Simon Pegg's full-frontal assault on Hollywood looks set to continue, with the news from horror maestros Dread Central that he'll be heading up a new version of the gruesome **Burke and Hare **legend, directed by John Landis.
William Burke and William Hare, to refresh your memory, were the nineteenth-century murderers with the resourceful motive of selling their victims to the Edinburgh Medical College for dissection by the students. They were caught in 1828, whereupon Hare was given immunity from prosecution for telling on Burke, who was promptly hung and publicly dismembered in the name of medical science.
The story has made the screen several times before: not least as The Flesh and the Fiends with Peter Cushing and Donald Pleasance, The Anatomist with Alistair Sim, and The Doctor and the Devils with Timothy Dalton.
But a new version is completely welcome if it means the return of John Landis, who, aside from a couple of Masters of Horror instalments and bits and pieces of other TV, hasn't directed since 1998. A potential new comedy horror from the man behind An American Werewolf in London and the underrated Innocent Blood, is a lip-smacking prospect indeed.
Simon Pegg's presence in a film that presumably centres on a double-act obviously begs the question of whether Nick Frost will be involved. But the pair aren't joined at the hip, and Pegg has successfully worked without Frost before. Plus there's always the possibility that Pegg won't be playing either of the bodysnatchers. Previous versions have focused on their best customer Dr Robert Knox.