Wednesday, October 14, 2009

The Body Snatcher

A morally flexible doctor and his young protege employ an amoral cabbie (Boris Karloff) to steal corpses from the local graveyards for their medical experiments. They get more than they bargained for, when the cabbie decides to skip the hard work digging holes and starts bringing them the bodies of people he's killed. The student wants to turn him in, but the doctor isn't so keen on this idea, as the cabbie has all sort of dirt on him.

I'm slowly catching up with all the Val Lewton produced/RKO 1940's horror movies, I think I only have one or 2 left. This is a solid entry, not as tense or atmospheric as I Walked With a Zombie or The Leopard Man, but still a typically tightly structured and entertaining horror/thriller, with a memorable Karloff performance to boot.

I taped this one of TCM, and wouldn't you guess it, just like with Jules and Jim, the recording cut off the last minute or so, I didn't see the ending and had to look it up. A damn, annoying shame.
at

3 comments:

  1. ElmerOctober 18, 2009 at 9:03 PM

    The same thing happened to me when I recorded Jules and Jim! I had to rush out to the video store to see the ending, and what an ending it was too!

    ReplyDelete
  2. DanOctober 19, 2009 at 8:53 AM

    I had seen JULES AND JIM before, but Shenan hadn't, so she didn't understand why I was insistent that we rent it immediately. The last 2 minutes are a game changer.

    ReplyDelete
  3. ShenanOctober 20, 2009 at 5:54 PM

    yeah and one of your friends (i forget who now) told me the ending over AIM because i had my frustration over the cut-off as an away message.

    ReplyDelete