The Doctor and the Devils

Based on a screenplay by Dylan Thomas, this thinly disguised story of the notorious 'resurrectionists' Burke and Hare, supplying freshly killed bodies to a Victorian surgeon, comes across as watered-down Hammer Gothic, complete with trite metaphysical meditations. The depiction of the huddled Victorian whores, hags, beggars, drunks, idiots and street-pedlars forever rhubarbing in the grimy gloom is risible. The cast is as wooden as the three admittedly elegant studio sets. Twiggy's Cockney prostitute takes the Golden Stiff Award for sheer ineptitude, but surely even she didn't deserve the random, irrelevant inclusion of her tuneless tavern song spot?