The Creeping Flesh
The Creeping Flesh
PG | 12 February 1973 (USA)
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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.

Reviews
Hellen

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

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LouHomey

From my favorite movies..

Brendon Jones

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

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Cassandra

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

GL84

Recovering a skeleton from New Guinea, a London doctor finds that the creature might be a possible missing link in human evolution only for the discovery of water to reanimate the body and tries to keep his friends and family safe from the news.This one turned out to be quite the fun effort. What really gives this one quite a lot to really like here is the fact that there's a great deal of fine backstory generated by the presence of the skeleton and what it really means which is rather intriguing. By allowing for the unique location in New Guinea, there's a believability granted here to what the attempted course of action of having the skeleton get reanimated with their knowledge of studying it, and that's a rather nice achievement here made all the more possible with the film's insistence on spending the vast majority of the time studying the creature. Coming up with the manners of study, which brings the fun scenes of him reviving the beast and the discovery of the creatures' blood that leads into the attempt to inject it into her which is what really drives the film along here with this one featuring some solid work here in the later half trying to find her as she ventures out into the world for the first time as the lead-in comes off very nicely getting it out of their laboratory. The resulting scene in the pub where she nearly gets assaulted and runs away leading to the chase through the streets and into the warehouse leads to some nice action scenes here as well, and the rather frantic finale here is even more fun with the abduction of the creature and the eventual reanimation of the skeleton inside while they're all completely unaware of the incident really makes for a much livelier and engaging effort than it really should be as the full-on Gothic sensibilities are brought about in full-force during this section which is what makes it so fun. Although these here make this one enjoyable enough, there's still some problems here in the fact that there's just not a whole lot of action to be had within this as a vast majority of the time this one doesn't really do much other than really helping to build the boredom of just watching the two fumble around their equipment spouting off tons of inane scientific babble that doesn't really focus on anything interesting. Though the film moves along at a decent-enough pace, these are just overall bland and dull which just don't have any kind of interest throughout here with the film really generating the kind of endless monotony of just staring at these scenes of nothing going on which just goes on quite a long time. Spiced within these scenes is another rather lame angle, with the film focusing on nothing but truly lame sub-plots to pad out the running time as there's little need for the scenes of the doctor wandering around the grounds complaining about his charges or focusing on the escaped mental patient that really has no place in the film and should've been taken out as it has no place in the film. Alongside the weak effects for the creature who looks like a mass of jelly walking around, these here are the film's weak points that lower it overall.Rated PG: Violence and an attempted Rape.

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BA_Harrison

The presence of English horror icons Lee and Cushing cannot save The Creeping Flesh from being one of Tigon Productions least effective horror efforts, the film's major weakness being its silly, plodding Gothic plot—a creaky, cliché-ridden mess that clumsily handles its theology versus science central theme, regularly defying logic and positing numerous preposterous theories as it progresses.Cushing plays scientist Emmanuel Hildern, who returns from his three year expedition in New Guinea with the skeleton of a giant humanoid creature that predates the earliest known examples of man. After water is accidentally spilt on the skeleton's hand, Hildern is amazed to see flesh forming on the bone; he severs the now living finger from the rest of the skeleton, and proceeds to study the creature's blood.Under the microscope, Hildern witnesses the being's blood cells attacking his own and comes to the incredible conclusion that, not only was the creature the origin of all evil, but also that he might be able to create a serum from the creature's blood that could inoculate humans from evil itself!!! But as bonkers as that sounds, it nowhere near as daft as what he does next: inject his daughter Penelope with the serum because he believes it will prevent her from going the same way as her clinically insane mother.Rather ironically, the unwitting test subject goes psychotic as a result of the injection, and after going on a hedonistic killing spree, winds up at the very same asylum that was home to her mother, and which is rather coincidentally run by her Uncle James (Lee). When blood tests on Penelope yield some unusual results, James becomes very intrigued about his brother's experiments, and eventually attempts to steal his scientific specimen, unwisely choosing a stormy night to do so and unleashing pure evil on Earth in the process!Director Freddie Francis admirably handles this nonsense without taking the easy tongue-in-cheek option and even manages to conjure up quite a chilling atmosphere, but the pacing of his film is dreadfully slow and with the 'creeping terror' itself only making a fleeting appearance towards the very end, genuine scares are in short supply. A rather clever twist ends the film on a high note, but one cannot help but feel disappointed when considering the film's stars and the studio's horror pedigree (Tigon also gave us Witchfinder General, Blood on Satan's Claw and Virgin Witch, all of which are much more enjoyable).

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scarletheels

In the late 19th century, scientist Emmanuel Hildern (Peter Cushing) returns home to London with a prehistoric skeleton that he acquired in Papua New Guinea. While cleaning the skeleton, he learns that water triggers a horrific reaction - reanimation. He slices off the finger, now covered in flesh, and preserves it for later experiments. While having breakfast with his daughter, Penelope (the breathtaking Lorna Heilbron), Emmanuel reads a letter informing him of his wife's death. Unbeknowst to Penelope, her mother has been in an insane asylum since she was a little girl. Fearful that his wife's mental illness may be hereditary, Emmanuel has sheltered his daughter at their estate with only the servants to keep her company. She's not allowed outside, except for short walks within the gated premises. Emmanuel travels to the institution where his wife died. He meets up with his half-brother, James (Christopher Lee), who happens to be the insane asylum's director and a competing scientist. Emmanuel was always the favorite of the two siblings, the one destined to achieve greatness, so it's with great pleasure that James tells him that he is in the running for the prestigious Richter Award. In addition, he will no longer fund Emmanuel's transcontinental trips. I'm not familiar with most horror predating 1980. I rate this somewhere between 60%-70% (about a 6.5/10). I've never watched a movie, horror or other genre, with so much anticipation and dread for what may come. The climax is truly a frightening one. The suspense is nail-biting! Lee and Cushing are great but it's the beautiful Heilbron who steals the show. I want to watch more films she stars in. I recommend this to horror fans who want to explore the classics. No gore, torture, or loud music cues to instill a false sense of fear. I liked it!

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MartinHafer

I saw this reason for the same reason many others probably watched the film--it starred Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee...AND, of course, it was a horror film. This combination is usually pretty interesting and this film is quite interesting--even if it is also a bit silly now and then.The story finds Cushing as a scientist of sorts. He seems to be a combination of a paleontologist and biochemist back in the late 1800s. When the film begins, he is arriving back home with a skeleton he unearthed in Indonesia. Oddly, the skeleton is an enormous humanoid but it is much older and radically different from anything found in the past. Odder still, if you know much about skeletons, you know that once the flesh decays, the bones all become disconnected--but the one in this film is fully articulated--even after a bazillion years in the ground. In other words, the ligaments and tendons and muscles holding everything together decompose after death and the bones naturally all fall apart from each other. However, like I've seen in a lot of bad horror movies over the years (such as TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE), the skeletons are fully articulated--like some sort of Halloween novelty skeleton. This is a silly mistake, but one that will most likely only bother doctors, biology majors and compulsive film nuts like myself.For some inexplicable reason, Cushing is convinced that the skeleton belongs to a creature of pure evil. His reasons for this are pretty vague, as is his theory about evil itself. While working with the skeleton, he washes off some dirt and soon flesh begins growing around the portion he dampened!! Quickly, he cuts off this finger and puts it in water. Soon, it has grown into a huge flesh covered finger and it actually bleeds! The blood, naturally, is not normal blood...it's EVIL blood.A parallel story occurs in Cushing's house. It seems that years before, Cushing's wife went mad and was incarcerated in his brother's hellish mental hospital. However, he has always told his daughter that her mother died in order to spare her from the stigma and pain. In an odd twist, when the daughter accidentally discovers this, she almost immediately turns into a sluttish psycho murderer--though she'd been previously normal her whole life. And, when the brother (Lee) looks at her blood under a microscope, it turns out she, too, has evil blood--just like the skeleton's! There's a lot more to the story than this--especially a plot involving Lee experimenting on his own patients. Up until the end, most of the film makes no sense at all and there are lots of inconsistencies. However, believe it or not, pretty much all the problems with the film are explained away well by the twist ending which is highly reminiscent of THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI. So, be sure to stick with it--the mistakes and problems just seem insurmountable until late in the film.An interesting and unusual film.

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