Simply Perfect

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

How can you go wrong with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in the same film? They appeared in movies together twenty two times; I don't know if that's a record or not, but it sounds pretty prolific to me. They're cast as half brothers in this flick, both on a course of determining the true nature of evil from slightly different angles, with Emmanuel (Cushing) seeking a cure for evil as a disease. This sounded to me a little like putting terrorists on trial as lawbreakers, with a lot of the same drawbacks.Hey, how about that escaped lunatic Lenny from the Hildern Institute for Mental Disorders. The actor, Kenneth J. Warren looked like he could have portrayed Russian dictator Nikita Khrushchev given the chance, or if you prefer, a reasonably whacky George 'The Animal' Steele. He just had the perfect look for those kinds of roles, and he fit right in here.Told in a flashback from the perspective of Professor Emmanuel Hildern, we don't know it when the movie opens that he's already become a patient of his brother James (Lee) three years earlier when the events of the story took place. If he had to do it again, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have injected daughter Penelope (Lorna Heilbron) with that anti-evil serum he concocted from the giant skeleton discovered in New Guinea. What was he thinking? And by the way, anyone else think that the head on that skeleton resembled the Predator that came along about a decade later? First thing I thought of.Well, with Penelope taking on her own mother's persona and the skeleton coming to life after the Sky God weeped, it was just a matter of time before the good doctor's plans for wiping out evil in the world came to an abrupt end. Produced by Tigon Pictures, this English film bears the hallmarks of it's competitor Hammer Films, right down to the principals and the Gothic feel of the sets and characters. One element the story could have done a better job of though, was explaining how the resurrected skeleton came by his Riding Hood gear.

Freddie Francis finds himself working for Tigon on the ambitious, albeit flawed, horror opus The Creeping Flesh. It's always fun to see Cushing and Lee working together and this is no exception, although it's fair to say that they don't get enough shared screen time in this particular film. Nevertheless, The Creeping Flesh is an extremely interesting and well-made offering. Ultimately it bites off more than it can chew, but there's still plenty of enjoyment to be had from a viewing of it.Victorian scientist Emmanuel Hildern (Cushing) returns from New Guinea with the skeletal remains of a humanoid creature. His excitement about the creature is tempered somewhat when he discovers his wife has died while he has been away. Not that their relationship was a normal one anyway – Mrs Hildern had been put into a lunatic asylum run by Emmanuel's brother, James (Christopher Lee), on account of her unquenchable sexual appetite. Furthermore, Emmanuel's daughter, Penelope (Lorna Heilbron), has no idea that her mother has been locked away, believing that she died years ago. Whilst examining the skeleton, Emmanuel discovers if it comes into contact with water its flesh and blood cells are able to regenerate. In other words, the skeleton can regrow flesh when wet. Believing the creature may be the 'Evil One' mentioned in the ancient prophecies of the tribes of New Guinea, Emmanuel decides to investigate further. He discovers strange cells in the creature's biological make-up and concludes they may be a germ-like form of evil, suggesting that evil itself is a virus like any other, as easy to 'catch' as a common cold. Emmanuel attempts to use the cells to create a vaccine against evil. He tests it on his daughter, believing that she may need to be protected in order to prevent her from turning out like her mother. Alas, his tests have the opposite effect and soon Penelope becomes a dangerous murderess intent on luring others to their death. Meanwhile, James plots to steal the New Guinean skeleton for himself… but makes the mistake of attempting to spirit it away during a rainstorm.As one can see, there's an awful lot going on in The Creeping Flesh considering that it is merely a 94 minute horror film. We have brotherly rivalry and betrayal; messed-up family politics; tribal prophecies; a flesh-growing monster; and the radical concept of evil as a contagious illness rather than an immoral mind-set. Where The Creeping Flesh comes undone somewhat is in its doomed effort to tie so many disparate components together into a coherent whole.Fortunately, the good points outweigh the flaws, resulting in a film that is worth watching in spite of any weaknesses. Flawed it may well be, but The Creeping Flesh still has much to admire. It takes a while to click into gear, biding its time in setting up the main 'evil-on-the-loose' story thread. However, once the consequences of Emmanuel's experimentations become clear - with Penelope going on a murderous rampage - things become exciting and compelling. Plus, of course, running alongside this thread we have the scheme hatched by Lee's character to steal the creature, not realising the potentially catastrophic result of taking it outside in the rain. With its steady but intriguing build-up, disturbing apocalyptic ending and plenty of atmospheric chills in between, The Creeping Flesh is a film that undeniably rewards patient viewing.

This has Peter Cushing as scientist Emmanuel Hildern, who returns from New Guinea with a huge humanoid skeleton. This skeleton forms skin when water is dropped on it and somehow Hildern is able to deduce from the blood in the skin that evil is a sickness that one can get like a cold. By combining good and bad blood, his theory is he can make someone immune to evil. He promptly injects it into his daughter Penelope (Lorna Heilbron), hoping she will not become mentally ill like his wife who recently died in a sanitarium run by his brother James (Christophe Lee). She, naturally, goes nuts and hits the town hitting on men in bars before running into an escaped lunatic. Are you still with me? The script for this is really out there and seems like three good ideas rolled into one. It is a credit to Cushing and Lee that they make it work. Of course, you should also praise director Freddie Francis for making it look good. You won't get too many surprises here, other than the fact that the monster comes back to life and feels the need to knock on the front door to announce its arrival. The opening minutes set up an ending you can see coming from a mile away, but it still has a nice sinister stamp on it.

The mere presence of horror legends Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee ought to alert potential viewers that this film might be a cut above the usual fare, and happily enough, such indeed is the case here. "The Creeping Flesh" turns out to be a handsomely mounted, well-acted and even literate little potboiler of a scarifier, expertly helmed by British horror director Freddie Francis. The plot concerns an ancient skeleton that Prof. Cushing has brought back to London from the wilds of New Guinea in 1894; a skeleton that harbors the essence of evil, and that becomes revivified when water touches it. Cushing's half-brother, Lee, who runs an insane asylum, steals the skeleton to further his own researches, which leads to (in the words of Beaver Cleaver) "all kinds of trouble." There are also some interesting subplots regarding an escaped madman, as well as what happens to Cushing's daughter (wonderfully played by the actress Lorna Heilbron) after she receives an injection of blood taken from said skeleton. The look of the film is so handsome that it indeed looks like a cross between an old Hammer horror flick and an episode of "Masterpiece Theatre." If the potential viewer has enough time one evening, this film would make for a wonderful double feature with another Cushing/ Lee film, the similarly themed "Horror Express." I really did enjoy this one!