The Creeping Flesh

2/12/19731h 32m

Theatrical Release (US)

~ A terrifying journey through the nightmare worlds of evil, insanity, and terrible revenge. ~

Overview:

A scientist comes to believe that evil is a disease of the blood and that the flesh of a skeleton he has brought back from New Guinea contains it in a pure form. Convinced that his wife, a Folies Bergere dancer who went insane, manifested this evil, he is terrified that it will be passed on to their daughter. He tries to use the skeleton's blood to immunise her against this eventuality, but his attempt has anything but the desired result.

Director:

Freddie Francis

Status:

Released

Language:

English

Buget:

$0.00

Revenue:

$0.00

Key words:

skeleton
monster
reincarnation
insane asylum
murder
creature
corpse
scientist
monkey
attempted rape
mental illness

Cast

Peter Cushing

~ as ~

Emmanuel Hildern

Lorna Heilbron

~ as ~

Penelope Hildern

Christopher Lee

~ as ~

James Hildern

George Benson

~ as ~

Waterlow

Catherine Finn

~ as ~

Emily

Hedger Wallace

~ as ~

Doctor Perry

Duncan Lamont

~ as ~

Inspector

Kenneth J. Warren

~ as ~

Charles Lenny

Larry Taylor

~ as ~

Chief Asylum Warder

Harry Locke

~ as ~

Barman

View full cast & crew

Reviews (2)

t
talisencrw
Written 9 year(s) ago
8
I love both the horror films of Britain's Hammer Studios and the pairings of Sir Peter Cushing and Sir Christopher Lee so very much. Though this is one of their latter and lesser-known, it doesn't disappoint. Very much worth purchasing and rewatches for the horror connoisseurs amongst you...
CinemaSerf
Written 2 year(s) ago
6
Right until the end, I was convinced that this was just a bit of nonsense. At the end, though, a great deal of it falls into place and through it still isn't really very good, this film made a lot more sense. In a nutshell, "Hildern" (Peter Cushing) returns from Papua New Guinea with some artefacts (human ones). When they get wet, they reanimate into a rather nasty skeleton that wreaks havoc. Determined to stop this evil from spreading, the professor tries to use it's blood to immunise his young daughter from it's effects - bad move! Meantime, his half-brother Christopher Lee - who has been supervising the care of his sibling's mentally ill wife for some years, has his own agenda not just for the treatment of the wifely insanity, but also for our marauding bundle of bones. The script offers us just a little too much half-baked, amateur psychology but there is still enough gravitas delivered by Messrs. Cushing and Lee to make the conclusion worth the wait. This genre was losing it's appeal by 1973, the colour photography robbing the storyline of much of its eeriness and jeopardy and at times this looks more akin to a "Sherlock Holmes" style of investigative costume drama, but it is still worth a watch.