Burke and Hare (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Apr 28, 2025
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
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Director
Vernon SewellRelease Date(s)
1972 (April 1, 2025)Studio(s)
Armitage Films/Kenneth Shipman Productions (Kino Lorber Studio Classics)- Film/Program Grade: B+
- Video Grade: B
- Audio Grade: B+
- Extras Grade: B+
Review
Burke and Hare is based on a series of sixteen murders committed in 1828 in Edinburgh, Scotland, by William Burke and William Hare, who sold the corpses to anatomy professor Dr. Robert Knox. Medical schools needed cadavers for dissection during anatomy lectures but custom and law kept the bodies in short supply. Dr. Knox paid a good price for fresh ones and asked no inconvenient questions.
Hare (Glynn Edwards, The Playbirds) and his wife (Yootha Joyce, Having a Wild Weekend) run a boarding house where their friends Burke (Derren Nesbitt, Not Now Darling) and his wife (Dee Shenderey, The Avengers TV series) also reside. When a tenant dies, the pair figure they can make good money selling the cadaver, and pay a visit to Dr. Knox (Harry Andrews, Theater of Blood). The sale lines their pockets handsomely but the sudden windfall arouses their wives’ suspicions and the men are forced to divulge the source of their sudden prosperity. Given that the tenant was already dead, the wives warm to the idea of profiting from the body.
Eventually, Burke and Hare decide to hurry things along by assisting their victims on their way to the great beyond. To avoid detection, they prey only on loners who won’t be missed and are careful to leave no signs of murder. Their method of dispatch is to smother them, one pinning the body while the other cuts off his breathing until expiration occurs. Soon, the wives get wise to what’s going on and become accomplices, lured by the improved standard of living the money can buy.
Three medical students (Alan Tucker, Robin Harden, Paul Greaves) become incidentally involved in the unsavory goings-on and begin to suspect the bodies acquired by Knox may not have died naturally. Arbuthnot (Tucker, TV’s Coronation Street) is a naive new student who’s taken to a brothel and becomes romantically involved with lovely, young prostitute Marie (Francoise Pascal, Lightning, the White Stallion). When she winds up on a slab in the lecture hall, his shock turns to suspicion that Dr. Knox has not come by his cadavers legitimately.
What might appear to be dark subject matter better suited to Gothic horror is treated with a surprisingly light touch. The title characters are drawn not as demonic predators but as drunken, bumbling idiots who blunder into a way to turn the already dead into gold and let greed lead them to murder. They manage to get away with their crimes for so long because their victims are society’s outcasts—destitute, friendless, itinerant drunks—so there are no inquiries when they disappear.
Director Vernon Sewell is adept at portraying the period in Edinburgh when institutes of advanced medical research coexisted with extreme poverty and elaborate brothels serving rich and powerful men. We see the grimy side of Edinburgh with its shadowy, narrow streets, squalid dwellings, and ragged residents trying to eke out a living. Then we glimpse arrogant Dr. Knox hosting an elegant dinner party for his physician friends where they complain about the dearth of cadavers. His brief dealings with Burke and Hare consist of checking out their latest cadaver, stating a price, and leaving the rest of the business to his assistants.
Director Sewell’s blend of gruesome murders, female nudity, humorous banter, and admirable production design is testament to his ability to look at disturbing subject matter from an unlikely perspective. The murders are portrayed realistically and apparently replicate the sinister duo’s modus operandi. Their misguided ingenuity is fascinating. The bickering between them and their shrewish wives becomes a source of perverse humor. Performances from the mostly British cast are uniformly very good, and the atmosphere of the period is captured exceptionally well. Burke and Hare is a balance of the grim and the ridiculous.
Burke and Hare was shot by director of photography Desmond Dickinson on 35 mm film with spherical lenses, finished photochemically, and presented in the aspect ratio of 1.66:1. Quality is only fair, by Blu-ray standards. Details are often blurry, lacking sharpness and definition. Production design is especially notable in the fancy brothel catering to men of high social station. Knox’s home is elegant and replete with servants. By contrast, the lodging house of the Hares is run-down, unkempt, crowded, and dirty, which underscores the marked differences in class structure. For the brothel scenes, director Sewell incorporates lots of female nudity as the prostitutes ply their trade under the supervision of the watchful madam.
The English 2.0 mono DTS-HD soundtrack features clear dialogue and a good sound mix of human speech, ambient sound, and sound effects. Speech patterns vary, from the educated banter of Dr. Knox and his dinner guests to the rough-spoken style of the Hares and Burkes. The brothel’s madam is elegant in dress, comportment, and speech as she deals graciously with her gentlemen guests. The title song heard under the opening and closing credits is an inane pop number with lyrics by Norman Newell, performed by the Liverpool group The Scaffold that’s hardly reflects the tone of the film. It might have been an attempt to alert the viewer that the film is more a gruesome comic romp than a full-fledged horror film, but it’s extremely off-putting. English subtitles are an option.
Kino Lorber previously released Burke and Hare on Blu-ray in 2012 as part of their Redemption line of titles. This new edition from Kino Lorber Studio Classics adds reversible artwork and a slipcover, as well as a new audio commentary. Bonus materials include the following:
- Audio Commentary by Gary Gerani
- Grave Desires: Corpses on Film (12:30)
- Interview with Francoise Pascal (4:13)
- Trailer (3:10)
- The Blood Beast Terror Trailer (2:26)
- Body Parts Trailer (2:34)
- Graveyard Shift Trailer (1:37)
- Homebodies Trailer (1:40)
- The Mad Doctor Trailer (2:09)
- Invasion of the Body Snatchers Trailer (2:16)
Audio Commentary – Film historian/screenwriter/critic Gary Gerani refers to Burke and Hare as a “one-of-a-kind experience.” The film is based on actual events that occurred in Edinburgh in 1828. Though the film has its share of ghastly moments, it contains few traditional thrills. Shot at Twickenham Studios in England, it contains a large supporting cast for a low-budget film. The brothel features prominently. Director Vernon Sewell connects two worlds—those of revered Dr. Knox and of Burke and Hare. Crosscutting emphasizes the contrast between them. The title characters and their wives barely eke out a living. The get-rich scheme soon becomes the family business. Selling corpses is made to seem a reasonable way to make easy money. Knox and his friends discuss body snatchers, referred to as resurrectionists, and their importance to science, while enjoying a sumptuous meal and making jokes about their profession. Knox was in conflict with his associates and the clergy. The real Dr. Knox had smallpox that destroyed his right eye. That’s why Harry Andrews wears glasses with one darkened lens. The film was released in 1972, toward the end of the heyday of British horror films. Female nudity and graphic images in horror films were becoming increasingly prevalent. There’s no gore in Burke and Hare. Director Sewell presents material on a mature level. He illustrates the difficulty of killing a human being. He hated the final result because of cuts made and the insertion of a song he deemed a “deliberately incorrect use of music.” Both Derren Nesbitt and Glynn Edwards had worked previously with Sewell, who encouraged input from his actors. Sewell was well liked in the industry and expert at making low-budget pictures. Burke and Hare was his final film. A continental version was released with more female nudity. Gerani concludes his informative commentary by talking about the fates of Burke, Hare, and Dr. Knox.
Grave Desires: Corpses on Film – Dr. Patricia MacCormack, decked out in goth attire, sporting arm tattoos, a nose ring, dark lipstick, and a pentagram amulet, discusses the history of body snatchers. Victorians loved a spectacle that shocked, so there was a fascination with the practice. The ordinariness of the corpse became a “penny dreadful kind of experience.” Burke and Hare began killing people who “didn’t count,” usually derelicts or the poor. Surgeons needed corpses and didn’t want to know where they came from. MacCormack references Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and the necessity of obtaining body parts to further the cause of science. Movies that deal with corpses as a central theme are mentioned.
Interview with Francoise Pascal – Pascal, who plays Marie, a victim of the murderous duo, was hired for Burke and Hare while she was making Blood Suckers. The part of Marie in Burke and Hare was her first starring role, but she feels she didn’t have strong enough direction. She laughingly refers to a critic’s review that said she was better as a corpse than a living person.
Burke and Hare might be the first serial killers on record, pre-dating Jack the Ripper by several decades. Other movies that have dealt with their notorious murders include Val Newton’s The Body Snatcher (1945), The Flesh and the Fiends (1960), The Doctor and the Devils (1985), and the similarly titled Burke & Hare (2010). The Vernon Sewell-directed film is an outlier of sorts, since it treats the subject with dark humor rather than as a morbid horror thriller. With memorable performances by Nesbitt and Edwards, Burke and Hare proves that with the right script and direction, a grisly historical subject can succeed as black humor.
- Dennis Seuling