Burke and Hare

Year 18, Day 97 - 4/7/26 - Movie #5,296

BEFORE: I was making a master list yesterday of my Star Wars autographs, all signed 8 x 10s, some of them are hanging on the wall and some of them are in boxes because I ran out of wall space. But I noticed how many of those actors have popped up recently, like Rose Byrne (Episode 2) and Domhnall Gleeson (Eps. 7-9) were both in "Peter Rabbit 2" and I didn't realize the "Star Wars" connection there. Keri Russell (Ep. 9) popped up in "The Upside of Anger") and Naomi Ackie (Ep. 9) in "Mickey 17" and "The Thursday Murder Club", Liam Neeson in "The Naked Gun", of course. Oh, and Laura Dern (Ep. 8) was in three movies in February and Celia Imrie (Ep. 1) is second on my leader board right now, and Ben Mendelsohn (Rogue One) popped up in "KIller Elite". They're all over the place. 

Today's film has at least THREE, which I think is notable - Simon Pegg (Ep. 7) and Andy Serkis (Ep. 8) and a cameo from Christopher Lee (Ep. 2). Simon Pegg carries over from "Terminal". 

THE PLOT: Two 19th-century grave robbers find a lucrative business providing cadavers for an Edinburgh medical school. 

AFTER: I should point out that I have not MET those three "Star Wars" actors in person, I only purchased their signed photos from reputable sources. (I've met a LOT of Star Wars actors, just not any of those three...). But I did meet John Landis, the director, and SPFX genius Ray Harryhausen, who has a cameo here - both at San Diego Comic-Con, though in different years, Harryhausen did a signing in the booth next to mine in 2007 and Landis walked by and then visited my booth in 2009. I'm just glad I knew what both people looked like and therefore I was able to spot them and chat them up. 

Today's comedy is based on a real string of 16 murders committed in Edinburgh, Scotland around 1828, so almost 200 years ago now. William Burke and William Hare sold the corpses of their victims to Robert Knox, to be used for dissection in his anatomy lectures at the Royal College of Surgeons. It seems that someone passed a law that stated that the only corpses that could be dissected were people who were sentenced to death for crimes, and then the main medical school in Edinburgh was paying the executioners top dollar for exclusive rights to those corpses, leaving the smaller anatomy school without any bodies. So Dr. Knox spread the word among local mobsters that he'd pay a second-tier rate for any bodies they encountered - and come on, what proper mobster doesn't have a few bodies he'd like to get rid of? - and the word filtered down to Burke and Hare, who happened to be in the pub and just happened to be disposing of the body of a lodger who'd died before paying his monthly rent. The next lodger was only sick, but they sort of helped him along, and then after robbing graves was a bust (and didn't provide fresh enough corpses) they just started killing people at random, more or less. 

Hare's wife seemed to approve of his plan, as her husband had finally found something he was good at, rather than selling mold as a medical cure for everything, and she only demanded a pound per killing as a "wife tax" - meanwhile the local mobsters decided they wanted in on the scheme and for half of every corpse sale, they basically provided "protection" to keep the cops from figuring out what was going on. Meanwhile Burke suddenly had money to invest in his intended girlfriend's all-female production of "Macbeth", which sure seems like it was way ahead of its time. This sounds a lot like what the Public Theater might stage in the 21st century, not the 19th. 

But as you might have guessed, with half the money going to the mob, a pound going to Hare's wife, and other money being invested into a theater production, that didn't leave much, so they had to double their murder rate just to break even. Fortunately this was back before CSI or even fingerprints, so the police were pretty inept and it was only by chance that someone in the anatomy class recognized the body of one of the mobsters being used in a demonstration. A captain in the police force takes up the case, investigating where all the missing persons might be going, and the head solicitor and the Lord Provost offer him a promotion if he will help keep the scandal out of the newspapers. However, after Burke, Hare, Hare's wife and Burke's girlfriend are all arrested, he demands that one person admit to the killing in order to allow the others to go free. 

This isn't REALLY the way the trial went down in real life, Hare was granted immunity if he turned king's evidence, and also confessed to all 16 deaths, then formal charges were made against Burke for three of the murders, and he was only found guilty of one, but still sentenced to death. Yeah, it doesn't really make much sense for the police to make ONE person confess and then let everyone else walk, that feels very much like an oversimplification of this case.

The real irony was that Burke's body was turned over to medical research after his hanging, and after dissection his skeleton is still on display at the Museum of the Edinburg Medical School.  Another irony was that the case highlighted the need for bodies used in medical research and led to the passing of the Anatomy Act of 1832, which allowed more people to donate their bodies, or those of family members, for anatomical dissection in exchange for eventual burial at the school's expense. Also surgeons could have legal access to corpses that were unclaimed after death, people who had died in hospitals, prisons or workhouses. 

The way the police got suspicious about the murders in real life was also quite different, but you can just look that up on Wikipedia yourself, if you're so inclined. What's more important is whether this works as a kind of dark comedy, and I suppose it does. I guess it's better to laugh about murder and the ongoing need for medical research than it is to bemoan it all, right?

Directed by John Landis (director of "Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project" and "Into the Night")

Also starring Andy Serkis (last heard. in "Venom: The Last Dance"), Isla Fisher (last seen in "Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy"), Tom Wilkinson (last seen in "Unfinished Business"), Tim Curry (last heard in "The Pebble and the Penguin"), Jessica Hynes (last seen in "Paddington in Peru"), Hugh Bonneville (ditto), Simon Farnaby (ditto), Bill Bailey (last heard in "The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales"), Allan Corduner (last seen in "Bigger Than the Sky"), David Hayman (last seen in "Macbeth" (2015)), David Schofield (last seen in "Six Minutes to Midnight"), Ronnie Corbett (last seen in "A Liar's Autobiography"), Reece Shearsmith (last seen in "Saltburn"), Christian Brassington (last seen in "Easy Virtue"), Michael Smiley (last seen in "Gunpowder Milkshake"), Christopher Lee (last heard in "The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim"), Jenny Agutter (last seen in "The Eagle Has Landed"), Georgia King (last seen in "Austenland"), John Woodvine (last seen in "Wuthering Heights" (1992)), Steve Speirs (last seen in "The Musketeer"), Stephen Merchant (last seen in "Locked Down"), Paul Whitehouse (last seen in "King of Thieves"), Michael Winner, Max Landis, Ray Harryhausen (last seen in "20 Million Miles to Earth"), Gabrielle Downey (last seen in "The Double"), Stuart McQuarrie (last seen in "Terminator: Dark Fate"), Mike Goodenough, Robert Fyfe (last seen in "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies"), Robert Willox, Ciaron Kelly, Joyce Henderson (last seen in "About a Boy"), Pollyanna McIntosh (last seen in "Filth"), Shelley Longworth, Amanda Claire-Jones, George Potts (last seen in "Dorian Gray"), Duncan Duff, Alan Munroe, John Gaynor, Michael Wilson, Robert Paynter (last seen in "Into the Night"), Tom Meeten (last seen in "Paddington"), Tom Urie (last seen in "T2 Trainspotting"), Ella Smith (last seen in "The Voices"), Janet Whiteside (last seen in "Pride & Prejudice"), Robert Stone (last seen in "RocknRolla"), Chris Obi (last seen in "Ghost in the Shell"), Patricia Gibson-Howell, Jacob Edwards, Billy Riddoch, Esme Thompson, Costa-Gavras (last seen in "Spies Like Us"), Michele Ray-Gavras, Kieran-Miguel Diego D'La Vega, Ken Matthews, Spencer Noll

RATING: 5 out of 10 "missing person" posters