Burke & Hare (2010)

John Landis returned to feature directing in 2010 with a film about the men who sold corpses to an Edinburgh anatomist, and the result is a broad, amiable black comedy that treats serial murder as a farce of small-time commerce. Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis tumble through the roles of Burke and Hare with the energy of a music-hall double act, and the supporting cast (Tom Wilkinson, Tim Curry, Christopher Lee) lends the proceedings a respectable coat of British character acting. Ealing Studios wanted another Kind Hearts and Coronets. The result was a creaky, cheerful thing that critics met with a shrug.

The film's social consciousness is thin and mostly accidental. Lucky, the innkeeper's wife, extracts a pound per corpse as a marital tax, and Ginny Hawkins nurses a modest ambition for the stage, which grants the women a few moments of agency in an otherwise bawdy period romp. There is no thesis behind any of it. The script does glance at the corruption of city officials and the medical establishment, who bribe a militia captain to bury a scandal that would damage the reputation (and the revenue) of the anatomy schools. That is cynicism of the old-fashioned, equal-opportunity variety. It is not a call to arms.

Race goes unmentioned, as does the climate, and the film has nothing to say about sexuality or bodies beyond their cash value as cadavers. The historical liberties taken here, invented characters and a romantic subplot, serve comedy, not ideology. Burke & Hare wants us to laugh at grave robbers. It has no sermon to deliver, and for that small mercy, we can be grateful.