Average Rating: 6.7/10
Reviews Counted: 15
Fresh: 12 | Rotten: 3
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: N/A
Critic Reviews: 3
Fresh: 1 | Rotten: 2
liked it
Average Rating: 3.5/5
User Ratings: 3,498
Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi were given top billing in the Val Lewton-produced The Body Snatcher, but the film's protagonist is played by Henry Daniell. A brilliant 18th century London surgeon, Daniell can only make his humanitarian medical advances by experimenting on cadavers, which is strictly illegal. Karloff plays a Uriah Heep-type cabman who is secretly a grave robber, providing corpses for Daniell's research. The low-born Karloff enjoys blackmailing the aristocratic Daniell into silence;
Unrated, 1 hr. 17 min.
Jan 1, 1945 Wide
All Critics (15) | Top Critics (3) | Fresh (12) | Rotten (3) | DVD (5)
Settings are inexpensive but sufficient for the needs. Production values, in general, however, aid materially in making this picture a winner.
Even though this film is taken from a modest stage play of a few seasons back, its humors are as stale and mechanical as those of the oldest such farce.
One of the lesser products of Val Lewton's years as the head of RKO's horror-film unit.
Researchers and healers are closer to the subjects on the autopsy slab than to their living patients in this acerbic chimera of shadow and sacrifice
there's a fascination with the ultimate futility of ever being something beyond opportunistic and solipsistic.
Too stuck on being literate to be a great movie ... .
The first and best of the three Val Lewton-Boris Karloff collaborations for RKO.
The film accelerates to great effect towards the end.
This is the most elegant and leisurely of the Val Lewton horror films, up until the whopper of an ending.
It is certainly far more accomplished and evocative than some critics have suggested.
A pretty interesting little flick that ends extremely well. Odd seeing Bela Lugosi in such a tiny role, but also it's nice to see Boris Karloff being so evil and relishing it.
April 13, 2011
Super Reviewer
My favourite corpse snatching movie, it stars both Karloff and Lugosi, how could you not like it? It's exciting and creepy.
September 5, 2010Super Reviewer
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