The Body Snatcher 1945

A group of friends enjoys a night out with drinks when a renowned doctor, Wolfe Macfarlane, unexpectedly arrives. Among them, Fettes, portrayed by Boris Karloff, recognizes the doctor’s name and confronts him in anger, prompting suspicions among his friends about the underlying tension.

As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that Fettes and Macfarlane share a past from their days in medical school, under the supervision of the mysterious Mr. K, an anatomy professor. Their education involved the grim task of accepting cadavers for dissection, sourced from a couple of dubious characters who supplied them.

During a particularly unsettling incident, Fettes encounters a deceased woman he knows and insists she has been murdered. Macfarlane, however, persuades him not to report this to avoid implicating both of them in the horrifying act.

Their paths cross again at a tavern, where they meet a man named Gray, who shows blatant disrespect towards Macfarlane. The very next night, Macfarlane presents Gray’s corpse as a specimen for dissection. Now fully convinced of his friend’s guilt, Fettes is once more swayed by Macfarlane to remain silent. Macfarlane assures him that lacking the courage to partake in such dark deeds would only make them victims themselves. In their grim determination, they meticulously dissect the body, eliminating any potential forensic clues.

Fettes and Macfarlane continue their lives as if unscathed by crime. However, the duo faces a chilling moment when a shortage of bodies prompts their mentor’s desperate request. They are dispatched to exhume a recently buried woman from a rural churchyard. On their unnerving drive back, with the corpse positioned ominously between them, they stop to inspect it more closely, only to discover in horror that this body is none other than Gray, the very man they had thought they had disposed of.