The Doctor and the Devils (1985)

Wonderful Movie

Lack of good storyline.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Blistering performances.

For all intents and purposes, "The Doctor and the Devils" is a Hammer horror film. It might be produced by comedian Mel Brooks and his Brooksfilms imprint, but all signs point to this being made by the British house of terror had it been conceived during the 1960s or 1970s. A strong English cast directed by Freddie Francis while surrounded by a period piece atmosphere completes the successful formula for such a film.Thomas Rock (Timothy Dalton) is a young anatomy professor who feels his hands are tied to make new discoveries for the advancement of science. Rigid moral laws of the day limit him to the amount of cadavers he can research on. He receives the rotting bodies of a few hanged criminals every year to work with. Rock needs fresher specimens to work with, and two grave robbers (Jonathan Pryce and Stephen Rea) will do what it takes to provide fresher corpses for the professor – at a hefty cost."The Doctor and the Devils" is rated R for sex and nudity, violence and gore, profanity, alcohol and smoking, and frightening and intense scenes. The sex scenes take place in a brothel where the prostitutes work. There's brief upper nudity in one part that takes place in the house of ill repute. The blood and guts are about the same amount you would expect from a Hammer horror film of the 1970s.Director Freddie Francis is no stranger to English horror films set in 1800's England. He helmed many a Hammer movie and uses the same ingredients to put together "The Doctor and the Devils." Screenwriters Dylan Thomas and Ronald Harwood takes the Burke and Hare tale and puts his own spin on it.

In the Nineteenth Century, the renowned professor of anatomy Dr. Thomas Rock (Timothy Dalton) gives classes to neophyte medicine students in the local university. Dr. Rock uses his assistant Dr. Murray (Julian Sands) to buy corpses for his experiments from body snatchers paying a little fortune for the cadavers. When the alcoholic scum Robert Fallon (Jonathan Pryce) and Timothy Broom (Stephen Rea) overhear the conversation of grave-robbers about Dr. Rock, they decide to supply fresher corpses that worth more to the doctor, killing the poor inhabitants. Dr. Murray has unrequited feelings for the cockney whore Jennie Bailey (Twiggy) that usually hangs around with the also prostitute Alice (Nichola McAuliffe). When Dr. Murray discovers that Fallon has just sold the corpse of Alice, he seeks out the worthless Fallon and Broom to stop them from murdering Jennie. Will he arrive in time o save Jennie? "The Doctor and the Devils" is a stylish drama, but not a horror movie. The costumes, sets and art direction are amazing, with a great reconstitution of the period with muddy streets and dirty people. The excellent cast has great performances, with great names of the British cinema and the story is also good. Unfortunately the screenplay is not good and does not offer the adequate pace for this film. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): Not Available

This is the third historical grave-robbing film I've watched after THE BODY SNATCHER (1945) and THE FLESH AND THE FIENDS (1960) – for the record, other cinematic versions of the same events out there are the Tod Slaughter vehicle THE GREED OF WILLIAM HART aka HORROR MANIACS (1948) and BURKE AND HARE (1972). While certainly the least of the three I'm familiar with (due perhaps to its graphic wallowing in the lurid details of the plot), it's pretty good for a product of its time (incidentally, the mid-1980s produced an unexpected but all-too-brief outburst of Gothic Horror which also included Franc Roddam's THE BRIDE [1985] and Ken Russell's Gothic [1986]).The film was produced by Mel Brooks' company which had also been behind David Lynch's THE ELEPHANT MAN (1980) – which, incidentally, had marked Freddie Francis' own return to being a director of photography! Timothy Dalton as the overzealous doctor has a couple of good scenes in the first half, but he is clearly overshadowed by the more flamboyant turns of Jonathan Pryce and Stephen Rea as the nefarious night diggers. The impressive cast is completed by Twiggy, Sian Phillips, Beryl Reid, Julian Sands and Patrick Stewart; Twiggy (as another whore with a heart of gold) gets to sing as well and, predictably, medical student Sands falls for her charms.I recall the film playing theatrically but, needless to say, I was too young to catch it back then. It's based on an original, unproduced script by celebrated Welsh playwright Dylan Thomas – adapted here by future Oscar-winning screenwriter Ronald Harwood; curiously, the names of the characters have been changed from the real ones of Knox, Burke and Hare – so had been the case with THE BODY SNATCHER, for that matter, but that one had the excuse of being based on a Robert Louis Stevenson novella! Apart from the starry cast and the film's undeniably evocative look, its main asset is a spare, unusual but effective score provided by longtime Mel Brooks collaborator John Morris.

Unquestionably one of the most fascinating real-life murder cases in the history of mankind is the story of William Burke and William Hare; suppliers of fresh human cadavers for surgeon Robert Knox to study anatomy upon. The facts took place in the late Victorian era, in other words a strictly religious time where scientists could exclusively dispose of the bodies of executed criminals as study material. The lack of serviceable cadavers spawned the malicious business of "body snatching". For a good price, lowlife criminals would dig up newly buried corpses at night and deliver them secretly to the doctors' houses. Obsessed with the payments, which increased remarkably if the bodies were fresher, Burke and Hare quickly converted to murder and, even though Dr. Knox damn well knew about this, he didn't object because the bodies he got were perfect to experiment with. "The Doctor and the Devils" is no less than the fifth film version of this factual murder case and, for some damn reason, just as obscure and hard-to-find as the other four. Personally, I spent quite a few years finding Val Lewton's "The Body Snatcher" and John Gilling's "The Flesh and the Fiends" and I still haven't managed to pick up decent copies of "Burke & Hare" (1972) and "The Greed of William Hart" (1948). Purchasing "The Doctor and the Devils" was quite a difficult mission as well but, if you're also intrigued by the story, it's an absolute must-see! The screenplay was completed by poet Dylan Thomas (in the 1950's already), who changed the names of the characters but sticked truly close to the timing, setting and accurate little details of the murders. The whole depiction of the murderers as well as their victims (prostitutes, beggars, ill people and drunks) is depressing and raw, yet amazingly accurate and even truly disturbing without becoming explicit or gory.Despite being mainly an American production (with comedy legend Mel Brooks as the unlikely producer) and released during the flamboyant horror period of the mid-80's, "The Doctor and the Devils" truly feels like a good old-fashioned and solid British Gothic movie. Pretty much the type Hammer Studios used to be specialized in. Surely this is no coincidence, given the subject matter and the origin of the facts, but this feeling is also largely created by director Freddie Francis and his overall professional British cast. Francis actually did quite a lot of work for Hammer during the 60's and 70's and has some respectable classics on his repertoire, such as "The Evil of Frankenstein" and "Legend of the Werewolf". The cast, as mentioned before, is pretty great and that only makes it harder to understand why this film is still so under-appreciated. Timothy Dalton is terrific as the ambitious and stubborn Dr. Thomas Rock, constantly battling his superiors and being zealous for the evolution of his profession. But most praise goes out to Jonathan Pryce and Stephen Rea, both playing their roles of greedy and inhuman killers with amazing vigour. Perhaps a bit sad and redundant is the role of Julian Sands ("Gothic", "Boxing Helena") as Dr. Rock's assistant. His pointless romance with the local prostitute Twiggy is the only weak element in the movie. Other than this, the set pieces are very convincing, the cinematography is excellent and the music is downright enchanting. "The Doctor and the Devils" is a great and genuinely chilling movie that urgently deserves to be catapulted out of oblivion.