The Body Snatcher
(1945)
Lewton's adaptation of a Robert Louis Stevenson story, directed by Robert Wise, set in the early 19th century and concerned with the moral ambiguity of grave-robbing to facilitate medical dissection. Doctor and educator Toddy McFarlane (Henry Daniell) traverses that gray area, enabled by cabman and resurrectionist John Gray (Karloff), who is not overly particular about whether the corpses he resurrects have actually shuffled off their mortal coil in the first place. Bela Lugosi has a terminally thankless role as Gray's blackmailer, too dimwitted to fully consider how that strategy is apt to play out.
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