Jonathan Melville: Is Hollywood getting away with murder?

Published on Monday 25 October 2010 13:19

As Burke and Hare prepares to hit Capital cinemas, Jonathan Melville asks if real murders are a suitable subject for humour

&#149 Simon Pegg, left, and Andy Serkis star in the 'black comedy' Burke and Hare

Mass murder! Funny accents! Toilet humour! That's what the trailer to the new Edinburgh-set comedy, Burke and Hare, promised when it appeared a few weeks ago, the serial killings which took place in and around West Port in the 19th century the subject of a new Hollywood film.

John Landis, who created the classic An American Werewolf in London in the 1970s and the not-quite-so-classic Beverley Hills Cop III in the 1990s, has turned his attention to the exploits of Auld Reekie's best-known mass murderers, casting Star Trek's Simon Pegg and Lord of the Rings' Andy Serkis as the eponymous killers.

Judging by the fast-cut, slapstick-style trailer, it would seem that it's not only Edinburgh's horrific history that will be seen to be plundered in the movie, but also any vestiges of dignity that the victims of these crimes may still have in the eyes of viewers.

It was in 1827 that Irish immigrants, William Burke and William Hare, first hit upon the idea of selling dead bodies to Surgeons' Hall, starting out with the cadaver of someone who had died of natural causes.

Renowned Edinburgh surgeon Dr Robert Knox was the medic who effectively sanctioned the practice of paying for bodies, his zeal leading to Burke and Hare hitting on the idea of supplying a fresher product to Knox, instead of the decaying remains stolen from graveyards. Over the course of a year, the pair murdered 17 people around Edinburgh, mainly those they thought wouldn't be missed.

A tragic tale then, and one in which it's hard to see much opportunity for humour. Yet the film's trailer plays up the "hilarious" side of events, showing victims collapsing on beds and being taken to the surgeon's table in various deformed positions. Laugh as poor people die horribly, it appears to say.

In the two-minute trailer, we watch as Burke (Pegg) and Hare (Serkis) try to come up with a get-rich-quick scheme. Cue excrement on faces, comedy sound effects and a breaking of the fourth wall, not to mention a thumping rock soundtrack.

Pegg and Serkis are accompanied by Isla Fisher, Tom Wilkinson, Tim Curry and local lad Ronnie Corbett as Burke and Hare go about their business, the only subtle part of the clip being the muted browns of the characters' costumes. Other than that, it's Carry On Murdering.

I'll admit to having misgivings about the tone the film's makers have gone for. I found it hard to reconcile the fact that I was watching the trailer for a Hollywood comedy while sitting in my flat not 15 minutes from where the killings took place 170 years ago.

Has enough time passed that we should shrug our shoulders and wish them well? Is there a statute of limitation on when a mass murder becomes a joke? Or does the trailer misrepresent the movie? What inspired Landis to take such a crass approach to the subject matter?

Landis has admitted that he's "walking a very fine line", going on to note that "these guys were loathsome psychopaths . . . murdering scum who did horrible things in Edinburgh, and yet I am making them like romantic leading men".

Pegg also defended the film via his Twitter account recently, noting that: "Burke and Hare were guilty but also scapegoated. By making them sympathetic, likable even, the wider conspiracy is thrown into sharp relief."

If it is the case that the trailer masks a sophisticated, post-modern examination of the role of the establishment in the creation of evil mass murderers, then I'm doing the filmmakers a disservice. Until I watch the film, I'm going on a piece of promotional material, not an historically accurate representation of the facts.

Perhaps there is more depth here, Landis betting that broad humour sells more tickets than satire, the full weight of his polemic obvious in the finished version.

Sadly, the lack of press screenings, a defensive cast and crew and a barrage of negative internet chatter makes me wonder if we're about to be served something colder than the corpses on the mortuary slabs, a misjudged comedy that may entertain anyone unaware of the film's basis in fact but could leave many viewers wondering what just happened. In a couple of days, we'll know for certain.

&#149 Burke and Hare opens at Edinburgh cinemas on Friday.

POPULAR APPEAL FOR FILMMAKERS

The first film about Burke and Hare was The Body Snatcher, made in 1945 by Robert Wise, starring Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, and based on Robert Louis Stevenson's short story.

In 1948 the murders were the inspiration for a film with the working title Crimes of Burke and Hare. The British Board of Film Censors decided the subject was "too disturbing" however, and demanded references to Burke and Hare be removed. The film was re-dubbed and released as The Greed of William Hart.

The 1960 film The Flesh and the Fiends starred Peter Cushing, Donald Pleasence and George Rose. The following year, The Anatomist featured Alastair Sim as Knox.

The 1971 Hammer film Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde sees them transported into the late Victorian era and employed to provide bodies for Dr Jekyll.