IMDb > The Body Snatcher (1945) > Plot Summary
The Body Snatcher
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Plot Summary for
The Body Snatcher (1945) More at IMDbPro »

In Edinburgh in 1831, Dr. Wolfe MacFarlane runs a medical school where Donald Fettes is a student. Fettes is interested in helping a young girl who has lost the use of her legs. He is certain that MacFarlane's surgical skills could be put to great use but he is reluctant to do so. The good Dr. MacFarlane has a secret that soon becomes all too obvious to young Fettes, who has only recently been promoted as his assistant: he has been paying a local cabbie, John Gray, to supply him with dead bodies for anatomical research. Gray constantly harasses MacFarlane and clearly has a hold over him dating to a famous trial many years before where Gray refused to identify the man for whom he was robbing graves. Fettes isn't aware of any of this but soon realizes exactly how Gray obtains the bodies they use in their anatomy classes. Written by garykmcd

In Edinburgh, renowned surgeon and now teacher of anatomy Dr. MacFarlane, has been paying John Gray, a cabman, to clandestinely bring him exhumed bodies of the recently deceased for classroom demonstration purposes. With cemeteries being increasingly guarded, Gray turns to murder to provide MacFarlane with fresh bodies. Realizing that he will never be rid of Gray, who constantly taunts him with his knowledge of MacFarland's past indiscretions, MacFarlane engages the malevolent Gray in a hand-to-hand fight to the death, the ultimate results of which provide the victor with an episode of unprecedented psychological horror. Written by Doug Sederberg <vornoff@sonic.net>

Based on a Robert Louis Stevenson story, a young medical student learns that both good and evil are manifested in all men. Written by Carl Schultz


Plot Synopsis:
A gruesome tale of a reality of 19th Century medicine. Karloff portrays Mr. Gray, a dubious supplier of human cadavers for medical experimentation... See more (warning! contains spoilers) »

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