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Lobby Card, The Body Snatcher R52
is a 1945 American horror film directed by Robert Wise and produced by Val Lewton. It is based on an 1884 short story of the same name by Robert Louis Stevenson. The film stars Boris Karloff as a grave robber named John Gray and Bela Lugosi in a supporting role as a servant named Joseph. This was the last film to feature both horror icons together.
The plot is set in 1831 Edinburgh, Scotland, where a doctor, played by Henry Daniell, illegally buys cadavers from a cab driver, John Gray, for his medical school's anatomy studies. The film's story is loosely inspired by the real-life Burke and Hare murders that took place in Edinburgh in 1828, in which men murdered people to sell their bodies to a doctor for dissection. The film's suspense and horror come from psychological tension rather than supernatural elements. |
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