The Doctor And The Devils: Review

The Film:

The Doctor and the Devils is a film based on real life grave robbers Burke and Hare. Much like in the real life happenings, the film follows two men as they sell dead bodies to an anatomy academy, where the academy can dissect the body and gain more knowledge about the human body. In the film they change the name of the characters. Instead of Burke and Hare they are now Robert Fallon (Jonathan Pryce) and Timothy Broom (Stephen Rea). Also Dr. Knox is now Dr. Rock (Timothy Dalton). Dr. Rock teaches anatomy at an academy and is discontented with the lack of bodies that he is legally allowed to have for dissection, so he begins to be bodies from whoever can bring him some. He believes that it is hampering progress when he is limited in the amount of bodies he can use, as well as the quality of the bodies not being very good. This is where Fallon and Broom come in. They discover that there is a lot of money to be had with dead bodies. So at first they stumble upon some dead bodies and sell them to Dr. Rock. As they progress in their business their methods begin to progress until they reach the point of murder and at this point Dr. Rock knows this is happening but lets it continue.

The film has a lot of interesting aspects to it, the divide of rich and poor and the conflict between tradition and progress. The movie shows the conflict between those that fly the banner of progress and those that believe that progress can get in the way of traditions that have served well so far. This conflict is shown by the belief that peoples souls would not go to heaven during the second coming if their bodies are torn apart after death. The side of progress argues that if as doctors they want to improve people's quality of life they must be able to test and study on human bodies so as to learn how to perform helpful actions correctly in the future. One thing that I find very interesting about this is that the use of the bodies for science during this period is probably seen as a good thing by most today rather than something wrong. Particularly because most people recognize that without some incidents like these happening the progress in the medical field would have been a lot slower in advancement and perhaps not have gotten to the point it is at now. Also the film looks at the division between rich and poor were it becomes obvious that the bodies of the poor are easy to buy and hold little value. The movie is definitely not a straight forward horror film, but rather it is a more complex detailing of morals through the various aspects described above.

The video quality found on this release is very good. The film has a kind of brown tinge to it for most of the film and this slightly lessens detail in the picture, particularly in darker scenes. As well, in some of the darker scenes there is a slight crush but nothing too extreme. The grain in the film is very natural looking. Overall the video quality for this Blu-ray is very good. The things discussed are only minor and do not detract from the film very much at all.

3.5/5

The Extras:

This release does not contain too many extras. The extras found on this disc are an Audio Commentary with Steve Haberman. An Interview with Executive Producer Mel Brooks, Producers Jonathan Sanger and Randy Auerbach. The last extra is the theatrical trailer. The audio commentary is an interesting one and varies from the type of commentaries usually found on Scream Factory releases. This commentary is very academic and provides a historical background of the story of the film, different artistic interpretations of the story, and the making of The Doctor and the Devils. It is an interesting commentary that is filled with information but it can be a little boring in that everything said appears to have been read directly off of a written essay. As a result often times what is on screen is not directly discussed. So for some this can be less enjoyable. The interview with the producers also provides a lot of background information on getting the film made, making the film, and releasing in the film. At times it is hard to understand what they are saying because they occasionally talk over each other. Overall the extras are pretty good and filled with a lot of information.

2.5/5

Overall: Recommended