The Body Snatcher
Directed by Robert Wise
Isle of the Dead
Directed by Mark Robson
Screening on Film
Following a successful career as a story editor for David O. Selznick, Val Lewton was hired to head RKO Pictures’ newly established horror unit in 1942. Designed as an economical way to capitalize on the popularity of Universal’s forays into the genre (Frankenstein, Dracula), Lewton’s productions offered stripped down exercises in the macabre, including some of Jacques Tourneurs’ most acclaimed works. Adapted from a Robert Louis Stevenson story, The Body Snatcher stars Boris Karloff as a murderous hansom cab driver whose victims are used for scientific expereiments. In Isle of the Dead, Karloff plays a Greek general who seeks to contain the effects of a deadly plague on a deserted Balkan island.