This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

Sorry, this movie sucks

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Dr. Robert Knox (Peter Cushing) is an arrogant professor who is in need of fresh corpses to dissect. He buys corpses from lowlifes William Hare and William Burke. They engineer a scheme of killing the poor who stays at Burke's house then selling the bodies to Knox. This gets out of hand and Knox must face judgment.This is an old black and white British horror. It's slow and not scary compared to more modern fare. The horror is more of the mind than of the gory variety. It is the horror of Dr Knox's ambition. Peter Cushing has nailed this character without making him a cartoon. He isn't evil but what he does has led to much evil. In the end, the system itself is shown to be complicit. It is horror with poetry.

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.

This is a classic example of the way a small budget film can be much more enjoyable than big budget affairs, provided the right people work on it. This film has everything going for it in terms of creative personnel, at least in regard to the direction, writing and acting.The claustrophobic and minimalist sets, the seedy-looking costumes and the venal and petty motivations of various characters successfully evoke the bitter world of the impoverished citizens of the British Empire. Drama is provided at the nexus where an underclass harlot and ghouls meet the upper-class and the educated.There is no element of the supernatural in this film, yet the natural evil of men seeking profit is enough to provide sufficient horror. Fans of old school horror will find this film highly enjoyable and will appreciate how well-crafted it is.

John Gilling's (The Mummy's Shroud) film is listed as a horror film, but it is really an exciting thriller about an anatomy teacher (Peter Cushing) and grave-robbers (Donald Pleasence - Halloween, Dracula, & George Rose).Billie Whitelaw (Hott Fuzz, The Omen), with two BAFTA wins and four more nominations, plays a prostitute that falls for one of the medical students (John Cairney).The grave-robbers find that it is easier just to kill someone and sell them, than to dig them up. It wasn't long before Mary (Whitelaw) had a spat with Chris (Cairney) and fell into the clutches of the murderers.Imagine Chris' surprise when she shows up on the slab in class the next day.Soon, the grave-robbers were committing murders to cover up their murders.Excellent performances by Pleasence, who got what he deserved in a weird sense, Cushing, and Dermot Walsh, as Cushing's assistant. A fascinating story that is supposedly based upon a true event.