Dr. Robert Knox (Peter Cushing) is a Scottish anatomist and ethnologist in Edinburg, Scotland. During his lectures he needs bodies to dissect in order to teach students who want to become doctors. Finding bodies is difficult at best. The only ones available are convicted criminals who have been given the death penalty. This is not nearly enough bodies to do the job. As a result Dr. Knox must make use of unscrupulous people known as “resurrection men”. In other words, grave robbers.
The price for a recently dug up body depends on the freshness of the corpse. Two gentlemen of the trade, having recently provided the doctor with a corpse, were given a partial payment. Dr. Knox sends one of his students, Chris Jackson (John Cairney) with the remainder of the payment to a pub where the two are seriously imbibing.
In the pub are two men who are looking for a way to make a fast buck. William Burke (George Rose) and William Hare (Donald Pleasence) decide to rob the young Jackson when he leaves the pub. Mary Patterson (Billie Whitlaw) is also interested in Jackson but for different reasons. She follows him out of the pub and sees two men trying to rob him. She comes to his rescue and calls for the cops. While people are running around Mary takes Jackson to her room. A relationship develops between the two.
Meanwhile Burke and his wife Helen (Renee Houston) run a boarding house. One of their roomers dies of natural causes. Hare suggests that they take the former lodger to Dr. Knox and sell it. It nets them a nice profit and launches them on a new career. Instead of waiting for people to die, they give them a head start.
After awhile Burke and Hare get quite good at killing people and selling them to Dr. Knox. Knox’s assistant Dr. Geoffrey Mitchell (Dermot Walsh) is suspicious of where the bodies are coming from but Knox does not seem concerned. Unfortunately for all involved Burke’s and Hare’s activities come to light when one of the bodies delivered to the doctor is medical student Chris Jackson’s girlfriend Mary Patterson. Jackson goes off to the boarding house to confront the men and ends up stabbed in the back by Hare. This event results in a cascade of bad luck for both Burke and Hare. Trying to cover up one murder with another murder results in more murder. With too many piled up bodies to their name Burke and Hare are facing more than just an angry mob.
“The Flesh and the Fiends” was released in 1960 and was directed by John Gilling. It is a British horror film. There are quite a few Burke and Hare movies out there. I’ve seen several of them. As far as Burke and Hare movies go this one is pretty good. The acting is solid, the script is good and the cinematography is Hammer-esque. I’m not a fan of Burke and Hare films but this one was done so well that you have to appreciate it.
The movie is based on the real life murderous duo of William Burke and William Hare who in 1828 Edinburg, Scotland were responsible for at least sixteen murders during a ten month period. The corpses were sold to Dr. Robert Knox who used dissecting them as part of his lectures on anatomy for his medical students. Cushing’s drooping left eye was a feature of the real Dr. Knox. The disfigurement was caused by his having smallpox when he was and infant. The disease destroyed his left eye.
This is Gilling’s second movie based on the story of Burke and Hare. In the first “The Greed of William Hart” 1948, the British Board of Film Censors refused to allow Gilling to mention the Burke or Hare anywhere in the film, so he had to change their names, as well as those of a few other characters. In “The Flesh and the Fiends” the names were restored but he couldn’t use them in the title. The censors also has some issues with a couple scenes were some women were topless. Those scenes stayed in but the film ended up rated X because of them.
Although the film didn’t do well when released it has garnered a small cult following. It’s been released several times on DVD under different names and cut to various lengths. Some of the other titles were “Mania”, “Psycho Killers”, and “The Fiendish Ghouls”. The original film is about 94 minutes long.