Burke And Hare [DVD]

Burke & Hare (1971) will really only appeal to those who appreciate low-budget British horror films of the 70's. If you want to learn about the crimes committed by these two men then there are better films available than this one. This film does stick closely to the actual events, though parts of the story have been omitted.

1820's Edinburgh is presented as a city whose inhabitants are either wealthy or impoverished. Rich men wear expensive clothes and visit high-class brothels, while the poor are reduced to begging for pennies and shovelling up horse manure. Burke and Hare aren't portrayed as evil monsters, but as hard-up immoral men driven by their greed for money and want of a better life.

For a low-budget film Burke and Hare actually stands up well compared with other similar films of the time. The costumes and sets are very good (though nowhere close to what Hammer were capable of in the early 70's). The actors all turn in fine performances with no one letting the side down. Highlights include a scene where elderly doctors exchange amusing stories about their patients over dinner. There's some enjoyable scenes set in a brothel featuring a bevy of incredibly attractive young ladies. And there's some particularly impressive black humour such as "Show a little respect for the dead man, and get yer arse off the coffin!".

What really lets this film down is the music. The film opens with a totally inappropriate upbeat, Chas & Dave-style, Cockney knees up theme tune (complete with lyrics such as: Burke and Hare, Beware of them, Burke and Hare, The pair of `em, Out to snatch, Your body from you!). The film is also peppered with Carry On-style incidental music that completely ruins the atmosphere. When the filmmakers do get the music right the film works well - such as in the graveyard scene at the beginning). I think the director should have been aiming more for a tone similar to 10 Rillington Place (also 1971). After all, we are dealing with real-life murders here.

As far as the DVD goes, it's as bog-standard as you can get - no extras, no subtitles, just the film and nothing else. The picture quality is not up to the standards we've come to expect from DVD, but is still perfectly watchable.

If you enjoy this film, then may I recommend you check out Hammer's Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde (1971) if you haven't already seen it.

1972's Burke and Hare is a schizophrenic British exploitation film that can't seem to make up its mind whether it's a comedy about the infamous suppliers of fresh - very fresh - cadavers to 19th Century Scottish surgeons or a sex comedy set in a brothel where a young medical student (Robin Tucker) falls in love with the new girl (Francoise Pascal), a kind of Confessions of a Resurrectionist or Carry On Snatching. It takes ages for the two plot strands to collide, giving the feeling of producer Guido Cohen cutting his losses and combining two half-completed scripts and topping it off with a pre-Chas'n'Dave pub singalong title song from The Scaffold ("They'll find you - they're behind you!/Take care, they're out to rape you/They're out to drape you/With white"). Most of Cohen's movies were quota quickies, the kind of uninspired fare aimed at the bottom half of a double-bill to fulfil UK cinemas' legal obligation to show a set percentage of British films each year, and while Burke and Hare was the lead attraction this time round and has somewhat more decent production values than you'd expect despite the obviously low budget, it still has the feel of something you sit through while you're waiting for the picture you really came to see start.

Derren Nesbitt, the only Thunderbird puppet to make a go of a live-action career before unfortunately mistaking his wife for a whipping post made him unemployable outside of soft porn for much of the 70s, and Glynn `Dave the barman off of Minder' Edwards are the two Irish immigrants in Edinburgh who stumble accidentally into the body selling business when a lodger dies without paying his rent and no-one seems interested in claiming his body. With the prospect of £8 a fresh corpse - £10 in the summer when they go off faster - from Harry Andrews' Dr Knox as incentive, they're soon helping others on their way with a little urging from their wives while the good doctor turns his blind eye to the obvious signs of violence on his latest specimens. But the film never really plays up either the horror or the bawdy comedy, the latter, in true British sex comedy tradition, largely consisting of ageing British bit players briefly seen making a silly ass of themselves with some unfortunate topless starlet: even the big `sex' scene, a threesome with Nesbitt, Pascal and Hammer vamp Yutte Stensgaard, comes down to running around the bedroom topless while giggling. Not much of a swansong for director Vernon Sewell, a one-time alumni of Michael Powell films, it chugs alone in its vaguely watchable but unmemorable way, not the worst retelling of its villains' misdeeds but a very long way from the best, something only British horror or sex comedy completists really need to see.

Redemption's Region A-locked Blu-ray release offers a much better widescreen transfer than the shoddy UK DVD, though it's not without its faults. Extras are limited to a brief interview with Francoise Pascal, who sportingly agrees with one critics comment that she was more convincing as a corpse than alive, a 12-minute featurette with an Australian goth with a PHD talking about corpses in movies and the original trailer, albeit missing the original captions.

Derren Nesbitt and Glynn Edwards are Burke and Hare in this 1972 telling of the famous duo.This versions definitely got one foot in the sexploitation arena though as so much time is spent in the local brothel to up the onscreen nudity quota,but when it's coming from the likes of Yutte Stensgaard and Francoise Pascal you can't complain too much.If your expecting a straight horror though your going to be disappointed at the films distractions from the story.

This Redemption U.S Blu-Ray has a very nice transfer,it knocks the socks off the uk dvd release i own.There were a couple of instances of weird flickering for a minute or so but it didn't interfere to much,just slightly annoying.
Extras start with a very quick interview with Francoise Pascal which really should have been much longer considering she seems quite relaxed and eager to talk about her career.Perhaps there was an intention to put a longer interview on another release(Iron Rose?)A 12 minute look at Burke and Hare and fetishizing Corpses from an Aussie goth doctor round out the extras.This Blu-Ray is not region free.