Ten Days of Terror!: The Flesh and the Fiends

Film: The Flesh and the Fiends
Format: Streaming video from Kanopy on Fire!

Of all the creepy, ghoulish, real-world horrors from the 19th century United Kingdom, two stand out as being the most cinematic. The first is certainly that of Jack the Ripper, who has been the subject of films as far back as the ‘20s. The second is the story of Burke and Hare, two “resurrection men” (graverobbers) of Edinburgh who decided to supplement their income of selling bodies to doctors for dissection by murdering their victims to create those bodies. While body snatching films showed up before 1960, The Flesh and the Fiends appears to be the first film specifically about Burke and Hare, or at least having characters with those names.

In Georgian London, Dr. Knox (Peter Cushing) is a popular lecturer at a medical college, even if he is less well-liked by his colleagues. The biggest problem he faces is one of a lack of suitable bodies for study, a problem that he tends to solve with the aid of graverobbers. The problem there is that most of the bodies he gets are in the ground a good week before he has a chance to use them. He passes on the chore of paying for the bodies to his assistant Mitchell (Dermot Walsh) and a young, desperate, and failing student named Jackson (John Cairney).

One night, when Jackson goes to pay off a couple of resurrection men, two important things happen. The first is that drunken miscreants William Burke (George Rose) and William Hare (Donald Pleasance) overhear exactly what has happened and see the amount that the others are paid for the body. Second, Jackson meets Mary Patterson (Billie Whitelaw), an attractive prostitute, who saves him from a mugging. The two soon become an item.

Around the same time, Burke and Hare discover that one of Burke’s lodgers has died. Seeing an opportunity, they take the body to Dr. Knox, who pays them a considerable amount based on the freshness of the corpse. So what are two enterprising miscreants to do? Murder, of course, which not only ensures them having a regular supply of bodies for the doctor, but ensures that those bodies will always be as fresh as possible, which brings in the highest payment.

This arrangement goes surprisingly well for everyone involved for some time. Burke and Hare murder a few forgotten people who won’t otherwise be missed, Dr. Knox gets bodies to work with, and no one seems to be the wiser. Things go south when there is a minor falling out between Jackson and Mary. Drunk and vulnerable, Mary winds up in the clutches of Burke and Hare and is soon the next cadaver on Knox’s slab. As you might expect, this causes a terrible reaction in Jackson.

While this is very much a film in the vein of horror, in a lot of respects, it’s much more a thriller. There’s nothing otherworldly or supernatural about Burke and Hare, nor is there anything more in Dr. Knox than simply looking the other way because of necessity. A deeper horror might well be the society that made Burke’s and Hare’s victims so disposable and forgotten, but that’s probably a commentary for another place. There’s nothing here that isn’t really any deeper than greed in the persons of the graverobbers and a misguided sense of the greater good in Dr. Knox, justifying his purchase of the bodies for the possibility of advancing medical knowledge.

Donald Pleasance is a fun addition to this film. It’s easy to forget just how versatile he was as an actor, capable of portraying compassion and pure evil, and in a lot of ways, this is his film. Peter Cushing, as always, is great, and he’s the real reason to spend time with this. The film gives him the affectation of a drooping left eyelid, reference to the real Dr. Knox who had a damaged eye from smallpox.

One surprise is that in the UK release of this film (which is also the version I watched on Kanopy), there is brief nudity, including something that is almost full-frontal at one point. While British horror films eventually started to include nudity, seeing it in 1960 is surprising and almost scandalous.

Truthfully, there’s nothing here that is particularly scary for any modern horror fan who is used to seeing demons, entrails, and more. It’s a good story, though, and produced well, and the acting is solid. Billie Whitelaw would eventually become a horror icon in The Omen, so it’s fun seeing her here, more than a decade prior.

Honestly, you could do a lot worse. You won’t get much of a fright from it, but it’s definitely worth your time.

Why to watch The Flesh and the Fiends: The Burke and Hare story is a classic of horror.
Why not to watch: It’s more a thriller than horror.