Before the terror of Jack the Ripper in London, Edinburg (Scotland) witnessed a series of murders linked to one of the noblest professions – medicine. The Doctor and the Devils (1985) by Freddie Francis brings that dark and less-known chapter of early Victorian history to the screen.
Based on the real-life series of murders by William Burke and William Hare in Edinburgh in 1828, The Doctor and the Devils features two thugs – Robert Fallon (Jonathan Pryce) and Timothy Broom (Stephen Rea) – who prey on poor, vulnerable people from the shabby part of the town so as to sell their corpses to the medical school. The bodies of their victims would serve the research of Dr. Thomas Rock (Timothy Dalton), professor of anatomy whose assistant Dr. Murray is in charge of procuring the bodies and becomes suspicious of the two men repeatedly bringing in corpses.
The story has substance and gains importance from being a major crime tied to the medical field in history. With good cinematography, skillful editing, and believable acting from the cast, this movie comes as an underrated work of significant import. It extends the question of medical ethics to include the process of oversight and the values of academicians. Dr. Rock’s character has all the shades of darkness as he is shown to turn a blind eye to the killings because his conviction places the importance of medical research way above any means by which it could be brought to fruition for the service of humanity.
Perhaps the most interesting and obvious question about The Doctor and the Devils relates its categorization in the known genre(s). This reviewer would argue against putting a horror tag on it. Though morbid, the subject matter and presentation are more of a dark crime drama than horror. The character of Fallon does have vibes of a psychopath carrying predatory liking for killing but that alone falls short of earning a horror tag for the movie.
In an age where assisted suicide, abortion, organ harvesting, and the push for more medical adventurism are common knowledge, The Doctor and the Devils remains a relevant work in cinema with a lesson from history.
