Burke and Hare

Cinematic Wiseacre Duos, Part 3

A light farce about a dark subject. That is what director John Landis attempted with his first film in over a decade, 2010's British produced BURKE AND HARE. On his mind were the classic Ealing Studios gems like THE LADYKILLERS and KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS. His latter day retelling of an old, true ("except the parts that aren't") story of barely making it rogues William Burke and William Hare in 19th century Scotland is in fact a new Ealing production. Do Landis and screenwriters Piers Ashworth and Nick Moorcroft successfully tread the line of good/bad taste?

Burke (Simon Pegg) and Hare (Andy Serkis) are 2 bumbling ne'er do wells spinning cons on the streets of Edinburgh in the early nineteenth century, failing enough to warrant being chased by mobs. Their luck changes dramatically when a lodger turns up dead in Hare's spare room. Across town, Dr. Robert Knox (Tom Wilkinson), is seeking new cadavers to disect for his medical students at the University. He agrees to pay the pair a few pounds for the cadaver, suggesting he's willing to pay hansomely for more of them. But Burke and Hare don't have any luck with grave robbing. And corpses aren't just falling at their feet. Sometimes people just need a little help getting to their ultimate destination. A cottage industry is born.

The events in BURKE AND HARE get grislier, but the tone remains light as fluff. Landis nimbly orchestrates suffocations and frying pans on skulls as if he were presenting a pie fight, or a banana peel gag of yesteryear. There is a funny sight gag - a corpse in a rather impossible position after its back needs to be broken to fit in a barrel for transport. Of course, the barrel ends up rolling down a hill. The protagonists have been described as an evil Laurel and Hardy, and that's pretty accurate. I'll bet the real life B + H were not the likeable blokes we see in this retelling.

The women in Burke and Hare's lives? Hare's wife (Jessica Hynes) is first seen as an incoherent lush, often face down in her bowl of gruel. But as she learns of her husband's new enterprise she becomes sharp and clear, a bit Lady Macbeth-like in her motivations. And how funny that the young lady (Isla Fisher) Burke fancies in a bar happens to want to stage an all-female version of that very Shakespeare tragedy. As romance blooms, Burke even funds this ill-advised production, which provides a few chuckles. But the dirty deeds catch up to our duo, and the hangman may again have some business.

BURKE AND HARE is not really the comeback Landis completists were hoping for. Expectations were that the guy responsible for classic pop like THE BLUES BROTHERS and NATIONAL LAMPOON'S ANIMAL HOUSE would return, after his 12 year hiatus, with the sort of anarchic zest he lent to those and other films in his glory days. He even brings 2 actors in for cameos (Jenny Agutter and John Woodvine) who had appeared in his earlier Brit pic, AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, but the timing and tone are not quite the same. There are also a few unfortunate bits of dialogue, including "I once trusted in a fart, then shat myself!"

But, BURKE AND HARE is leagues better than Landis' 90s' offerings like THE STUPIDS, BEVERLY HILLS COP 3, BLUES BROTHERS 2000, and SUSAN'S PLAN. He shows much more confidence with his actors, including Tim Curry (with whom he worked in another less than stellar throwback stapsticker, OSCAR) who plays Knox's rival, Dr. Alexander Monro, haplessly left to merely amputate feet. His sparring with Wilkinson is fun and with just the right bit of facetiousness. The entire cast works at the same level, nearly achieving what the older British charmers did. The real locations used also help to give this movie some feeling of authenticity.

This movie never did get a wide North American release, and I imagine it would play better to English audiences familiar with the aforementioned and films like those in the CARRY ON... and CONFESSIONS... series. Quite surprisingly, a director known in his earlier days for plentiful nudity keeps his actors fully clothed during a rather randy sex scene. It actually plays funnier. A lesson learned?

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