The Doctor & The Devils is a 1985 thriller/drama kind of thing starring Timothy Dalton, Jonathan Pryce, Stephen Rea, Julian Sands, Twiggy, Phyllis Logan, and Nicola McAuliffe.
In the late 19th century, one Doctor Rock (Dalton) believes that science must progress by any means necessary. Since the laws of the time prevent him from getting his hands on medical cadavers (he's only allowed to use hanged criminals, and they don't drop in that often), he pays people to dig up dead bodies. The fresher, the better, no one gets hurt.
(You can probably see the problem here.)
A couple of local lowlives, Broom (Rea) and Fallon (Pryce) catch wind of this scheme, and very quickly realize that they get paid more money for less work if they just murder people, rather than do all the labor of digging. Meanwhile, Dr. Rock's reputation steadily declines because not only is it painfully obvious what's happening to anyone paying attention, he openly says that the law is dumb and following it is dumb.
Eventually, Fallon goes truly off the deep end and kills a woman named Alice (McAuliffe) that Rock actually knows (he fixed her brother's broken leg (Philip Davis - the brother, not the leg)), which causes kind of a crisis of conscience for him. His assistant Dr. Murray (Sands) gets to be all heroic and rush in to stop Fallon murdering Alice's friend Jenny (Twiggy), with whom Murray has fallen in love. Broom turns on Fallon and rats him and Rock out to the authorities, Fallon is hanged, Rock isn't charged because that would embarrass rich people, all is right with the world. Kind of.
Obviously this is a cinematic version of the Burke & Hare story, and the movie has some interesting trivia behind its creation. It's based on a screenplay written by Dylan Thomas (as in, "do not go gentle into that good night"), but wasn't produced until thirty years after he died. One of the producers was Mel freaking Brooks, and the director was Freddie Francis, who I only knew because he directed some horror films for Hammer but is also a celebrated (and Oscar-winning) cinematographer.
But that's all very interesting - what about this movie? It's not bad. The performances are what make it, Jonathan Pryce chewing scenery and Stephen Rea being relatively restrained as a counterpoint. Twiggy was an odd choice for the pragmatic, somewhat cynical prostitute role, but I think she does OK. Julian Sands is perfect as the young hero (I of course know him from Warlock, so it's weird to see him play the hero), and Timothy Dalton goes from self-righteous to charming seamlessly.
The pacing is a little weird, and the script leaves some guns unfired that make me a little sad. Like, Dr. Rock's wife Elizabeth (Logan) is a medical illustrator and is shunned by polite society because she draws anatomy (shock, horror, clutch pearls). I'd have loved to know more about her and their marriage and how she copes with being ostracized for her husband's work, not to mention where she learned to art so well, but she just kind of gets a couple of scenes to smooch her hubby and not much else.
It's by no means a bad or boring movie, but there are more interesting adaptations of the events.
My Grade: C
Rewatch Value: Medium-low
Next up: The Fog
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