Near the end of the episode, these Victorian England characters were in a police station talking, and there, hanging on the wall, was a portrait of George Washington. While in Victorian England, the relations between our nations were stable and friendly, I'm surprised that a police station there would sport a portrait of POTUS#1!
6 Reviews
I see that others who reviewed it thought this episode isn't up to snuff, but I found it enjoyable
montez-1356621 August 2019
Warning: Spoilers
The Murderers
AaronCapenBanner2 November 2014
John Anderson & George Kennedy play Jacob Grant & John Paterson, two murderous body snatchers in Victorian England who are not above murdering any "innocent bystanders" when regular grave robbing dries up. They sell the bodies to a medical doctor who needs them for his experiments in class, but the morality of subverting the law by committing these illegal acts is much debated, as fate catches up with both Grant & Paterson... Oddly ineffectual re-telling of the familiar true life story of Burke & Hare has all the right ingredients but still comes out flat. Watch "The Body Snatcher"(1945) instead, or even "Night Gallery", which did a better version of this story called 'Deliveries In The Rear'.
Weak Body Snatcher Stuff
Hitchcoc14 December 2016
This involves a subculture of Victorian England. Apparently, there was practically a body snatcher's union. They dug up graves and stole the dead to be passed on to medical schools for dissection. However, the bodies were supposed to be dead by violence or natural causes. A couple of really bad dudes do their own killing and then sell the bodies. We are witness to some of the murders. A young man and his disinherited wife find refuge in the home of one of these guys. He is ugly and abusive and has a mentally handicapped partner. The young man is looking for work but times are tough and even when he finds out what these guys are doing, he wants to look the other way. When it comes to self preservation, the young woman is one of the stupidest characters I've ever seen. A really weak episode of Thriller.
"We're all in the same boat, and we'll sail away together.
classicsoncall13 March 2012
Warning: Spoilers
It's only fitting that before the series ended, Thriller got in a story that paid tribute to one of Boris Karloff's seminal film roles, and one of my favorites, that of Cabman Gray in 1945's "The Body Snatcher". That might have been his best characterization ever, notwithstanding his iconic achievements as Frankenstein and The Mummy. Karloff doesn't appear in this episode, serving only in his regular duty as host of the show, but no Karloff fan can miss the connection.
The villains of the piece here are a couple of body snatchers, actually murderers going by Grant and Paterson. By now, I've probably seen John Anderson more than any other actor in a whole slew of films, usually Westerns, in which he always does a credible job. His partner in crime was certainly a surprise for me to see here, George Kennedy as a hunchback sort of a dimwit who did most of the dirty work. With no scruples at all, this pair killed for convenience and money, and allowed their greed to command increasing tribute for the bodies they provided to anatomy professor Dr. Marcus Graham (Carl Benton Reid).
Now I can't imagine that the demand for cadavers could have been so great that there would have been more than a couple of entrepreneurs like Grant and Paterson operating on behalf of a local academy, but there you'd be wrong. That's actually what provided the twist in this morbid little tale as the rest of the body snatcher guild brought down Grant before he could give them all a bad name. Which made me wonder, how much is a body snatcher's body worth?
The villains of the piece here are a couple of body snatchers, actually murderers going by Grant and Paterson. By now, I've probably seen John Anderson more than any other actor in a whole slew of films, usually Westerns, in which he always does a credible job. His partner in crime was certainly a surprise for me to see here, George Kennedy as a hunchback sort of a dimwit who did most of the dirty work. With no scruples at all, this pair killed for convenience and money, and allowed their greed to command increasing tribute for the bodies they provided to anatomy professor Dr. Marcus Graham (Carl Benton Reid).
Now I can't imagine that the demand for cadavers could have been so great that there would have been more than a couple of entrepreneurs like Grant and Paterson operating on behalf of a local academy, but there you'd be wrong. That's actually what provided the twist in this morbid little tale as the rest of the body snatcher guild brought down Grant before he could give them all a bad name. Which made me wonder, how much is a body snatcher's body worth?
A poor story inspired by Burke and Hare's evil antics.
planktonrules21 October 2018
It seems ironic that a HIGHLY fictionalized account of the exploits of the Scottish resurrectionists Burke & Hare are presented in this edition of "Thriller". This is because in 1945, Boris Karloff (the man who introduces each episode of the series made his own version of the story, "The Body Snatcher". While "The Body Snatcher" is among Karloff's best films, "The Innocent Bystanders" is much more pedestrian and features one of the worst cliches from TV and film.
In the old days, surgeons had difficulty learning their craft because folks were loathe to donate the bodies of the dead and the only bodies medical schools could obtain were from folks executed for various crimes. This led to folks becoming 'resurrectionists' by trade....in other words, they stole dead bodies and secretly sold them to the medical schools! But, when this inventory of bodies became scarce, some resurrectionists took to robbing graveyards....and the infamous Burke & Hare made a business out of killing people and selling them to the medical schools. This story is a completely fictitious version of them...and the names were changed because the story differs so significantly from the true account of their actions.
So why did I only give this one a 3? Well, first, there are much better accounts of these resurrectionists...and you should see them instead. Second, when the show was wrapping up, one of these evil men is trying to kill a woman. Her husband comes to her rescue and fights with the giant murderous man....and the wife just stands there doing absolutely nothing to help her husband from being murdered! The helpless victim cliche is annoying as anyone who is seeing their husband being killed would do more than just stand there doing nothing! She could have screamed, gone to get help, hit the big man with a chair or even called him nasty names to confuse him...but she did NOTHING!!! This is just bad writing...pure and simple.
In the old days, surgeons had difficulty learning their craft because folks were loathe to donate the bodies of the dead and the only bodies medical schools could obtain were from folks executed for various crimes. This led to folks becoming 'resurrectionists' by trade....in other words, they stole dead bodies and secretly sold them to the medical schools! But, when this inventory of bodies became scarce, some resurrectionists took to robbing graveyards....and the infamous Burke & Hare made a business out of killing people and selling them to the medical schools. This story is a completely fictitious version of them...and the names were changed because the story differs so significantly from the true account of their actions.
So why did I only give this one a 3? Well, first, there are much better accounts of these resurrectionists...and you should see them instead. Second, when the show was wrapping up, one of these evil men is trying to kill a woman. Her husband comes to her rescue and fights with the giant murderous man....and the wife just stands there doing absolutely nothing to help her husband from being murdered! The helpless victim cliche is annoying as anyone who is seeing their husband being killed would do more than just stand there doing nothing! She could have screamed, gone to get help, hit the big man with a chair or even called him nasty names to confuse him...but she did NOTHING!!! This is just bad writing...pure and simple.
Burke and Hare with John Anderson and George Kennedy
kevinolzak9 November 2008
An extremely weak entry (producer Willam Frye's name completely absent), this is merely an ultra low budget take on the 19th century story of Burke and Hare, who murdered derelicts and prostitutes and sold their corpses to the medical academy of Doctor Knox (Boris Karloff himself mined this territory in 1945's superb "The Body Snatcher"). Carl Benton Reid plays the doctor (here named Marcus Graham), while the killers are called Jacob Grant (John Anderson) and John Paterson (George Kennedy). Anderson, perhaps best known as the 'high pressured' car salesman in 1960's "Psycho," has the showy part to offer as much life as this episode has, while Kennedy is a one-dimensional disappointment as the dimwitted accomplice. The young hero is played by Steve Terrell (1957's "Invasion of the Saucer Men"), Diki Lerner makes his second memorable appearance on THRILLER (previously the dummy Hans in "The Weird Tailor"), and there is an unbilled silent bit from Harry Wilson, the former Wallace Beery stand-in previously seen as a wax figure in "Waxworks," perhaps best known to genre buffs as the titular creature in 1958's "Frankenstein's Daughter." In 1964, THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR had equally mediocre results with their take on Burke and Hare, "The McGregor Affair" with Elsa Lanchester.
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