The Flesh and the Fiends

Moviecut—The Flesh and the Fiends

source: The Flesh and the Fiends

A surprisingly effective retelling of the adventures and ultimate fates of the two grave robbers and murderers -- William Burke (George Rose) and William Hare (Donald Pleasance) -- and Dr. Knox, the lecturer on anatomy (Peter Cushing) who was complicit in their crimes. At the time, the mid-1800s in Edinburgh, Scotland, it was difficult for medical schools to come by cadavers for dissection. They were forced to wait for hangings and sometimes chafed at the long intervals between executions. The raggedy and snaggletoothed Burke and Hare, among many other "ressurectionists", collected dead bodies off the streets and sold them to Knox in an excess of zeal to advance the progress of medical science. The bodies would otherwise have wound up in pauper's graves. And there WERE dead bodies found on the streets. There is no poverty like the poverty of a northern city in the grip of unfettered industrialism. However, if a thing is worth doing well, it's worth doing in extremes. Burke and Hare made the short and simple step from collecting dead bodies, through grave robbing, to murder. Knox is portrayed as a cold-blooded scientist who believes neither in the soul nor in the guilt of his two enablers. I don't know how closely the script follows the historical events, but it's convincingly done, even if the budget is a bit low. The sets look a little perfunctory. The cobbled, crooked night-time streets of the city are nicely on display but there was no provision for fussy extras like street lamps or street litter or intimate nooks and crannies and cheap shops. The lighting seems to come from nowhere and what we're looking at appears to be a rather stark movie set instead of an atmospheric Edinburgh street. Burke and Hare eventually go too far -- knocking off victims that are well known and fondly thought of by some of the community -- but they don't really change. The arc of character belongs to Cushing's Dr. Knox. He's openly insulting to other figures in the medical profession. He seems not devoted to helping humanity, but holds them in contempt. Until, after the trial of Burke and Hare, he stoops down in a city square when a tattered little girl asks him for alms. He has no money but invites her to accompany him to his home where he will give her some cash. "Oh, no!," she replies, "You might sell me to Dr. Knox." That does it for Knox. He discovers his compassionate side. It would have been more effective if we'd seen his devotion to medicine but in fact his lectures have been as cold and distant as the rest of his character. Before this epiphany he's been a pretty unlikable snot, treating his students pitilessly. The performances are all rather good. Pleasance is a charming, unpretentious, treacherous psychopath, a little like Long John Silver. Rose is the dummy who gets hanged because he didn't know how to play "the prisoner's dilemma" to his best advantage. Billy Whitelaw is sexy, almost feral, as the hard-drinking tart being courted by one of the medical students. She overacts much of the time but, when reined in by her instincts or the director, she delivers some thoughtful lines. But then no one's performance is so bad that it's outstanding. I said that the sets and the set dressing didn't really evoke the Edinburgh of the 1840s and maybe that's a good thing. The cities of the period really stank -- literally. Endiburgh could be smelled miles away and was known as "Auld Reekie." In the absence of any social programs, poverty, drunkenness, poor health, and quick death were rampant on the foul streets. Women in particular were disenfranchised. Without a man, many of them wound up as prostitutes. The same conditions prevailed in London, making whores easy prey for Jack the Ripper. Well, that's reality, but this is cinema and, as such, is pretty good. More artful, in my opinion, is Val Lewton's inexpensive effort from RKO, "The Body Snatchers," its demonic overtones notwithstanding.

With Peter Cushing as Dr. Knox billed as the lead, I felt that he did not get nearly enough screen time to justify the billing. The film starts out promisingly with Dr. Knox lecturing medical students in anatomy, scoffing at his fellow physicians for their hypocrisy and old fashioned ways, and receiving cadavers from two questionable fellows - Hare (Donald Pleasance) and Burke (George Rose)- as subjects for the study of his students and himself. This is where he goes wrong. He is paying for cadavers thinking them the product of morgue or grave robbing. Hare and Burke just see that they can get eight guineas per corpse. And every human being is a potential corpse. So why work so hard to dig them up if you can just find some homeless person with no friends or family, offer them a drink and a warm place by the fire for awhile and strangle them? Nobody will miss them and poof! Eight guineas! This is the rather predictable path similar films and even episodes of Night Gallery have trodden. What makes it good are the times that Cushing is on screen and his brilliant portrayal of a morally ambiguous figure, and the rather odd and unexpected ending that seems somewhat classist. Let's just say this couldn't have been made in the USA at the time because of the production code. The rather tiresome parts are the romances between minor characters that at first don't seem to have much purpose - actually one romance does - and the excessive footage in the bawdy pubs of impoverished London. Without Peter Cushing, I'd rate this a 5/10 - quite mediocre. With him it jumps a star to a worthwhile 6/10.

With this seemly arrogant but honest message showing on the screen, the film opens at a dark Edinburgh cemetery where two vicious figures lift a cadaver from its grave... "The Flesh and the Fiends" tells the true story of William Burke and William Hare, corpse-suppliers to the ambitious surgeon and university professor Dr. Robert Knox. From what I've read in factual biographies and works of reference (yes, I find this stuff so intriguing that I study it on the side), the screenplay is rather accurate and faithful when it comes to the basic re-telling of the murder cases. Burke and Hare's modus operandi as well as their negotiations with Dr. Knox really were this clumsy and unscrupulous while Knox damn well knew about the suspicious methods of the two, but he couldn't care less as long the study-objects he received were fresh and supplied regularly. I reckon that writer/director John Gilling then added some fictional elements to his film, like the characterizations of the main roles, since Hare's persona is almost blackly comical and Dr. Knox' attitude is stubborn and typically obnoxious like nearly every scientist in horror cinema. Still, the escalation of the tragedy is truthfully illustrated with Burke and Hare getting into the body-snatching business coincidentally at first, but quickly specializing in it because of the good cash money and eventually even converting to murder in order to deliver the most 'quality'. "The Flesh and the Fiends" isn't just a great historical film, it also is a praiseworthy horror achievement with a uniquely grim atmosphere and very convincing acting performances. John Gilling terrifically revives a 19th century Edinburgh with its low-perspective inhabitants (drunks, beggars and thieves...) and ominous bars and alleys. The murders are very mean and cold-heartedly illustrated (the death of a young unintelligent boy, strangled amid squealing pigs is particularly unsettling) which probably makes this film the most disturbing of the entire 50's decade. Peter Cushing is excellent in the - for him - familiar role of brilliant doctor but it especially are Donald Pleasance (hypocrite and self-centered) and George Rose (a simple-minded killer) who impress as Hare and Burke. The supportive roles are somewhat stiff and they bring forward redundant sub plots, like the romantic interactions between Knox' daughter Martha and her doctor-lover Geoffrey. The typically Scottish accents are a joy to listen to and the eerie black and white photography emphases the already very chilling tone. This movie is still incomprehensibly underrated and unknown. Maybe because it's not a Hammer production or maybe because the substance was considered controversial for a long period of time. Fact remains that this old shocker is far better than most contemporary horror gems and everybody who has an interest in the obscure should urgently check it out!

The Flesh And The Fiends gives us the oft-told story of Burke And Hare - with a surprising amount of accuracy and some excellent performances. First of all we have Peter Cushing as Dr. Knox, a somewhat ruthless medical lecturer who is not exactly scrupulous as to where he gets his bodies for medical dissection. And it's a tribute to the mighty Cushing that his Knox is utterly different from his Baron Frankenstein. He gives a layered and fascinating performance, only at the end of the movie displaying a conscience in a marvellous scene with a street gamin. And in George Rose and Donald Pleasence we have a Burke and Hare to savour. True their accents are not exactly authentic but the mixture of callous cunning and rank stupidity they display has never been bettered. Pleasence in particular is a delight as the cowardly Hare. And then there's the excellent Billie Whitelaw - years before The Omen - giving an erotically charged turn as the girlfriend of a young medical student at Knox's academy. The film itself recreates 1820's Edinburgh brilliantly, and is superbly photographed. John Gilling, later responsible for the Hammer classic Plague of The Zombies, directs with a sure hand. The budget appears somewhat higher than your average 50s British horror movie - some well stocked crowd scenes are included here. The film doesn't stint on the horror, either. Perhaps the only real fault is the occasional lag in pace - the 95 minute running time could possibly have done with some slight trimming here and there. All told this is a splendidly realised and watchable horror drama.

Since most of the movie focuses on the villains, it's a pleasure. "Is Dr Knox the most evil of them all, or is he above judgement?" is the main question the movie asks us. In the end he answers the question in scenes that could have been laughable, but are actually quite touching. My copy of the movie cost two dollars and is oddly packaged with a bald green man wielding a knife on the cover. It's entitled 'Mania' and I suspect is censored.

Solid, well-crafted but rather patchy cinematic treatment of the saga of notorious 19th Century "Resurrectionists" Burke and Hare and their unorthodox employer Dr. Robert Knox; in the vein of Hammer horror (featuring two of their most notable participants in Cushing and Gilling) though the lack of color makes it seem a half-hearted attempt (even if, with an eye on the low-budget, it was probably a conscious choice by the film-makers as the intentions were clearly of a serious undertaking)! Anyway, the best thing about the film - apart from the vivid recreation of the era - are the performances of Peter Cushing (as the cold Dr. Knox, not unlike Baron Frankenstein), Donald Pleasance (an impressive early performance as the oily but quick-thinking Hare - his come-uppance is especially eerie) and Billie Whitelaw (as the proverbial "tart with a heart of gold" who ends up as one of the victims); Burke is played as a scurrilous but jovial brute (but who murders with the apparent complicity of his own wife) by character actor George Rose. Dr. Knox's condescending attitude towards his fellow colleagues also provides a number of entertaining confrontation scenes (my favorite line is during their face-off at his house, when he brusquely terminates the discussion by instructing them to "incline their heads slightly to the left...{in order to} observe the door...{and could they} please use it!"); Cushing, of course, is equally commanding while addressing his lectures or when scrutinizing the newest corpse. The film makes a fine, though essentially unpleasant, companion piece to the more literate and subtle THE BODY SNATCHER (1945); the theme was again handled (by another horror veteran, Freddie Francis) a quarter of a century later in THE DOCTOR AND THE DEVILS (1985) - while Gilling himself had contributed to the script of an earlier variation, THE GREED OF WILLIAM HART (1948), starring Tod Slaughter! By the way, the producing team of Robert S. Baker and Monty Berman (who doubled as cinematographer) also brought to the screen the nefarious deeds of other historical figures such as JACK THE RIPPER (1959) and THE HELLFIRE CLUB (1961; upcoming on DVD from Dark Sky Films). Image's DVD also includes the "Continental Version" which contains about a minute of more explicit violence and nudity (in the many tavern sequences) - though this only helps render it even more unsavory than it already is! The prints are distractingly soft throughout, and the severe widescreen ratio (2.35:1) hampers somewhat the viewer's complete involvement (at least on a normal T.V. screen); the "Continental Version" fares even worse, showing more damage and having rather scratched audio to boot! Unfortunately, the liner notes by Jonathan Sothcott were not available with my copy: it's probable that the disc was initially released as a snapper-case (with the essay on the inner sleeve) but was then dropped when re-issued in the more manageable keep-case!

In 1945, Val Lewton produced a wonderfully creepy film starring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi (THE BODY SNATCHER). It was based on a Robert Louis Stevenson novel which was a fictional story based on real-life serial killers, William Burke and William Hare, who were WAAAY over-zealous in procuring corpses for the local medical school in Edinburgh. Apparently they didn't bother waiting until the people died in order to make a few pounds--often suffocating their hapless victims!! Years later, in 1960, another variation of the William Burke and William Hare story came to the theaters, but this one (starring Peter Cushing) was not based on the Stevenson novel but the actual crimes. While the Lewton movie was marvelous and horrifying, this one seems worth seeing as well because it is more realistic and unflinching (with some very brutal murders), plus it sticks much closer to the facts and mirrors the real decisions in the courts. Although whether or not Hare was blinded is a popular account that was never confirmed, this make for a cool inclusion in the film. Plus, I was really impressed by Peter Cushing's performance as a surgeon on a crusade--his speech before the graduating class and impassioned argument with old established "surgeons" was very impressive--some great oration indeed! Very, very interesting as well as well made--this British horror film is well worth seeing--especially since it's true!!

Sterling casts highlights one of the better versions of the Burke and Hare story of the grave robbers who turn to murder to keep the flow of bodies flowing for the anatomy professor. Here the cast includes Donald Pleasance as one of the grave robbers, Peter Cushing as the doctor buying their wares and the always wonderful Billie Whitelaw as a tavern girl caught up in the ghoulish proceedings. More thriller than straight on horror movie the film has more than enough atmosphere for five or six of these films and it really helps to keep things interesting in the oft told tale. I really like this version a great deal and place near the top of the heap. Very much worth a look.