant and taking him into the deep underbelly of pre-body medical donation. Cab driver by day and grave robber by night, Gray (Karloff) provides him with these bodies, but whether or not they were his own murder victims is another question. It is slowly revealed that the lowlife Gray has something over the doctor from his dark past that will torture him until his dying day. 

Karloff looked entirely in his element, even his costume of a top hat, side burns, and whiskers seemed to be complimented around his iconic face. While it is very easy to gush on Karloff's professionalism and Bela's lack but full of a passionate grit, I want to highlight on the unsung antihero, the doctor himself, Henry Daniell. 

Lewton was known for casting fantastic bit players that time forgot and as full as Daniell's career was, it is heartbreaking that his performance is overshadowed, but yet overshadowed by the greats. A consummate actor with a career spanning over FOUR decades, Daniell was the actor to cast in roles of the aristocratic yet malevolent gentleman. "I was never a villain until Gerald du Maurier said there was something creepingly sinister about me. I was a good, clean-living boy until then! Of course, it may be that I am really a sinister person and that portraying respectability is really, on my part, a display of virtuosity." (1944 interview) Unfortunately "The Body Snatcher" is Daniell's only flirt with horror, imagine what Hitchcock could have done with him!

While the story is consistent, two scenes do remain the most memorable. When Joseph (Lugosi) tries to blackmail Gray (Karloff) out of saying anything about the body snatching operation he had with his employer, it becomes a classic stand off much like the chess game in "The Black Cat!" But Lewton uses this scene of all scenes to basically tell the origin story of the Burke and Hare  murders paralleling both instances of homicidal grave robbers as it is clear one of them will kill the other as the anticipation builds during the storytelling. The last few minutes themselves is a piece of classic horror mastery as Daniell's demons finally catch up with him, literally before ending on a quote from Hippocrates of Cos which seems cryptic against the final Lewtonian mind game.