The 7th movie Val Lewton produced for RKO was the 1945 film The Body Snatcher. It's got a script by Philip MacDonald and Val Lewton with Robert Wise directing. It's based on a short story of the same name by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Henry Daniell is Dr MacFarlane, he runs a medical school. Boris Karloff is an old "friend" who sells the good Doctor dead bodies for his school. He gets £7 for a body which according to the Wikipedia is just over $1100 in today's cash. Bela Lugosi is MacFarlane's servant and Russell Wade is the Doctor's assistant.
The movie is set during time of the resurrection men. Grave robbers who supply dead bodies to the medical schools were a necessity of the time. If they couldn't find a body to steal they would kill people. Burke and Hare were the big names in the business and only because they got caught. The young assistant has mixed feelings about the source of the school's dead bodies. Boris has something over the Doctor.
With all this tension things start building and come to an end with lots of death. There's a bright ray of hope in the story, a young girl has surgery to cure a carriage accident, and after a bit of drama she gets to walk. It's a good story, well told, and a great cast. I liked the movie when I saw it first a few years ago and it holds up for multiple viewings. I'm betting that I'll watch it again someday. There's a nice commentary with Robert Wise and Steve Haberman. Only two more of the Lewton horror pictures to watch.
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