A surprisingly effective retelling of the adventures and ultimate fates of the two grave robbers and murderers -- William Burke (George Rose) and William Hare (Donald Pleasance) -- and Dr. Knox, the lecturer on anatomy (Peter Cushing) who was complicit in their crimes.<br /><br />At the time, the mid-1800s in Edinburgh, Scotland, it was difficult for medical schools to come by cadavers for dissection. They were forced to wait for hangings and sometimes chafed at the long intervals between executions. The raggedy and snaggletoothed Burke and Hare, among many other "ressurectionists", collected dead bodies off the streets and sold them to Knox in an excess of zeal to advance the progress of medical science. The bodies would otherwise have wound up in pauper's graves. And there WERE dead bodies found on the streets. There is no poverty like the poverty of a northern city in the grip of unfettered industrialism.<br /><br />However, if a thing is worth doing well, it's worth doing in extremes. Burke and Hare made the short and simple step from collecting dead bodies, through grave robbing, to murder. Knox is portrayed as a cold-blooded scientist who believes neither in the soul nor in the guilt of his two enablers.<br /><br />I don't know how closely the script follows the historical events, but it's convincingly done, even if the budget is a bit low. The sets look a little perfunctory. The cobbled, crooked night-time streets of the city are nicely on display but there was no provision for fussy extras like street lamps or street litter or intimate nooks and crannies and cheap shops. The lighting seems to come from nowhere and what we're looking at appears to be a rather stark movie set instead of an atmospheric Edinburgh street.<br /><br />Burke and Hare eventually go too far -- knocking off victims that are well known and fondly thought of by some of the community -- but they don't really change. The arc of character belongs to Cushing's Dr. Knox. He's openly insulting to other figures in the medical profession. He seems not devoted to helping humanity, but holds them in contempt. Until, after the trial of Burke and Hare, he stoops down in a city square when a tattered little girl asks him for alms. He has no money but invites her to accompany him to his home where he will give her some cash. "Oh, no!," she replies, "You might sell me to Dr. Knox." That does it for Knox. He discovers his compassionate side.<br /><br />It would have been more effective if we'd seen his devotion to medicine but in fact his lectures have been as cold and distant as the rest of his character. Before this epiphany he's been a pretty unlikable snot, treating his students pitilessly.<br /><br />The performances are all rather good. Pleasance is a charming, unpretentious, treacherous psychopath, a little like Long John Silver. Rose is the dummy who gets hanged because he didn't know how to play "the prisoner's dilemma" to his best advantage. Billy Whitelaw is sexy, almost feral, as the hard-drinking tart being courted by one of the medical students. She overacts much of the time but, when reined in by her instincts or the director, she delivers some thoughtful lines. But then no one's performance is so bad that it's outstanding.<br /><br />I said that the sets and the set dressing didn't really evoke the Edinburgh of the 1840s and maybe that's a good thing. The cities of the period really stank -- literally. Endiburgh could be smelled miles away and was known as "Auld Reekie." In the absence of any social programs, poverty, drunkenness, poor health, and quick death were rampant on the foul streets. Women in particular were disenfranchised. Without a man, many of them wound up as prostitutes. The same conditions prevailed in London, making whores easy prey for Jack the Ripper.<br /><br />Well, that's reality, but this is cinema and, as such, is pretty good. More artful, in my opinion, is Val Lewton's inexpensive effort from RKO, "The Body Snatchers," its demonic overtones notwithstanding.