Considering it’s only three weeks away from its UK release, it’s somewhat surprising, and a little worrying, that we hadn’t seen any real footage for John Landis’ “Burke & Hare” (and sadly indicative of the lack of effort that British distributors put into their marketing efforts for home-grown efforts, for the most part).
It’s a film we’ve been cautiously looking forward to: while Landis has been off his game for close to a quarter-century, the film, which follows the true story of the titular Victorian body-snatchers turned serial killers, has a starry cast of UK comic talent, with Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis in the leads, and Isla Fisher, Tim Curry, Tom Wilkinson, Christopher Lee, Jenny Agutter, Stephen Merchant, Bill Bailey, Jessica Hynes, Reece Shearsmith and Ronnie Corbett all involved. Now the trailer has debuted over at Empire, does it look like it’ll reward our faith?
Not so much, no. The production values look strong (Edinburgh looks terrifically Gothic), and it’s clearly not shying away from the darker aspects of the story, but it’s looking more like a “Carry On” film than an Ealing classic; packed with mugging, bawdiness and jokes about poo and farting. It’s not necessarily the end of the game — comedy trailers tend to play to the lowest common denominator — but with Piers Ashworth and Nick Moorcroft, the hacks behind “St. Trinian’s,” writing the script, we’re not going in with high expectations.
There’s no release scheduled Stateside yet, but it hits UK theaters on October 29th, and we’ll catch up with it then to let you know how it turns out.