The Doctor and the Devils

Plot synopsis:
Dr. Thomas Rock (Timothy Dalton) is a respected 19th-century anatomist lecturing at a prominent medical school. He is deeply passionate about improving medical knowledge, a pursuit for which he believes "the ends justify the means." Unfortunately, due to the laws of the time very few cadavers are legally available to the medical profession, necessitating the use of graverobbers or "Resurrection men" by the medical establishment to procure additional specimens. Dr. Rock's young assistant Dr. Murray (Julian Sands) is given the task of buying the bodies, for which he is authorized to pay a small fortune, particularly for fresher corpses. When alcoholic miscreants Fallon (Jonathan Pryce) and Broom (Stephen Rea) overhear details of the arrangement, they begin to murder the locals and sell their bodies. Gradually, Dr. Murray becomes more suspicious of the string of fresh bodies turning up at the medical school, but Dr. Rock dismisses his concerns. Meanwhile, Murray has begun to fall for beautiful local prostitute Jennie Bailey (Twiggy), who soon becomes the target of Fallon and Broom's murderous enterprise. When Jennie's friend Alice (Nichola McAuliffe) turns up dead in Dr. Rock's dissection room, Murray realizes what is happening and heroically rescues Jennie from a murderous Fallon. Both killers are soon arrested, but Broom agrees to turn state's evidence against his former partner, and is set free, unrepentant. Fallon is executed by hanging. Dr. Rock, for his part in the killings, is the subject of widespread public outrage, but ultimately not punished or censured by his colleagues. The film ends with Rock pondering his responsibility for the horrors and concluding, "oh my God -- I knew what I was doing."

Tags: violence, dark, gothic, murder, historical

Review:
Things take a turn for the worst when the slum of Robert Fallon and Timothy Broom find out there's good money in the job, and go one step further by providing on every occasion a 'fresh' corpse for the unconcerned doctor.
I couldn't help but be slightly disappointed by this Mel Brooks produced Gothic take on the true exploits of the infamous grave robbers of the 19th century, Burke and Hare.
Timothy Dalton, Jonathan Pryce, Julian Sands, Twiggy, Stephen Rea and Patrick Stewart.
And Rock's the boy that buys the beef."At the film's closing, Dr. Thomas Rock(Timothy Dalton)proclaims that he has become a ghost story that frightens children and questioned how it had gotten so far.A revisionist take on "The Body Snatcher"(..a marvelous film produced by Val Lewton), this film has Dalton portraying a scientist whose skills in anatomy are unsurpassed thanks to his intense study of dead bodies.
He soon enlists the aid of graverobbers Fallon and Broom(Jonathan Pryce and Stephen Rea)to bring him fresh bodies for proper research not knowing they are supplying him with victims they murder.
Julian Sands plays Dr. Murray, Rock's assistant, who falls in love with a prostitute named Jennie(Twiggy)and discovers when he goes to see her how Broom and Fallon get their corpses so fresh.The whole business of delivered bodies provides a special moral dilemma within the story(..which worked quite well in "The Body Snatcher").
Macklin(Patrick Stewart, whose role and character is underwritten)who wishes for his unusual methods to be grounds for dismissal.The major moral crisis, though, comes when a deranged Fallon attempts to murder Jennie and is sought after by Dr. Murray where Rock's illegal researching in accepting bodies murdered might soon be discovered.
While he only wishes to advance anatomy to save lives, his accepting murdered bodies is indeed considered immoral and unlawful.While the material of the film might seem familiar, considering it just really feels like a remake of "The Body Snatcher" and is just difficult not to think of the previous film while watching "The Doctor and the Devils", Fisher's marvelous direction makes up for it.
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.
The story of Burke and Hare is one of horror's all time classics and has inspired some great films such as The Flesh and the Fiends and The Body Snatcher, among many others.
The film has a period setting which it carries off very well, and the excellent cast all turn in great performances which helps to ensure that The Doctor and the Devils always feels like a very polished and professional production.
The names used in this movie are not the real life names of the people involved - for some reason, Doctor Knox has become Doctor Rock and Burke and Hare are now Broom and Fallon, but anyone that knows the story of Burke and Hare will know what to expect.
It soon becomes clear to the doctor that the bodies aren't being taken from graves, yet he continues to accept them to test on...The Doctor and the Devils is not the best film to be based on this classic story; though I have not seen every film it inspired, I am sure that The Flesh and the Fiends remains the best; though this is certainly an excellent take on it.
The film is directed by one of Hammer's best directors, Freddie Francis, and Francis creates the period style excellently; there is nothing about the setting or atmosphere of this film that doesn't make you think that it's all taking place in the Victorian era.
Overall, The Doctor and the Devils is an excellent and sadly overlooked take on the classic story of Burke and Hare and while it may not be easy to come by - this one is certainly worth the effort!.
Based on the Burke and Hare vivisectionist murders, this film has a lot of the feel of the old Hammer movies though for the most part it is played quite a bit straighter.
This is a grim, oppressive, stylish take on the Burke and Hare story that has also inspired such films as Robert Wises' "The Body Snatcher".
As has been pointed out, this production by Mel Brooks's company Brooksfilms is clearly inspired by Hammer films of the past - right down to the use of renowned cinematographer and sometime director Freddie Francis.
It stars a distinguished Timothy Dalton as Thomas Rock, a doctor / researcher / instructor frustrated with having to settle for the bodies of hanged men for study purposes.
So he's supplied with bodies by grave robbers including despicable lowlifes Robert Fallon (Jonathan Pryce) and Timothy Broom (Stephen Rea), who recognize the profit to be made from such an activity.
Now, when it becomes a matter of bodies needing to be as "fresh" as possible, Fallon and Broom turn out to be willing to turn to murder to achieve the right product.The wonderful group of actors also features Julian Sands as Murray, Rocks' young associate who falls in love with world weary prostitute Jennie Bailey (Twiggy), Phyllis Logan as Rocks' wife, Sian Phillips as his sister, Beryl Reid as old Mrs. Flynn, and Patrick Stewart as Professor Macklin.
Inspired by the tale of 18th century British body-snatchers Burke and Hare and their benefactor Dr. Alexander Knox, noted Welsh writer and poet Dylan Thomas wrote the screenplays for The Doctor And The Devils in 1953 shortly before his death.
Timothy Dalton, himself a Welshman, plays anatomist Dr. Thomas Rock as a man so passionate and desperate to learn more about the human body that he resorts to paying grave-robbers to do so.
Believably playing versions of the infamous body-snatchers are Jonathan Pryce and Stephen Rea as Robert Fallon and Timothy Broom, respectively.
The supporting cast is just as splendid as well including Julian Sands as Rock's troubled assistant Doctor Murray, Patrick Stewart as fellow anatomist Professor Macklin, Beryl Reid as one of the body-snatchers victims, Phyllis Logan as Rock's wife, Siân Phillips as Rock's troubled sister and the singer Twiggy as Murray's prostitute girlfriend in a performance that proves every once in a while a singer can actually act.Period dramas rely heavily on their production values almost as much as their cast to bring them to life believably with this film being no exception.
In particular the production design of Robert Laing and Imogen Richardson's costumes come together to bring to life the two clashing worlds of the film: the clean and cultured world of Doctor Rock and the dirty, grimy world of Fallon and Broom.
Written by Thomas, with work done by Ronald Harwood, the script is an intriguing fictionalization of the tale of 18th century British body-snatchers Burke and Hare and their benefactor Dr. Alexander Knox.
The film also looks at Fallon and Broom, men of the grim and filthier side of London who take up body-snatching and indeed murder for a bit of Doctor Rock's money.
It is the scripts exploration of how the cultured, nobly minded but possibly amoral Doctor Rock is, in his own words, brought down into the slime that bred Fallon and Broom that lies at the heart of the film rather then the murders and body-snatching of "the devils" he employed.The Doctor And The Devils is not only an intriguing fictionalization of the tale of 18th century British body-snatchers Burke and Hare and their benefactor Dr. Alexander Knox but also a fine piece of period drama.
To top it all off, there's a nice cast with Timothy Dalton, Jonathan Pryce, Stephen Rea, Julian Sands, and...um, Twiggy.So, with all of this, why doesn't the movie work better?
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.
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!
Nice retelling of the Burke and Hare murder case, which was about 2 low- life lads in the early part of the 19th century selling off bodies to an all too eager Doctor Of Anatomy.
In murky old Edinburgh, Scotland, during the 19th century, anatomy professor Timothy Dalton (as Thomas Rock) lectures neophyte students by day and experiments on cadavers at night.
Alcohol-soaked grave-robbers Jonathan Pryce (as Robert Fallon) and Stephen Rea (as Timothy Broom) provide Mr. Dalton with bodies, but he needs fresher corpses for better experimentation.
Dalton's blond assistant doctor Julian Sands (as Murray) inadvertently encourages murder and hooks up with former skinny 1960s model Twiggy (as Jennie Bailey), playing an cockney prostitute.
Executively produced by Mel Brooks, this film has some advantages – a stylish look due to good costumes, sets and accessories is obvious.
But the story, adapted from an old Dylan Thomas screenplay, is dreadfully boring.***** The Doctor and the Devils (10/4/85) Freddie Francis ~ Timothy Dalton, Jonathan Pryce, Twiggy, Julian Sands.
Grave robbers supply a doctor (Timothy Dalton) with bodies to test on.Coming from a screenplay by Dylan Thomas with modifications from playwright Sir Ronald Harwood, directed by experienced horror director and cinematographer Freddie Francis and produced by Mel Brooks.Now let us mention the cast: besides Dalton, we have a pre-Trek Patrick Stewart as a higher-up doctor who suspects Dalton of doing something wrong, and Julian Sands as Dalton's assistant.
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 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.
It has a good cast, including Timothy Bottoms, Jonathan Pryce, Twiggy, Sean Rea, Patrick Stewart, Sian Phillips, Beryl Reid, and Patricia Neal (whose name I did not note in the cast - she was the mother-in-law of Dr. Rock).
For THE DOCTOR AND THE DEVILS is the retelling of the Burke and Hare story.As such it lacks the conciseness and tensions of the fictional retelling via Val Lewton and Robert Louis Stevenson of THE BODY SNATCHER (still the best version of the story), and the best historical account, MANIA.
It has been retouched here to make it more approachable as a movie project - which explains why it finally made it to the screen.The story does show how the murders were committed by Burke and Hare (Fang and Broome: Pryce and Rea), and even goes in greater detail about the luring of the victims and the method of suffocation used.
i really enjoyed this movie.i found it very stylish and atmospheric.i liked the dull,dreary look of the film.it was very appropriate in this case.i also liked the setting:Edinburg,Scotland in 1820.this movie was adapted from an original Screenplay by the poet Dylan Thomas.the script was written by Ronald Harwood.to me,this movie felt like something that Edgar Allen Poe would have written.i mean that in a good way.the general premise of the movie is as follows:Doctor Thomas Rock(Timothy Dalton)is an anatomy instructor at a local school.he is supplied his cadavers,or dead bodies,via the deaths of convicts who have been executed.however,two petty criminal lowlifes,named Timothy Broom(Stephen Rea)and Robert Fallon(Johnathon Pryce)find out they can profit by bringing bodies to the Doctor themselves and getting paid.from there,things begin to take a disturbingly chilling turn,but i won't reveal more.anyway,for me,this a genuine old fashioned ghost story that really works.there's no gore to speak of,but plenty of tension and suspense and some chills.if this seems like your bag,you might want to give "The Doctor and the Devils" a try.9/10 for me.
The pervasiveness of alcoholic excess as a way of driving off the demons of poverty and hopelessness has seldom been shown in more graphic detail.The truly appalling characters of Fallon and Broom are portrayed with utter conviction by Jonathan Pryce and Stephen Rea, with excellent support from other British television and movie stalwarts such as Patrick Stewart and Sian Phillips.
Former model Twiggy turns in a very moving portrayal of a young prostitute ,hardened by life at too early an age to accept the love of an earnest young medical student (Julian Sands.) Where the film falls down is in its mixed presentation of gruesome historical reality, lurid horror movie story telling, and the desire to have the film be a class act like something for the BBC.The nasty reality of the real life crimes of Burke and Hare is hardly something that could be overdone, in even the most Grand Guignol of horror movies.
That film was called 'The Doctor and the Devils', and is based on real events from a few 19th century murderers in England.
The film centers mostly on one Dr. Thomas Rock (Timothy Dalton), who is a a professor and doctor who examines and studies the human body.Dr. Rock wants to further the science and research of the human body, while others think that his methods aren't exactly kosher, including Professor Macklin (Patrick Stewart), who constantly tries to expose and stop Dr. Rock.
Since Dr. Rock is needing more and more dead bodies to do his experiments on, he enlists the help of Robert Fallon and Timothy Broom (Jonathan Pryce and Stephen Rea), who hear about the "good" doctor's needs.
'The Doctor and the Devils' is a great look with one hell of a cast and crew at some of the most horrific murders ever to grace the newspapers, and it still holds up thirty years later..
For all intents and purposes, "The Doctor and the Devils" is a Hammer horror film.
For all intents and purposes, "The Doctor and the Devils" is a Hammer horror film.
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.
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.
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 order to prove his scientific theories he acquires the services of the body snatchers Fallon (Jonathan Pryce) and Broom (Stephen Rea) who turn to multiple murder to provide him with the raw materials for his research purposes - fresh corpses.
But, things go horribly wrong for them after they pick a local prostitute called Jenny Bailey (Twiggy) as a potential victim, whom one of Rock's assistants, Dr Murray (Julian Sands), is in love with and his intervention not only saves her life but brings the pair to justice.
Nevertheless, the first rate cast does fine work with Pryce and Rea of exceptional note as Burke and Hare, here renamed as Fallon and Broom.
In the acting stakes, only Julian Sands and Twiggy slow the work down as the medical man and prostitute who fall in love, only the latter rejects him because she does not believe that because of her background she can fit in to being an upper class doctor's wife.
Ronald Harwood's script was based on an original screenplay by the poet Dylan Thomas, which at one time was due to be made as a film starring Sir Michael Redgrave and directed by Fritz Lang (and later Nicholas Ray).
"The Doctor and the Devils" is a slow and very underwhelming horror drama.**SPOILERS**Needing corpses for his anatomy class, teacher Dr. Thomas Rock, (Timothy Dalton) asks grave-robbers Robert Fallon, (Jonathan Pryce) and Timothy Broom, (Stephen Rea) to supply him with fresh corpses for his class.