Flesh and the Fiends*

This was on Shudder and I had been planning to revisit it. I thought it was sensational back in 2006, but I did a lot of comparison to another film. My fresh blog post will focus exclusively on the 1960 chiller.

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October 9, 2006

Shocking, surprisingly potent horror feature about the possible downfall of Edinburgh anatomy professor Dr. Robert Knox(Peter Cushing with one eyelid collapsing)who illegally accepts murdered bodies from supposed graverobbers Hare & Burke(Donald Pleasence and George Rose).

Burke and Hare's scheming of killing and supplying works until they murder Knox's apprentice Chris Jackson(John Cairney), Chris' prostitute lover Mary(Billie Whitelaw), and especially well-liked young Jamie(Melvyn Hayes).

Cushing as the cold, logical doctor who abandons emotion because it just gets in the way of his work, and Pleasence as cruel scoundrel Hare are both chilling in their own way.

This film should be quite an interesting pairing with the 1987 film, "The Doctor and the Devils" because both films deal with the same themes yet change in certain ways. In "Flesh" there's a positive outlook for Knox who comes to the understanding of what he was doing wrong because he had abandoned any emotion when it came to accepting any corpse those two brought him only thinking about science and leaving away the conscience. In "Devils", Timothy Dalton's anatomy professor was always sympathetic to the plight of those around him and always had emotion present on his face. Yet, Dalton's doctor's outlook is a bit gloomy in that film.

Also Julien Sands and Twiggy(representing the characters played by Cairney and Mary in the "Devils" version)have a much better outcome in their film than the pupil and prostitute in "Flesh and the Fiends." This is quite a well made chiller, atmospheric and quite stunningly violent for the time it was a made.