Hare with Body

Burke and Hare (2010) sounds like a sure thing: John Landis directs Andy Serkis and Simon Pegg as celebrated body snatchers Burke and Hare. It comes off as a pretty good pilot for a comedy series that never got picked up.

Pegg and Serkis are two Ulstermen in Edinburgh, a city famed for its medical community. In dire need of funds now that the canals are all dug, they come up with the idea of selling corpses to Dr. Knox. Since one of the lodgers in their tenement has died, they happen to have one handy. This works so well that they try graverobbing, but find it too risky (they dig up an ancient skeleton instead of a fresh corpse). They find another dying lodger, but this time they help him along.

They celebrate by getting some nice clothes and going to a finer type of drinking establishment, where Pegg meets Ilsa Fisher, a whore who wants to take to the stage - be the first woman to play Hamlet.

And so it goes, with Burke and Hare comically killing for corpses, while Burke (Pegg) romances Fisher. It’s funny but not all that funny, and the whole Ilsa Fisher theater subplot kind of takes over the second half. Considering that it was made by Ealing Studios, it just didn’t live up to its potential.

I guess it couldn’t have been made into a series, since Burke is hanged at the end (SPOILER!).