CREEPING FLESH, THE (director: Freddie Francis; screenwriters: Jonathan Rumbold/Peter Spenceley; cinematographer: Norman Warwick; editor: Oswald Hafenrichter; cast: Peter Cushing (Emmanuel Hildern), Christopher Lee (James Hildern), Catherine Finn (Emily), Jenny Runacre (Marguerite), Michael Ripper (Carter), Kenneth J. Warren (Lenny), Lorna Heilbron (Penelope), George Benson (Waterlow), Duncan Lamont (Inspector); Runtime: 89; Columbia; 1972-UK)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
A provocative tale of Gothic horror set in Victorian London. Peter Cushing in a hand-wringing performance is Professor Emmanuel Hildern. He has just returned to his Victorian mansion with the skeleton of a primitive New Guinea man, who is older than the Neanderthal but has a larger brain. The professor is working on his theory of 'the origin of man,' hoping to win the lucrative and prestigious prize given for a work of original scientific research by the experiments he plans to conduct in the laboratory in his house. His main competition comes from his half-brother James, played with delicious venom by Christopher Lee. He's in charge of an insane asylum and has secretly kept there Emmanuel's insane wife Marguerite, until her recent death. The professor's sheltered daughter Penelope (Lorna Heilbron) has been told ever since she was a young child that her mother is dead and is not permitted to enter her mother's locked room.
The professor is more interested in his experiment than he is in seeing his daughter again after returning from his long hiatus, as he immediately starts work with his loyal assistant Waterlow (Benson). His research has led him to believe that he can see 'the principle of evil' under the microscope, in the form of black blood cells. It is his hope to wipe evil away from the world and make a new paradise on earth. He plans to immunize mankind with a serum inoculation derived from the primitive skeleton. The professor soon discovers the skeleton's ability to grow new flesh when moistened with water. Further research reveals that the creature may actually be rooted with immediate evil, meaning that it would be best kept out of the rain.
The testy professor gets upset when he finds his prim daughter in her mother's room. He's afraid that she will go crazy like mom and become over sexed, dancing and whoring in saloons. The daughter rails at him: "You kept me as a prisoner, like you did her." He decides that he won't let her to go insane and injects the experimental serum into her. The result is that the girl's libido gets aroused and she heads to the East End saloons where her mother went astray. She gets into a situation after exotically dancing in a saloon where she kills a sailor who is bothering her and goes on the run from the police. She is trapped in a locked building, surrounded by the pursuing police, with a dangerous lunatic (Kenneth J. Warren) who escaped from James's asylum, and shows how insane she has become herself by answering his offer of help by hitting him over the head with a board and sending him to his death by forcing him off the ledge and onto the street.
The mystical theme of evil was never fully developed, but the film was well photographed and acted, and the story was very creepy. There were many odd touches that worked very well, that director Freddie Francis added to this original screenplay by Jonathan Rumbold & Peter Spenceley. There's also a surprise ending that fits in well with the film's theme of man's inhumanity. It makes for an above-average horror flick, one that horror fans in particular might enjoy more than others.
REVIEWED ON 4/3/2001 GRADE: B-
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
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