In Edinburgh, Scotland in 1831, young aspiring doctor Donald Fettes is studying under the esteemed Dr. MacFarlane, who is visited by Mrs. Marsh in the hopes that he could cure the paralysis that has slowly crippled her young daughter, Georgina, since a carriage accident several years before. MacFarlane believes that the girl can be helped by a delicate operation that's never been attempted but tells her that he can't do it himself, as his position of medical professor keeps him from actually practicing. At the same time, MacFarlane makes Fettes his assistant so he can continue to afford paying for his studies, but as a result, he soon learns the grim truth that some of the bodies used in the classes come from raided graves. He also personally meets the man behind it, cabman John Gray, when he arrives in the middle of the night to deliver a corpse and earn his pay. This, coupled with his learning that the body is that of a young man whose grieving mother he'd gotten to know the day before, makes Fettes consider giving up medicine, but MacFarlane convinces him to stay, insisting that doctors must do whatever they can to ensure progress in their field, no matter how horrific it may be. Later, when the two of them go to an inn for dinner, they meet Gray, who appears to know a dark secret from MacFarlane's past and threatens to reveal it if he doesn't agree to operate on little Georgina, a matter that the two medical men are discussing. MacFarlane agrees, mainly just to placate Gray, but later tries to go back on the promise, saying that he hasn't any specimens to use in studying the spinal column, which is necessary for the operation. Fettes then visits Gray to tell him of MacFarlane's need of another body but Gray tells him that he might not be able to acquire one for some time, as the churchyards are now very heavily guarded. However, later that night, Gray delivers a body, but when Fettes looks at the face, he recognizes it as that of a blind street singer whom he saw alive and well just hours before. Suspecting Gray of murder, Fettes intends to tell the police but MacFarlane stops him, saying that he himself could be arrested as an accomplice. Soon, as more death and descend on MacFarlane's house, the morbid secrets of the good doctor's past and his connection to Gray slowly come to light and threaten to send Fettes down the same dark path as his mentor.
There's no limit to how low Gray will stoop in order to make a profit. When Fettes comes to him requesting a specimen for MacFarlane, as the doctor must study the spine before he can perform the operation on Georgina, Gray feels that it'll be a long time before he'll be able to deliver, as the churchyards have become more heavily guarded since his last job where he killed the dog. That's when he decides to deliver a specimen that's much fresher than the corpses he's dug up for MacFarlane: he murders a blind street singer. Even though Fettes recognizes her, Gray tells him in a threatening tone that he'd best pay him and make the "proper" entry, which he does. After this situation, MacFarlane decides to terminate business with Gray, but even so, he insists that they'll still be "friends," saying he'll be stopping by now and then, adding, "And do you think you're getting rid of me, Toddy?" before leaving while chuckling evilly. He meets up with MacFarlane again sooner than he expected when he comes across him at the inn, drowning his sorrows over Georgina still being unable to walk after the operation, and when he laments how he's failed even though he knows he did it right, Gray decides to torment him some more. He tells him that the operation didn't work because MacFarlane only knows how to work with dead bodies, the result of his apprenticing under Dr. Knox, the man who employed the notorious Burke and Hare to kill for him in order for him to have specimens for his anatomy classes. He tells him, "You don't know. You'll never know or understand, Toddy. Not from Knox or me would you learn those things," and then grabs him, turns him to a mirror on the wall, and snarls, "Look. Look at yourself. Could you be a doctor, a healing man, with the things those eyes have seen? There's a lot of knowledge in those eyes, but no understanding." He then offers to take MacFarlane home so they can be "friends" again, adding, "Now that you know you're Knox's man and my friend. Aye, forever." He again attempts to threaten MacFarlane with the truth of what happened between them, that he took the fall for his involvement in the Burke and Hare case, but MacFarlane insists that he doesn't care if he does tell anyone and orders him to stay from him and his house.
But, Gray soon finds something else to hold over MacFarlane when his sneaking servant, Joseph, having overheard the doctor and Fettes talking about Gray having killed the street singer, shows up at his home and attempts to blackmail him. Instead of immediately lashing out, Gray appears to be acquiesce and gives him some money, as well as suggests that the two of them should work together as a pair of murderers like Burke and Hare, profiting by selling their victims' bodies to doctors. But then, Gray decides to show Joseph exactly how the two killers went about their business, having him drop his guard until he's able to attack and easily overpower him. After he chokes him to death, Gray takes Joseph's body to MacFarlane's house and decides to hang around until the doctor returns, keeping his secret wife, Meg Camden, company and reminding her of how he had a hand in the two of them getting together. When MacFarlane arrives, he angrily tries to throw Gray out but the grave-robber tells him that he has a "gift" for him, one he won't refuse, and says, "It might become known that when the great Dr. MacFarlane finds his anatomy school without subjects, he provides them himself and from the midst of his own household." He tells him to look down in the cellar before leaving, which is when MacFarlane discovers Joseph's body. The doctor later confronts Gray, trying whatever he can to get him out of his life, even offering him a great sum of money, but Gray admits that taking it wouldn't be as fun for him as to have MacFarlane beg, which he describes as his pleasure, and when he does beg, he adds, "Then I would lose the fun of having you come back and beg again." Gray then displays the full extent of what an emotional sadist he is and what it does for him, telling MacFarlane, "It'd be a hurt to me to see you no more, Toddy. You're a pleasure to me... A pride to know I can force you to my will. I am a small man, a humble man, and being poor, I have had to do much that I did not want to do. But so long as the great Dr McFarlane jumps to my whistle, that long am I a man. And if I have not that, I have nothing. Then I'm only a cabman and a grave robber. You'll never get rid of me, Toddy." MacFarlane then attacks Gray but, as with Joseph, Gray seemingly overpowers him, attempting to choke him, saying, "Don't force me to kill you, Toddy. My pride has need of you." MacFarlane, however, does manage to get the upper-hand and beat Gray to death but, even in doing that and later dissecting his body for his classes, Gray's words prove to be prophetic, as when he takes to grave-robbing himself, he hallucinates that Gray has returned, which ultimately leads to his death.
Watching the movie, you can tell that Boris Karloff is absolutely relishing the role of Gray and there's a good reason why. At this point in his career, though he'd had a lot of success on Broadway with Arsenic and Old Lace, he was growing rather weary of the films he was appearing in, having just come off of House of Frankenstein, which he dismissed as a "monster clambake" when he was interviewed by the Los Angeles Times. Indeed, while certainly entertaining, that movie can hardly be described as being one of Universal's true gems and Karloff was hoping for some more meaty roles. He got his wish when RKO hired him and had him working for Val Lewton, whom he credited with saving his life and restoring his soul, and considered the three films he did with him to be a major highlight of his long career. He really was able to show what a talented actor he was in playing Gray, putting on a slight but noticeable Cockney accent and easily giving him an equal air of chummy charm, menace, and downright malevolence when he reveals the depths of how much he truly enjoys tormenting and manipulating MacFarlane. It's small wonder why Gray is often considered one of Karloff's best roles.
It's no secret that MacFarlane absolutely despises Gray with every fiber of his being, as he reminds him of his own unenviable apprenticeship under Knox and having to deal with the notorious Burke and Hare, and also because he torments him at every opportunity, threatening to reveal that he took the fall for his part in robbing graves for Knox if he doesn't do what he wants. He only agrees to operate on Georgina because of Gray, which his initial refusal of also ties in to his past: he's secretly afraid that he's not the great doctor he lets everyone think he is because of the way in which he learned his practice. Despite claiming that he believes such an operation can be done and that he's the best man for the job, he makes excuses for it, such as that he has no time for actually practicing medicine because of his position as a teacher and that he hasn't studied the spinal column enough to be successful. He eventually does agree to it after he uses the street singer's body to gain the proper information, mainly just to prove that he is a great doctor, but when Georgina still can't walk, MacFarlane is absolutely tortured by his apparent failure, insisting that he did it right and that there's something wrong with the girl herself. As he's at the inn, drowning his sorrows in liquor, Gray shows up and proceeds to torment him with his deep-seated fear that he can't be a doctor because of the morbid methods he used in his study. MacFarlane, however, refuses to hear of it and tells Gray that he doesn't care if he reveals the truth, reminding him that in the Burke and Hare case, Dr. Knox got off scott-free, and orders him not to bother him anymore. This latest attempt to get Gray out of his life also fails when he uses Joseph's body to blackmail him into continuing business with him, prompting MacFarlane to confront Gray and do whatever he must to make him stop tormenting him, even if he has to beg. But, when Gray reveals the extent of the pleasure he gets from it and that he'll never leave him alone, MacFarlane loses it and attacks him, eventually managing to beat him to death.
Gray is not the only reminder of the past in MacFarlane's life: the same goes for his wife, Meg Camden, whom he met during his apprenticeship with Knox and who he was actually introduced to by Gray. Despite the fact that he does seem to have a genuine affection and love for her, he's so ashamed of what she represents that he keeps their marriage hidden, having her pretend to be nothing more than his housemaid. In fact, the nickname that both she and Gray call him, "Toddy," appears to remind him of it, and while he doesn't mind if she says it, Gray's constantly hounding him with it really irks him. Once Gray is dead, his body dissected, and his horse and carriage sold, MacFarlane believes that his troubles are over and ensures Fettes that he'll be a new man. And yet, the only thing that changes is that he's now the one doing the grave-robbing. He once again justifies it by saying that he won't let anything stop him from aiding the progression of medical science and says that now, he'll no longer have to deal with people like Gray, given his "experience" with a shovel, completely missing the point that he's fulfilling Gray's insistence that the two are very close and that he will forever be Knox's man. The real pity is that his surgery on Georgina does prove successful, as she eventually does stand, but he still seems to be unable to work with anything over than corpses and talks Fettes into helping him steal the body of a recently-buried woman. On their way back to Edinburgh, MacFarlane believes he hears Gray calling to him and when he inspects the woman's body, he sees that it's become Gray. His horses are then spooked by the storm that's raging and take off, pull the carriage crazily along the road until it goes over a small cliff, killing MacFarlane. When Fettes inspects the body himself, he sees that it is just the woman whose body they took and that Gray's voice and image were all in MacFarlane's mind. In the end, Gray was right when he told MacFarlane he'd never be rid of him.
Fettes may have reconciled the murder of the street singer since it allowed MacFarlane to operate on Georgina but he's once again disappointed when the girl is still unable to walk afterward. What's more, after Gray murders Joseph and brings his body to the house, Fettes is further horrified when MacFarlane orders him to dissect that body too, and after the doctor leaves to deal with Gray, his student learns the dark truth about his mentor's education from Meg Camden. Realizing that he's dangerously close to heading down the same dark road as MacFarlane, Fettes takes Meg's advice and leaves him, only to later return to tell him the good news that Georgina is now able to stand and walk after all. He thinks MacFarlane would be elated to hear the news and he is, but then, the good doctor decides to embark on some grave-robbing of his own for continued research and ropes Fettes into accompanying him in doing so. Despite his misgivings, Fettes does go with MacFarlane, aiding him in digging up the body and riding in the carriage with it as they head back to Edinburgh. That's when MacFarlane has his fatal hallucination about Gray returning to haunt him but, fortunately for Fettes, he'd gotten off the carriage when it momentarily stopped before the horses bolted. After he realizes that MacFarlane is dead and that the body he saw as Gray was nothing more than the elderly woman they dug up, the movie ends with Fettes walking off in the rain, no longer a naive innocent but someone now very much aware of the harsh realities of life.
Rounding out the cast are Mrs. Marsh (Rita Corday) and little Georgina (Sharyn Moffett), who come to see MacFarlane at the beginning of the movie to see if he can help with Georgina's paralysis, which slowly but surely set in after she was caught up in a carriage accident. Having been driven over by Gray in his official job as a cabman, Georgina becomes very fond of his horse, who he tells her will befriend and look out for her, and it becomes her incentive to get well so she can go looking for the horse in the streets. Tellingly, Georgina is not at all comfortable telling MacFarlane exactly where she feels the pain of her condition, as he unintentionally frightens her with his stern disposition and matter-of-fact manner in discussing what's wrong, but instantly opens up to the more welcoming Fettes, telling him exactly where it hurts and how it feels. Once MacFarlane tells Mrs. Marsh that, despite his believing the necessary and unprecedented surgery can be done, he can't undertake it because of how busy he is with teaching, she implores Fettes to speak with his mentor to get him to reconsider, as she knows Georgina's condition will only worsen as time goes on. Eventually, MacFarlane, of course, does decide to take it on and Georgina is eager to go through it, even though she knows it will probably involve a lot of pain on her part, while her mother is overcome with worry during the procedure. Afterward, though, Georgina finds herself still unable to walk or even stand and insists that she can't, which completely devastates MacFarlane and throws him into a state of depression. But, it isn't long before Georgina and her mother's disappointment turns to elation when she is able to get up and stand, although, like I said, it does nothing to steer MacFarlane away from the self-destructive path he's on.
Doing a period piece of this sort on the type of tiny budgets that Val Lewton got saddled with at RKO, in this case, around $125,000, may have seemed like an ill-advised idea but, as usual, he and his crew were able to make the most of what they had (incidentally, Mademoiselle Fifi, which he and Robert Wise worked on before this, was also a period piece but it seems like they gave him a little more money for that production). They used leftover sets from RKO's production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame for the exteriors, managing to give the movie a little bit of scale, with the castle in the background, the town streets, the rooftop of the Marsh home, and the graveyards that a few scenes are set in, while the interior sets were definitely more low-key and modest, with the only one that's a little bit fancy in decor being the upstairs areas of Dr. MacFarlane's house (which involves the same staircase from The Magnificent Ambersons that had been used before in Cat People). I actually think that helps the feel of the movie, as it gets across how MacFarlane is a man with a lot of money to his name due to his high-standing in his profession, while the other characters who aren't fortunate enough to have such wealth have to live in more simple, even impoverished, homes, especially Gray, whose home appears to have only one small sitting room to it and a little garage-like space beyond it where he keeps his horse and carriage. In fact, the town as a whole seems to be a rather poor place, with MacFarlane's house apparently being one of the few major establishments, as even the inn that he frequents with the other townspeople can hardly be described as luxurious, and despite the money he seems to have, the doctor has to resort to teaching his students down in his scrappy-looking cellar. The costumes, designed by Renie, who'd worked with Lewton on Cat People and The Seventh Victim, also do well in making this seem like a fairly big-budgeted costume movie and look and feel like they belong in the period it's meant to be taking place in. And Lewton must have been emboldened by the success of this film, as his last movie at RKO, Bedlam, was another period piece, this one set even further back, all the way in the early 1700's, and requiring even more elaborately-designed costumes.
As always with Lewton, atmosphere and mood is the name of the game and The Body Snatcher has some of the most palpable of any of his films. Cinematographer Robert De Grasse, who also shot The Leopard Man for him, is the biggest reason for this, as he shoots everything, especially the nighttime scenes, in a very dark and inky manner. All of the horror films Lewton produced have very deep, suggestive shadows thanks to their black-and-white photography but this film trumps them all, creating a look that's not only dark but downright murky, even during the scenes that take place during the day. Seriously, the sun never seems to come out at all, making this place feel just as depressing and grim as it is ominous, with Gray prowling the cemeteries and stalking the street singer in the dead of night. In fact, it's so darkly-lit that I've had to turn up the brightness on my TV a few times before just so I could see what was going on! But, believe me, I'm not at all complaining, as it helps create that great mood, especially when it's combined with the architecture and set design. The images of the street singer, unknowingly stalked by Gray in his carriage, disappearing into the darkness just beyond a huge awning, where she's subsequently murdered, Gray delivering bodies to the very dimly-lit cellar of the MacFarlane house, talking with and fighting Joseph and later MacFarlane in his own dark, claustrophobic home, the nighttime scenes in the cemeteries, where Gray and, at the end, MacFarlane and Fettes, dig up bodies, and the latter two driving their carriage back through a bad rainstorm are all the very epitome of classic horror and create the perfect mood for October. Those cemetery scenes are especially classic, with the dark photography being helped immensely by the sound of the wind blowing around them and rivaling the very atmospheric opening of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man that's set in a graveyard. Speaking of sound, that moment I mentioned where you can vaguely here the street singer's voice after she's been killed and the distant sound of Gray calling to him that MacFarlane hears at the end also help to make those particular moments very haunting.
As also as per usual with these films, there's always a feeling of something truly horrific just off-camera, mainly in the form of MacFarlane's classes, where he uses the corpses to teach his students about anatomy; we may not see them ourselves, but we can definitely guess that the doctor and his students are looking at dismembered body parts and other gruesome sights while doing their work. Moreover, we almost never actually see the bodies that Gray brings to the house; we only watch as he carries in something large and covered and then flops them onto the table, and when we do see them, as in the case with Joseph when his corpse is discovered, we only get a look at their faces. We also get suggestions of him performing hideous acts of violence, like killing the little dog at the grave early on and when he kills the street singer, but as you might expect, they occur either just off-camera or in the darkness, completely out of sight from us. And like Dr. Judd being attacked by the panther in Cat People, a lot of the details of Gray's fights with Joseph and MacFarlane occur offscreen, either shown in shadow or on closeups of Gray's face as he does his dirty work out of range of the camera.
Of the horror films that Val Lewton produced, this is one of the more plausible ones, as its grim subject matter is something that can happen and, in fact, did happen: Robert Louis Stevenson based his original short story on the crimes of William Burke and William Hare who, in 1828, killed 16 people and sold their bodies to Edinburgh's Dr. Robert Knox for use in his medical classes. I've never read the story myself but, from what I've gathered, the script that Lewton and co-writer Philip MacDonald constructed for the film is a very loose adaptation of the story but it keeps the same basic idea and, like the story, makes references to the actual case (the main difference is that, in the story, Fettes and MacFarlane, who are both students studying under Knox, are basically fictionalized caricatures of Burke and Hare themselves). Regardless of how it's portrayed in fiction, the concept is unsettling not only because it's taken from real events but also simply because of what it entails. The idea of dead people being dissected and used for research in medical schools is already a little, "Ugh," because of how they're regarded as nothing more than objects to be used and used up, but it becomes downright hideous when you have cemeteries being raided and people actually being murdered to keep up the demand for specimens. Oddly enough, I find the grave-robbing and the use of those corpses to be more disturbing than the actual murders. I guess it's the thought of not being allowed to rest in peace and what the families are put through, as shown when Fettes comes across the heartbroken mother whom he'd met at her son's grave the day before, as well as just how sick it is to think of a body being dug up after burial to use in dissection (yeah, those bodies are freshly buried, but still). And I also think of how crude medical science was during this period, to the point where some would stoop to having someone dig up corpses for them. It's a gruesome notion all-around.
It ties in to a major theme of the movie, which is the awful lengths that well-meaning doctors and scientists will sometimes stoop to for the sake of progress and the consequences they may lead to. Dr. MacFarlane himself is very much the embodiment of this idea, as he knows that what he's doing is morally wrong, but is convinced that the ends justify the means and that it's what he must do, given the restrictions of the laws concerning the use of bodies for dissecting. Even when his needs eventually lead to the murder of an innocent you woman, he has no qualms about covering it up by dissecting the girl's body, looking at it as nothing but a necessary evil and treating like a slab of meat he can study. Also, despite his deep-seated fear that he might not be as good of a doctor as his reputation suggests due to having only practiced on dead human specimens, he insists that he does know how to work on the body and that he's not like Knox or Gray, saying, "I'm my own man." Not only is he shockingly blind to the fact that he's teaching his students in the same immoral way that Knox taught him, right down to how but also that he's slowly but surely becoming like Gray, carrying his body into the basement of his home in the same manner that Gray did for him numerous times and resorting to robbing graves himself to continue his work, forcing Fettes to become his accomplice. Again, the sad irony is that MacFarlane's operation on Georgina did eventually end up working, thanks to how he was able to use the street singer's spine for study, and yet, in spite of this, all he can think of is to dig up more bodies, violate more graves, and cause more grief for the sake of continued "progress." The very family of his intended specimen is sitting right across from him at the inn, having just come back from burying the woman, and all he can focus on is how she's been buried at a lonely cemetery that will make digging her up easy. MacFarlane had the potential to be a good doctor but his soul was more or less contaminated by the immoral methods through which he learned his practice until it was all he knew, even if it did contribute to something good at one point.
The film's powerful climax perfectly portrays the tragedy that all of this has led to (it's also one of the closest ties to the original story). Having dug up the woman's body, MacFarlane and Fettes begin to the long drive back to Edinburgh, having to ride with the body in the carriage as there's no room in the back. As they ride through a rainstorm, with the body slumping against him a few times and making him uncomfortable, MacFarlane begins to hear what sounds like Gray calling to him, but when he asks Fettes if he heard anything, he says that all he heard was the wind. They continue on and MacFarlane hears Gray's voice again, repeating, "Never get rid of me," over and over until he decides to stop the carriage and inspect the body. Fettes gets out and hands him a lantern, as MacFarlane declares that the body has changed and that it's no longer a woman. When he uncovers the face and illuminates it, he sees that it's Gray, a sight that horrifies him, as he'd had his body completely dissected and eviscerated after he killed him. His horses are then spooked by the storm and take off down the road, leaving Fettes behind. MacFarlane finds himself trapped in the carriage, with the body flopping against him, looking as if it's trying to attack him, and when the horses round a bend, the carriage comes loose and goes crashing over a small cliff. Fettes catches up and runs down to the bottom of the hill, only to find MacFarlane dead and that the body is nothing more than that of the woman they'd dug up. The movie ends with him climbing back up the ridge and walking down the road in the rain, as we're shown this quote that brings it all home: "It is through error that man tries and rises. It is through tragedy he learns. All the roads of learning begin in darkness and go out into the light."
As with his score for Cat People, Roy Webb's music for The Body Snatcher, overall, fits the film well but doesn't have many pieces that really stick out, save for a select few; however, those that do stick are really good and are among the best music to grace Val Lewton's films. Unlike a lot of his horror films, the opening piece is not Beethoven's 9th Symphony but rather an opening dirge that highlights the grimness and melancholy of the story that's about to be told, before leading into the main theme. Said theme starts out with a fair amount of grandeur but then transitions into an understated, lovely melody, with a rather memorable sound to it. You hear it in an even more subtle form in several parts of the film, softly underscoring the action (such as the scene where Fettes first meets Gray and is making the "proper" entry on what he's received from him), but reaches its full zenith at the very end, when the frantic music that plays during MacFarlane's out-of-control carriage ride to his doom turns into a mournful string piece when Fettes finds his body before heading into the main theme one last time. Said theme now sounds very sad and tragic, highlighting the awful turn of events things have taken, and absolutely swells when that final quote comes onscreen, emphasizing the idea that, sometimes, we must stumble badly in order to fully understand. As you watch Fettes walk off into the storm while listening to this awesome music, it helps makes this ending even more powerful (if you can't tell, it really struck me and still does every time I see it). You also can't talk about this movie's score without mentioning When Ye Gang Awa, Jamie, the hymn that the street singer is always singing, which is definitely one that sticks with you, as it's also heard in instrumental form a few times and feels downright ghostly when you hear the distant sound of her singing during one moment after she's been murdered.
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