Review of The Body Snatcher (1945) by Karl S — 11 Feb 2009

Good fun, Karloff is excellent, and Legosi off, likely for obvious reasons.

Donald Fettes, a med student (Wade), is gradually initiated into the dark secrets of early 19th-century medical practice: grave-robbing and body buying; grave-robbing + dog killing [poor Greyfriars Bobby! and body buying]; murder [of beggar woman] and body buying; murder [of chief doctor's servant] &c; and, in the the end, he himself helps the chief doctor dig up a grave, so beginning his own slide towards moral degeneracy and medical supremacy.

You would think Fettes would show some horror on his face, that we'd see sadness or world wearyness or growing disgust or cynicism with himself or the world. Not so. Fettes--maybe because Wade could barely act--is just as cheery, eager, studious, uncertain, and vital as ever. He resists for a moment, and then gives in, without suffering any change in his demeanor or deportment.

This is the real horror, then, of The Body Snatcher. We learn through Fettes's happy face that none of the supposed moral violations of grave-robbing and murder are in fact moral violations. We learn that there's no moral core at all to the film, that there is in fact no horror at all, and that the guilt that kills the medical chief (Henry Daniell) is his own doing. A blithe can-do attitude may be the most terrifying thing of all.