THE BODY SNATCHER: Blu-ray (RKO, 1945) Shout!/Scream Factory

In the early 1940’s, RKO Studios took a gallant leap of faith to make the sort of ‘prestige’ pictures that could rival anything A-list Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer turned out en masse. Unfortunately – or fortunately, depending on one’s point of view – their investment was in Orson Welles. With the early withdrawal of Citizen Kane (1941) from theatrical release, to appease William Randolph Hearst, and, the absolute commercial implosion of Welles’ follow-up, The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), RKO quickly realized it could not sustain this model in healthy competition. Worse, war-time rationing, the end of the company’s lucrative Astaire/Rogers’ musical franchise, and a shake-up in management, all conspired to downscale the studio’s output considerably. In the middle of this crisis, the newly installed management made an even more daring and unorthodox decision: to woo 38-year-old Val Lewton, a lowly story editor with the Selznick Co., to their stables with the promise of his own indie unit, affording Lewton a certain amount of autonomy. In hindsight, this would prove one of the greatest bind faith gestures in Hollywood lore. For Lewton, who began his career as a minor author, working for Metro’s New York publicity department, before migrating over to Selznick, where he famously derided Gone with the Wind as “a ponderous piece of trash”, was now raring to go.
The RKO contract came with several codicils: first, Lewton, to be paid no more than $250 per week (equivalent to approximately $4,052.15 today).  Second, a fairly stringent budget on which to make his bones – barely $150,000 per picture (or $2,431,287.10 today). Finally, no movie to go beyond 75 minutes; an ideal run time to maximize daily screenings – and hopefully, profits. To all this, Lewton agreed. However, he was less enthusiastic with the studio’s decision to basically give him a title on which he was then expected to craft a plot. And who could really blame Lewton? The studio’s offerings, Cat People, and, I Walked with A Zombie, seemed to portend of some very low expectations; C-grade schlock to fill seats at the matinee. Ah, but RKO did not anticipate Lewton’s verve for turning vinegar into wine. And thus, the Lewton ‘horror’ cycle, starting with Cat People, was born: psychologically complex – thanks to Lewton’s own fascination with psychoanalysis, slightly romanticized, and, superbly scripted, featuring minor players and rising stars (not yet classified as such), and some, already considered Hollywood has-beens. Lewton was given his run of the RKO back lot and borrowed heavily on its illustrious past in free-standing sets to add visual cache to his masterpieces. He also had a knack for instinctually knowing how to cast his directorial talent; his two greatest finds from this period, Jacques Tourneur and Robert Wise.   
Wise’s involvement on The Body Snatcher (1945) was not a foregone conclusion, despite having already proven himself a skilled editor, and furthermore, adept at performing edits and re-takes on Welles’ Ambersons (some argue, to the picture’s ever-lasting detriment), Wise also illustrated, he could be trusted to implicitly follow studio edicts without fail or temperament – something of a ‘yes’ man in good standing with the front offices. But the picture almost did not get assigned to Wise.  The Body Snatcher is very loosely based on Robert Lewis Stevenson’s short story; Lewton, writing under the pseudonym Carlos Keith, co-authoring with Philip MacDonald. While Stevenson’s story hinged on the fantastic, Lewton’s reincarnation became more a cautionary tale, morality-based, and emotionally intriguing, as it illustrated the gradual debasement of a basically good man, led to self-destruction by his own ambition. Discarding Stevenson’s epilogue, the filmic Body Snatcher begins, though never returns, to the profound realizations of one Donald Fettes (Russell Wade), who aspires to be a great physician like his idol, Dr. Wolfe 'Toddy' MacFarlane (Henry Daniell). MacFarlane’s aim for medical exceptionalism comes at a high price; namely, his unholy alliance with the disreputable, cab man, John Gray (Boris Karloff), who has been procuring ‘subjects’ for MacFarlane by digging up fresh cadavers at the graveyard. When newly deceased bodies become unavailable, Gray resorts to murder to keep MacFarlane in corpses.
The Body Snatcher was a blessing for Boris Karloff; billed as ‘the magnificent’ by Universal, and forever immortalized as the Frankenstein monster – and later, the mummy. But by mid-decade, Karloff’s reputation had distinctly cooled. Indeed, he was thought of as only an oddity, not an actor. Although he possessed one of the truly striking visages of the century, distinctly angular and obviously not suitable for leading man parts, Karloff was equally passed over for any character parts outside of playing ghastly ghouls. And although Karloff here is playing a very evil man, he is nevertheless, fallibly human, distinctly flawed and of the ‘then’ current century. All told, Karloff would make three Lewton classics (Isle of the Dead, also in 1945, and, Bedlam, in 1946, being the other two). For decades thereafter, Karloff would fondly consider The Body Snatcher his finest of this trilogy. And Lewton, perhaps more than any other producer, admired Karloff ‘the actor’, afforded plum parts relying less on grotesque make-up applications to amplify his physical starkness. In Stevenson’s novel, the character of John Gray is practically incidental to the plot, featured only in one brief exposition as ‘one’ of the many corpses fit for the good doctor’s dissection. Lewton’s rewrite, of course, makes Karloff’s brooding and sinister cab man the heavy. Yet, despite this, and other alterations to the original text, Lewton and Wise immeasurably succeed in making Karloff’s killer all too empathetic, sad and tragic. The producer/director also capture the historical authenticity of Stevenson’s vintage Victoriana; a haunted dreariness in Robert De Grasse’s noir-ish cinematography, celebrating the sets built for The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939, with a few inserts of the real Edinburgh to kick start our journey).  Incidentally, the main set, Dr. MacFarlane’s stately manor, is a hold-over from Jacques Tourneur’s classic clunker, Experiment Perilous (1944).
The Body Snatcher is set in 1831, one year after real-life body snatcher, William Burke has been hanged on testimony from his accomplice, William Hare in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Rather uncannily, in another part of town we find the optimist, Donald Fettes, a vicar’s son, eager to become an assistant to Dr. MacFarlane. Fictitiously, the renowned anatomist and lecturer is referenced as being the one-time assistant to Dr. Knox – for whom the real-life Burke had resorted to a series of murders, merely to supply his benefactor with fresh corpses for dissection.  Presumably in the name of science, Fettes is assigned by MacFarlane to pay the cabman, John Gray for a body to continue their important work, studying human physiology.  This practice is distasteful to both men, particularly since Gray is not trustworthy, acquiring ‘subjects’ by whatever means necessary, simply to fatten his own wallet.
The Body Snatcher opens with a medical crisis: Mrs. Marsh (Rita Corday) seeking a cure for her paraplegic daughter, Georgina (Sharyn Moffett). MacFarlane believes a risky surgery will allow the girl to walk again, but emphatically refuses to perform the operation due to his commitments at the university. Meanwhile, MacFarlane’s protégé, Donald Fettes informs him he cannot continue his studies. He has no money. In reply, MacFarlane offers Fettes apprenticeship as his lab assistant. Fettes is ecstatic. However, sometime later, MacFarlane and Fettes are threatened by Gray, who promises to reveal MacFarlane's ‘dark secret’ if he refuses to operate on Georgina. Fettes makes his reluctant pilgrimage to Gray’s home to asks him to procure another ‘specimen’ for their dissection, as more ‘research’ is needed for Georgina’s operation. On his way, Fettes passes a blind street singer (Donna Lee) and offers her a coin; startled, disgusted, and inadvertently implicated, when he later discovers Gray has delivered the body of the same angelic singer to their laboratory – after having applied his grisly handiwork beyond the fresh exhumations at the graveyard.
Fettes accuses Gray of murder; their conversation, overheard by MacFarlane’s other assistant, Joseph (Bela Lugosi).  MacFarlane mildly threatens Fettes. After all, in the eyes of the law, he could easily be considered Gray’s accomplice. MacFarlane now operates on Georgina. And although the girl recovers quickly, she is still unable to walk.  Disheartened, MacFarlane goes to the inn to console himself. Alas, Gray appears, taunting MacFarlane with exposure of his dirty secret yet again. Joseph attempts to blackmail Gray. But he pays with his life for this miscalculation as Gray now returns Joseph’s body to MacFarlane as ‘a gift’. MacFarlane’s housekeeper, Meg Camden (Edith Atwater) informs Fettes how Gray admitted to graverobbing, using Burke and Hare as his cover. However, the real perpetrator has always been MacFarlane. Presumably, having had a change of heart, or perhaps, merely fearful of reprisals for his part in these crimes, MacFarlane offers Gray an ample bribe to simply disappear. While the sum is ample, Gray not only refuses to accept it, but cruelly insists MacFarlane will never be rid of him.  
Driven into a blind rage, MacFarlane bludgeons his nemesis to death. In the meantime, Fettes, unaware of MacFarlane’s latest crime, meets with Mrs. Marsh and Georgina. Stirred by the sound of horses nearby, Georgina wobbles to her feet to see them. Both startled and elated by this revelation, Fettes hurries to inform MacFarlane of the good news. Regrettably, Meg insists MacFarlane has already gone to sell Gray's horse and carriage. Fettes finds a rather morose MacFarlane at the inn, unable to reach him as he tells Fettes they must rob a freshly dug grave together tonight. Seeing no alternative, Fettes aids in this latest exhumation, despite a hellish storm. Loading the body into Gray’s carriage, Fettes and MacFarlane drive on. Only now, MacFarlane is haunted by Gray’s voice ringing in his ears. Nervously, he demands Fettes stop the carriage so he may inspect the body they have just dug up. But when MacFarlane peals back the burial shroud he is terrorized by the sight of Gray’s lifeless body staring back at him. Forcing Fettes into the storm, the horses, suddenly spooked, the carriage takes off down the road with MacFarlane desperately trying to regain the bridles, impeded by Gray’s limp and heavy remains knocking into him as the carriage is jostled over rough terrain. The cab breaks loose and topples into a steep ravine, killing MacFarlane. As Fettes makes his way down to the wreckage, he finds MacFarlane’s body lying next to a cadaver – not Gray, but an unknown woman. Our story concludes with a quote from Hippocrates, “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”, Lewton, adding stature to all that has gone before this penultimate tragedy.
The Body Snatcher is a potent and very macabre thriller. We are given a treatise on morality in science; the complex struggle of MacFarlane’s conscience pitted against self-serving vanity and ego – the contradictions of a basically ‘good’ man, brought down by his own ability to ‘look the other way’ while Gray scrounges about with dirty fingernails through the freshly laid earth, or worse, to procure even more bodies for study. Applying a time-honored principle in the picture-making biz, the character of Donald Fettes is humanized – made over as ‘the hero’. Although Lewton and Wise have otherwise retained the bleakness in Stevenson’s prose, they have made Fettes unusually amiable by contrast – the one figure spared his tortured sanity and to escape relatively unscathed. Yet even then, Lewton draws a queer parallel between Fettes and Gray – each benevolent in their own way toward the paralyzed Georgina Marsh (a creation of the MacDonald/Lewton screenplay with no counterpart in Stevenson’s novel). Another similarity between Gray and MacFarlane; Gray’s medical future, revoked for taking the fall for MacFarlane’s crimes.
In the movie, Meg Camden (a character with no counterpart in the novel) is secretly revealed to be MacFarlane’s wife as well as his housekeeper. Yet she sides, not with her husband, but Fettes, who is offered a reprieve from all this moral turpitude.  Nor, in the book, does MacFarlane pay the ultimate sacrifice for his wicked crimes against humanity. In fact, Stevenson, concludes the story with an aged MacFarlane, briefly returning to Scotland. Arguably, the best scene in The Body Snatcher remains the gruesome murder of the street singer; Robert Wise, holding his camera in long-shot on the blind girl, blissfully obtuse to her imminent demise as she proceeds – singing – through a large stone archway, softly pursued by Gray’s carriage. Both disappear into the murky fog just out of camera range; the slow clip-clop of horses’ hooves momentarily paused and then, the singer’s song suddenly snuffed. It is a potent, understated, though no less blood-curdling scene. But the biggest shocker comes at the end; Karloff’s half-naked corpse, painted in a reflecting make-up to add luster to its grotesque display each time the sky is ripped open by lightning; Karloff, loosely knocking against Daniell’s terrorized and rain-soaked MacFarlane.  Between these two scenes, Lewton, Wise, and, the cast, fatten Stevenson’s tale with subplot rather than subtext – much of it unnecessary. The scenes of burgeoning courtship between Mrs. Marsh and Fettes are deftly played with great sincerity by Russell Wade and Rita Corday. But these interludes stall, instead of delaying our suspense. And Karloff, though menacing, lacks subtlety.  At times, his John Gray is so overwrought it becomes increasing difficult to imagine Gray as ever having possessed the same high ideals and ambitions as either MacFarlane or Fettes; qualities, Fettes is spared at the end – sadder, but wiser for having known these two medical monsters.  
Until recently, The Body Snatcher has always arrived on home video via scans derived from film stock many generations removed from the original camera negative. Working closely in conjunction with Warner Home Video (the custodians of Lewton’s RKO horror catalog), for the first time anywhere, the original camera negative has been utilized as the source of a major 4K restoration. The results are nothing less than astounding. What was once a murky, dull and unrefined image, bursts forth herein with remarkable clarity, subtly nuanced textures and a gray scale that is reference-quality. For those never having experienced the movie before, I feel a sense of envy, as Shout! Factory’s new-to-Blu represents Lewton’s masterpiece as never before. A lot of love and care has been applied to produce an image that will surely never disappoint. And for those who only know The Body Snatcher from all the aforementioned incarnations on home video, prepare to be dazzled.  Image resolution will blow you away, and film grain is utterly gorgeous. The audio remains DTS mono and is quite adequately represented. Better still, Shout! has sprung for a new featurette: You’ll Never Get Rid of Me: Resurrecting ‘The Body Snatcher. Ported over from the previous DVD are Robert Wise/Steve Haberman’s audio commentary, as well as the full-length documentary: Shadows In The Dark: The Val Lewton Legacy. Bottom line: as a devout Val Lewton fan, you simply must own this disc. Now, can we have Warner and Shout! conspire on a new image harvest of Lewton’s I Walked with a Zombie (1943) and The 7th Victim (1943). Pretty please. I’m aging rapidly.
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)
4
VIDEO/AUDIO
5+
EXTRAS

5

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