Review of The Body Snatcher (1945) by Benjamin H — 18 Apr 2012

Val Lewton's most endlessly re-watchable production, a B-movie featuring A-performances by Boris Karloff and Henry Daniell. For a horror movie, it has everything; it is filled to the brim with spooks, chilling atmosphere, a twisted story (adapted from the classic Robert Louis Stevenson novella) and some great characters.

The great genre-spanning Robert Wise directed, and his ability to milk performances for all their work as well as his ability to find humor and life in the utterly macabre make this a masterfully crafted film.

Genre fans will find great pleasure in seeing a one-on-one scene between horror icons Karloff and Bela Lugosi (who, sadly, was delegated to play mostly imps and deformities after his turn as Dracula).

But as much as I get a thrill from that scene- and it is a great scene- I prefer a different one. It is a scene in a pub, where Karloff and Daniell battle it out over drinks using only their wicked tongues, pressing hot sizzlers against one another over and over again.

Meanwhile, the morally admirable but dull as a plank Donald Fettes (played by the comparably wooden Russell Wade) watches cluelessly, missing the hot acid exchange between these two deviants. It is a remarkably written and performed scene, and I enjoy it more every time I see it.

Horror fans should look no further than this when picking out a list of the great genre pictures of the 1940s- a decade that was filled with many scary masterpieces.