This could be a repeat entry in this series for me, but this is also one of my favorite films and easily my favorite Boris Karloff performance.

The Body Snatcher (Not to be confuse with iteration of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.) is a 1945 film helmed by then novice director Robert Wise as part of Val Lewton’s cycle of psychological horror films, which included Cat People, for RKO. Based upon the short story by Robert Lewis Stevenson this movie is about doctors, students, and grave robbers. Rather than a retelling of the Burke and Hare affair, though that one has been put to film a number of times including in a flawed but lively comedy staring Andy Serkis and Simon Peg, this story deals with fiction characters involved in the sordid business of robbing graves and murdering people to supply medical schools with dissection specimens.

A young student, without the means to continue his education, becomes the assistant to a famous doctor, McFarland, and quickly finds himself caught in the middle of McFarland’s antagonistic with the cabman and resurrectionist John Gray, played with wonderful oily charm by Karloff. The young man, a person of good morals, find himself pulled deeper and deeper into the crimes of the school as he desperately tries to get the doctor to save the life of a paralyzed little girl. When grave-robbing turns to murder the stakes are raised and the confrontation long delayed between the doctor and cabman explodes.

This is a wonderful little film. I remember getting this on laserdisc when I still watched movies on that pre-DVD format. I found it in a used shop for something like $8 and I had never seen it. Figuring it wasn’t too much of a risk I bought the disc and that weekend discovered this classic of horror cinema. This is not horror that beats out from supernatural monstrosities , but rather from the pride and need to dominate in the human condition. Not all of the Val Lewton psychological horrors of this cycle are to my tastes, but this one and Cat People certain are worth the scant time they take to view. This film is highly recommended.

Thanks to getting back onto a disc plan with Netflix, my selection of films has opened op and last night I watched a film I have wanted to see for some time, Zero Dark Thirty.

This is the dramatized account of the hunt for and the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden. From my basic knowledge of the facts I did not spot any glaring inconsistencies and the film was written and produced with a minimum of political bias.

The film uses as it’s focus a CIA operative named Maya, we never learn her last name and as for film purposes I wouldn’t even assume that this is her real name. We follow her multi-year trek through shards of intelligence data and bureaucratic infighting to try and located the world’s most hunted man. The tension is real and the filmmaker, Kathryn Bigalow who won an Oscar for ‘The Hurt Locker’ showed deft skills in managing a story that spanned such a vast amount of time and locations.

I appreciate that Ms. Bigalow did not using the stomach-wrenching video we have all seen of the attacks on 09/11. There was no need for that sort of exhibitionism in a tale this deftly told. She also never gave us the face of Bin Laden, I suspect so that even in the form of an impersonator as to deny him all manner of publicity and fame.

The script was well written by Mark Boal who was responsible for the reporting about Black Hawk Down that Ridley Scott turned into a fine film. The cast boasted no superstars, but was well represented with talented actors who seemed to inhabit their characters.

This film is worth the time.