Touches You

Purely Joyful Movie!

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

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

An excellently made and acted British film that retells the true story of the Burke and Hare horrors of the 19th century. An atmosphere of old Edinburgh is effectively evoked to enhance the brutal tale. And brutal it is, as was the actual true story.This is certainly one of Peter Cushing's finest performances. He is totally focused, energetic and delivers a fascinating characterization of his aristocratic, hypocrite-defying, unintentionally cruel and very determined Doctor Knox. He is not at all Doctor Frankenstein in this film- he is Doctor Knox.Donald Pleasance is chilling as the sociopath Burke. This is one of the performances that made him almost a cult actor way back in the 1960's, which is when I began to notice and seek out his film work. There is almost no way to describe British stage and film actress Billie Whitelaw's work in this film except to say that it is so powerful that she bursts from the screen. One of the most impactful actors ever to appear in film, she performs with a high level of skill and force, almost going over the top as necessary to portray her loud low-class character trapped in a downtrodden life. A violent film depicting a brutal era and the unsavory days when medicine began to stumble ahead toward modernity, this film is the real deal, solidly and seriously produced with ability and skill by everyone involved.

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.

Sterling casts highlights one of the better versions of the Burke and Hare story of the grave robbers who turn to murder to keep the flow of bodies flowing for the anatomy professor. Here the cast includes Donald Pleasance as one of the grave robbers, Peter Cushing as the doctor buying their wares and the always wonderful Billie Whitelaw as a tavern girl caught up in the ghoulish proceedings. More thriller than straight on horror movie the film has more than enough atmosphere for five or six of these films and it really helps to keep things interesting in the oft told tale. I really like this version a great deal and place near the top of the heap. Very much worth a look.

Shocking, surprisingly potent horror feature about the possible downfall of Edinburgh anatomy professor Dr. Robert Knox(Peter Cushing with one eyelid collapsing)who illegally accepts murdered bodies from supposed graverobbers Hare & Burke(Donald Pleasence and George Rose).Burke and Hare's scheming of killing and supplying works until they murder Knox's apprentice Chris Jackson(John Cairney), Chris' prostitute lover Mary(Billie Whitelaw), and especially well-liked young Jamie(Melvyn Hayes).Cushing as the cold, logical doctor who abandons emotion because it just gets in the way of his work, and Pleasence as cruel scoundrel Hare are both chilling in their own way.This film should be quite an interesting pairing with the 1987 film, "The Doctor and the Devils" because both films deal with the same themes yet change in certain ways. In "Flesh" there's a positive outlook for Knox who comes to the understanding of what he was doing wrong because he had abandoned any emotion when it came to accepting any corpse those two brought him only thinking about science and leaving away the conscience. In "Devils", Timothy Dalton's anatomy professor was always sympathetic to the plight of those around him and always had emotion present on his face. Yet, Dalton's doctor's outlook is a bit gloomy in that film.Also Julien Sands and Twiggy(representing the characters played by Cairney and Mary in the "Devils" version)have a much better outcome in their film than the pupil and prostitute in "Flesh and the Fiends." This is quite a well made chiller, atmospheric and quite stunningly violent for the time it was a made.