Ah, Burke & Hare — a film so steeped in death it somehow managed to kill the pacing, the mood, and any hope for historical accuracy before the opening credits finished rolling. This 1972 take on Edinburgh’s infamous duo of opportunistic murderers is part horror, part period drama, part softcore brothel tour, and all-around cinematic rigor mortis.
Directed by Vernon Sewell in what can only be described as a mercy killing of a career, Burke & Hare attempts to dramatize the true story of 19th-century resurrection men who started with grave robbing and ended with flat-out murder. But instead of delivering a chilling tale of moral decay and desperation, it gives us 95 minutes of sweaty men mumbling in candlelight, sex workers lounging about like they’re in an underfunded Renaissance fair, and rats that probably negotiated better contracts than the cast.
Plot: Kill ‘Em All, Dissect the Consequences
The story loosely — very loosely — follows the notorious body snatching duo William Burke and William Hare, who start off digging up corpses for the dissection table and end up manufacturing their own inventory like the world’s first artisanal serial killers.
Dr. Knox, played by Harry Andrews with all the subtlety of a man who drinks absinthe for hydration, is their eager buyer. He needs fresh bodies for his medical students, and he’s not too fussed about the ethics — as long as no one asks too many questions or arrives with a corpse still twitching.
As graveyards run dry and the pair’s greed skyrockets, Burke and Hare shift from nighttime skulking to outright murder, dragging drunkards, brothel workers, and in one truly awkward scene, the town simpleton “Daft Jamie” back to their home for “business.”
The film goes through the motions of the real events — murders, autopsies, suspicious glances — but with the dramatic urgency of a wet sponge. Even when a medical student realizes his girlfriend has ended up on the slab (and trust me, that should be a plot twist), the emotional impact lands somewhere between “mildly inconvenienced” and “forgot to cancel dinner reservations.”
Acting: Now With 30% More Ham and 70% Less Direction
Derren Nesbitt plays Burke like a man who stumbled onto the wrong set and just decided to go with it. His performance veers between “working-class horror” and “confused pub patron,” often within the same scene. You can practically hear the actor whispering, “What’s my motivation again? Oh right, money and murder.”
Glynn Edwards as Hare is the shouty, sweaty counterpart, constantly red-faced and in need of a cold compress. Meanwhile, their wives (Yootha Joyce and Dee Shenderey) float through the film like the ghosts of bad casting decisions, mostly there to cheer on the murder and occasionally deliver lines that sound like they were translated from another language by a haunted typewriter.
Then there’s Françoise Pascal, whose sole direction seems to have been: “Look seductive, ignore the plot, try not to laugh.” She gives a spirited performance as Marie, the prostitute doomed to become one of the more photogenic corpses. And Yutte Stensgaard, also present, also blonde, mostly there to round out the 1970s quota of doomed pretty women who think a man with blood on his shoes might still be a romantic option.
Direction: Dead on Arrival, and Still Getting Cut Open
Poor Vernon Sewell. This was his final film, and according to his own tragicomic recollection, it was hijacked, re-cut, overhauled, and given the worst musical score since someone let a kazoo band remix Sweeney Todd. His original vision of grim historical horror? Gone. Instead, we got pop music over scenes of corpse selling.
Yes, you read that right. Pop music. Playing over shots of rotting bodies being weighed and sold like fish at a market. Nothing says gritty 19th-century realism like wah-wah guitars and a beat you can grind to.
The film jerks between grim Victorian grime and softcore sexploitation like it can’t decide whether it wants to be a horror film or a deleted scene from Carry On Cadavers. The tone is as unstable as Hare on absinthe, swinging wildly from necrophilic suggestion to awkward comedy to unconvincing murder.
Set Design & Production: Gritty, Grim… and Kind of Greasy
Shot at Twickenham Studios, the sets look appropriately dingy — at least until someone starts adjusting candles mid-scene like they’re prepping for a séance-themed dinner party. Costumes are authentic-ish, meaning everyone looks itchy and probably smells like meat pies left out too long.
Also worth noting: the lighting appears to have been designed by a mole with cataracts. Most of the film is so dimly lit you could be forgiven for thinking half the cast were ghosts. Maybe they were. It would explain the dialogue delivery.
Historical Accuracy: Somewhere Between Wikipedia and Willy Wonka
To call this “based on true events” is generous. Historical detail is replaced by pub fights, leering prostitutes, and more smoke than a goth club in hell. It’s as if the filmmakers skimmed the headline “Burke and Hare Sold Bodies to a Doctor” and just riffed the rest like a high school improv troupe with a flair for Victorian murder.
By the time we get to the trial and the inevitable “voiceover summary” of what happened to everyone (a classic sign that the movie has given up), any resemblance to history has been buried — probably in a shallow grave next to the script notes.
Final Thoughts: One Foot in the Grave, The Other in a Bucket of Regret
Burke & Hare is less a film and more a tragic collection of missed opportunities. It could have been a chilling descent into greed, guilt, and societal rot. Instead, it’s a patchy, underlit mess where murders are somehow both too frequent and entirely unmemorable.
It tries to be sleazy, scary, and smart — and ends up as none of the above. This film is what happens when you take a fascinating true-crime story, remove all tension, and sprinkle it with a disco beat.
★☆☆☆☆ (1 out of 4 stars)
Come for the history. Stay for the brothel. Leave when you realize the scariest thing here is the editing.
