Although my true field of interest remains the silent film (see my other reviews), I just cannot pass up the opportunity to say something about this movie which has been one of my favorites for many years. I first saw it on television back in the 1960’s and it has been with me ever since. Despite the lurid title and packaging THE FLESH AND THE FIENDS is not really a horror film. It is a historical drama with horrific overtones. The movie is based on the lives of Burke and Hare, graverobbers in 1828 Edinburgh, who began to murder people in order to supply the local medical school with fresh corpses to dissect.
Robert Louis Stevenson based his story THE BODY SNATCHER (which was made into a film in 1943 by Val Lewton starring Boris Karloff) on their exploits. Filmmakers Robert S. Baker and Monty Berman mounted this project in 1959 hoping to cash in on the burgeoning horror boom created by Hammer Films. They hired Peter Cushing plus a host of character actors to bring the story to life. Special mention should be made of the vivid performances given by George Rose as Burke and Donald Pleasance as Hare. It is really their movie. The film also features Billie Whitelaw in a colorful early role. Like PSYCHO which it predates, THE FLESH AND THE FIENDS. is also a psychological thriller (it was called MANIA in the U.S.). It even eliminates its young protagonists halfway through the film. I wonder if Hitchcock was familiar with it?
John Gilling, the director and co-writer, would move on to Hammer after the success of this film where he would make THE REPTILE and THE PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES. FLESH is well acted, tightly directed, and in the Continental version (also available on this DVD) extremely daring in its use of nudity. An influential film that was ahead of its time, it has only been available in substandard public domain copies up until now. Thanks to Image Entertainment for making it available in a beautiful print made from the camera negative. Over 60 years later, the power of its brutal imagery has not diminished.
The Capsule Critic 