Shameless Self Expression

The story of sleazy but enterprising creeps Burke (Derren Nesbitt) and Hare (Glynn Edwards) who offer their grave-robbing services to medical professionals in 19 th Century Scotland. However, they quickly stop robbing graves and just start killing people and selling their fresh corpses. Harry Andrews is the infamous anatomy lecturer Dr. Knox, Yootha Joyce is Mrs. Hare, and Swedish-born Yutte Stensgaard plays a saucy brothel worker.   The grave-robbing real-life characters of Burke and Hare have oft been filmed, most memorably in “The Flesh and the Fiends” , and particularly the classic “The Body Snatcher” (although their names were changed for that one). American director John Landis more recently adopted a black comedy approach with the not-bad-but-not-quite-good “Burke & Hare” . This incredibly cheap 1972 telling of their exploits by director Vernon Sewell ( “Curse of the Crimson Altar” , “Blood Beast Terror”) and screenwriter Ernle Bradford (whose only other credit com...

Nightmare-plagued Dr. Henry Jekyll (Anthony Perkins) is obsessively experimenting with chemicals (basically crack cocaine) as an anaesthetic. One day, a lab monkey accidentally spills all the doctor’s chemicals, which Jekyll unfortunately ingests. It results in the dark, perverted side of the surgeon’s personality – giving itself the name of Jack Hyde – being unleashed on London streets (played here by Budapest, Hungary), with Ripper-esque murderous results on anyone who gets in his deranged, kinky path. David Lodge has a small role as Jekyll’s attorney, Glynis Barber is Jekyll’s confused wife.   Anthony Perkins was unquestionably great and iconic as Norman Bates and his ‘Mother’ in 1960’s “Psycho” , but perhaps due to a combination of typecasting and personal issues/demons, he ended up being pretty much a one-hit wonder. I also suspect it probably prevented him from truly honing his craft over the years, as he was too erratic on a personal level and was limited to pretty much ...