The Flesh and the Fiends (1960) **

 Burke and Hare's history of murder and "body delivery" has provided the horror genre with plenty of subject matter. How many Hammer films had grave robbers providing Dr. Frankenstein bodies? How many horror films dealt with mad scientists or just scientists interested in studying the human body to learn how to prevent disease, find cures, and provide the medical profession much needed information that benefits the community to this day? George Rose, and especially Donald Pleasence, as Burke and Hare are as vile a pair of lowlife murderers as they come. Pleasence's face when Rose murders a kid trying to just get away from them is damned unsettling...there's a certain glee, a real face of anticipation. The ability to just kill without a care in the world is articulated in this film as Rose and Pleasence seem more than capable of seizing on opportunities when arise for the guineas of an anatomy professor, Dr. Knox (Peter Cushing), needing fresh subjects for his scientific study. When Pleasence's Hare sticks a knife in Knox's struggling but dedicated student, Jackson (Cairney) while choking Rose's Burke, he quips, "This is one body that won't go to Dr. Knox". It is cold and without a hint of guilt. Later, the two of them drag that poor young man's body out of the rooming house, running into "Daft Jamie" (Melvyn Hayes), brushing him away, dumping Jackson in an alley, with Jamie later looking to profit off their error with a ring he confiscates from the body. Burke choking Jamie in among squealing pigs, and how his body looks as they drag him into the rooming house to a bed is chilling. Jackson made the mistake of taking a shine (and falling in love with...) a pub mainstay, Mary Patterson (Whitelaw), unwilling to give up booze and wild living. Mary's death at the hands of Hare is particularly ghoulish as she fends off rape only to succumb to strangulation. One outsider just looking for work and shelter has the unfortunate fate of passing by the rooming house of Burke's wife.

The film does take some creative liberties with the historical aspects of Burke, Hare, and Knox, but there is some satisfaction in seeing Hare not just get away with turning on Burke, selling him out, and allowing him to be hanged by the neck -- actually shown in screen, complete with Burke's tongue sticking out and eyes bulge as the rope strangles him much to the bliss of onlookers -- while the law allows him to go free, only for a few locals to gang up on him, burning his eyes with torch flame. Knox, though, is allowed to keep his position, despite locals outside his home demanding their pound of flesh from him. He survives the medical board, many of whom wholly dislike him -- because of comments he made against their surgeon about cutting into an aneurysm he thought was an abscess -- and his class remains intact and full. They even applaud him. But the film does seem to indicate Knox knew Burke and Hare were providing bodies they might have murdered, with Knox's smartest student, Dr. Geoffrey Mitchell (Dermot Walsh), warning him to be careful. Jackson, also, clearly thought something was fishy about Burke and Hare, learning all too tragically just how evil and violent they were. June Laverick is Knox's niece, returning from Paris a grown woman, cultured and refined.

The film clearly comments on class, the have's and have-not's. We see in the case of Jackson and Mary how that difference in class can clash, while Burke and Hare's willingness to kill for guineas from the wealthy professor, Knox, establishes how desperation and greed can lead those unsavory types to do whatever it takes to keep "cashing in". And we spend time with both the wealthy class and the poor, seeing the distinct differences in the finest, elegant bourgeoisie, and the ragged, harsh reality of surviving on the streets in low rent districts overrun with drunks, prostitution, and crime. The film even has nudity, as men escape into backrooms with naked women, mugs of beer spilling out, rowdy, loud Edinburgh denizens forgoing any reason to remain civil or decent in favor of having as good a time as allowed considering what life typically dishes out to them as opposed to the medical community far better off than them. 

Cushing's one eyelid remains drooping, giving him a sinister look that posters for the film curate into a horror must-see. But he's a sort of extension on Frankenstein, just someone who comes to realize that receiving every body that is brought to him might not be ideal. When a little girl brings his name up as a doctor she wants no part of, Knox comes to consider himself an ogre, mortified that his reputation has fallen so far. Yes, his mission is for understanding the human body more and more every day, but at what cost? Even Knox had to come to grasp the limits that come with scientific knowledge. It is quite a performance, one of Cushing's earliest and best...and that says something considering the wealth of roles in his career. 5/5  

Not too long ago, I noticed this was on Shudder. I knew eventually I would want to revisit it. I thought highly of the film in the past. The performances, unflinching portrayal of that time period, and willingness to go to those dark places in order for us to see the lengths of depravity Burke and Hare were willing to go and how Knox had to reckon with himself his part in their continued crime spree.