A doctor employs two men to dig up graves in order for him to have bodies on which to perform experiments, but the men begin to get their own ideas of where to get bodies.
An early TV movie, shot under the aegis of the busy Harry Alan Towers, adapted (minimally) by director Dennis Vance from James Bridie’s play about Dr Knox, the patron of Burke and Hare. The old warhorse piece was first done for BBC-TV in 1939 (!) with Andrew Cruickshank and again in 1980 with Patrick Stewart, but this version was made in 1956, and released theatrically in the US in 1961 (perhaps prompted by the more elaborate and lurid – and, it has to be said, exciting – The Flesh and the Fiends). It takes place on very few sets, in long, talky scenes and dwells rather more on a dull side-issue love affair between Knox’s pupil Walter Anderson (George Cole) and the supposedly upright (actually shrewish) Mary Belle (Jill Bennett), sister of Knox’s genteel mistress Amelia (Margaret Gordon). Burke (Diarmuid Kelly) and Hare (Michael Ripper) appear surprisingly little, and whole swathes of important story are passed on in speeches about arrests, trials, mobs and demonstrations – even the key moment as Walter recognises the ‘anatomical subject’ brought in by the Irish louts as the barely-cold Mary Paterson (Adrienne Corri), whom he met in a pub the night before, is conveyed by an offscreen scream with nothing so gruesome as a shot of the dead body (presumably, this was in deference to television audience sensibilities in the ‘50s since it’s an instance where a more dramatic staging wouldn’t have blown the budget).
Starring - Alastair Sim, George Cole, Adrienne Corri
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Item is complete with DVD and disk artwork and comes in plastic wallet.
Running Time 73 Minutes
DVD's are region zero - Play in any DVD player worldwide
Please do not purchase this item if you are expecting HD quality. Quality of the video and sound is 8 out of 10. Good quality.
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