REVIEWED BY DAN STUMPF:         


THE BODY SNATCHER. RKO, 1945. Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Henry Daniell, Edith Atwater, Russell Wade, Rita Corday. Based on the short story by Robert Louis Stevenson. Screenplay: Philip MacDonald & Val Lewton (as Carlos Keith). Director: Robert Wise.

THE BODY SNATCHER Boris Karloff

   Compared to the Fredric March version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, reviewed not so long ago here, RKO treated Stevenson rather more faithfully in The Body Snatcher (1945), one of their string of quality “B”s produced by the redoubtable Val Lewton.

   This was directed by Robert Wise in his pre-bomb period, and allegedly written by Philip MacDonald, though he said someplace that Lewton re-wrote the whole thing under the name Carlos Keith.

   Well, it’s a fine job regardless of whodunit; not a really scary pitchur as much as a brooding one, with characters a bit more complex than you usually find in a monster movie.

   Karloff is at his nastiest in the title role, killing blind women and puppies with scarcely a qualm, yet he’s kind to his horse and positively dotes on the little crippled girl at the center of the story.

   Opposite him is the surgeon forced into using the services of a resurrection man to help the little girl walk again, played by Henry Daniell, as cold and constipated as ever. Daniell was one of those actors (like Laurence Harvey. or Dan Duryea) who never made any claim on audience sympathy, and maybe that’s why I like him so much.

   He does nothing very sinister here, yet his palpable heartlessness puts him instantly in the same camp as the Mad Scientists who typically run amok in this sort of thing.

   And when the running comes, it is indeed amok. Body Snatcher is one of those rare horror films with sense enough to save the scariest part for the climax, and ends with a burst of creepy action followed by a grim coda that leaves us feeling we’ve just seen some sobering lesson — even if we can’t say quite what it was.