[2] In Edinburgh in 1831, Mrs. Marsh brings her paraplegic daughter, Georgina, to see Dr. Wolfe MacFarlane at his home, where he has an office and an anatomy school.

MacFarlane discovers a tumor pressing on Georgina's spinal cord, but insists he cannot perform the delicate operation to remove it because he is too busy teaching.

He is awakened one night when John Gray, a cab driver and body snatcher, delivers a corpse for MacFarlane's students to dissect.

Frustrated, MacFarlane gets drunk at the pub, where Gray torments him by saying his studies with Dr. Knox taught him about dead bodies, not how to heal people.

A group of mourners enter, and MacFarlane, his spirits high, decides to dig up their relative's body so he can teach his students to perform "miracles".

[3] The Body Snatcher was one of three films that Boris Karloff made with producer Val Lewton at RKO Radio Pictures from 1945 to 1946, the other two being Isle of the Dead (1945) and Bedlam (1946).

In a 1946 interview with Louis Berg of the Los Angeles Times, Karloff discussed his reasons for leaving Universal Pictures and working with Lewton.

Though the film performed well at the box office, Karloff found it ridiculous and decided not to renew his contract, crediting Lewton as "the man who rescued him from the living dead and restored, so to speak, his soul".

[4] Lewton had British screenwriter Philip MacDonald adapt Robert Louis Stevenson's 1884 short story "The Body Snatcher" for the screen, enlarging the role to be played by Karloff.

When it was suggested that the casting of Bela Lugosi might add marquee value to the film, he signed a deal with RKO, and Lewton and MacDonald wrote the small role of Joseph for him.

[10] The Catholic National Legion of Decency gave the film a "B" rating, deeming it "morally objectionable in part" due to "excessive gruesomeness".

[10] About this rating, Kramer stated: "I feel there is too much unanimity of opinion on the part of the people in the Legion about this picture to secure any better classification than the present one.

[12] Upon its release, John McManus of the New York PM Reviews commended Karloff's performance and wrote that "The Body Snatcher inherits class from its Robert Louis Stevenson parentage; it has the distinction, like many an ancient and honorable British ballad, of being a shocker with an edifying background of fact; [...] The Body Snatcher, if you are one for well-told legends, for balladry or just for shockers by preference, is something you won't want to miss.

"[12] A reviewer writing for the New York Herald Tribune wrote that Karloff "proves that with capable direction and script to work with he can be a real menace instead of a mere monster.

[2] The film was first released on Region 1 DVD by Warner Home Video in 2005 as part of "The Val Lewton Horror Collection", a 9-film box set, on the same disc as I Walked with a Zombie (1943).