I saw this reason for the same reason many others probably watched the film--it starred Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee...AND, of course, it was a horror film. This combination is usually pretty interesting and this film is quite interesting--even if it is also a bit silly now and then.

The story finds Cushing as a scientist of sorts. He seems to be a combination of a paleontologist and biochemist back in the late 1800s. When the film begins, he is arriving back home with a skeleton he unearthed in Indonesia. Oddly, the skeleton is an enormous humanoid but it is much older and radically different from anything found in the past. Odder still, if you know much about skeletons, you know that once the flesh decays, the bones all become disconnected--but the one in this film is fully articulated--even after a bazillion years in the ground. In other words, the ligaments and tendons and muscles holding everything together decompose after death and the bones naturally all fall apart from each other. However, like I've seen in a lot of bad horror movies over the years (such as TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE),the skeletons are fully articulated--like some sort of Halloween novelty skeleton. This is a silly mistake, but one that will most likely only bother doctors, biology majors and compulsive film nuts like myself.

For some inexplicable reason, Cushing is convinced that the skeleton belongs to a creature of pure evil. His reasons for this are pretty vague, as is his theory about evil itself. While working with the skeleton, he washes off some dirt and soon flesh begins growing around the portion he dampened!! Quickly, he cuts off this finger and puts it in water. Soon, it has grown into a huge flesh covered finger and it actually bleeds! The blood, naturally, is not normal blood...it's EVIL blood.

A parallel story occurs in Cushing's house. It seems that years before, Cushing's wife went mad and was incarcerated in his brother's hellish mental hospital. However, he has always told his daughter that her mother died in order to spare her from the stigma and pain. In an odd twist, when the daughter accidentally discovers this, she almost immediately turns into a sluttish psycho murderer--though she'd been previously normal her whole life. And, when the brother (Lee) looks at her blood under a microscope, it turns out she, too, has evil blood--just like the skeleton's!

There's a lot more to the story than this--especially a plot involving Lee experimenting on his own patients. Up until the end, most of the film makes no sense at all and there are lots of inconsistencies. However, believe it or not, pretty much all the problems with the film are explained away well by the twist ending which is highly reminiscent of THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI. So, be sure to stick with it--the mistakes and problems just seem insurmountable until late in the film.

An interesting and unusual film.

The classic pairing of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee have another frightfully good teaming in this gothic fright fest where they go up against each other as half siblings in their efforts to deal with a gruesome creature and attempts to find a cure for insanity. Ironically, Cushing, the good brother, is responsible for bringing the creature into their midst while Lee, experimenting with ways of curing mental illness, is not as noble.

Cushing's wife has been in an institution under Lee's care for years, and when she suddenly dies, his daughter seems to inherit her insanity. It's a race to save his own sanity as he deals with the methods Lee utilize that ended up destroying the people he loved.

The Victorian setting is beautifully felt in this Hammer horror where Cushing is basically Karloff and Lee is Lugosi. Thus Cushing has the stronger role and Lee's character is morally ambiguous. But they both give very strong performances and you never know what is going to happen. It's slow in spots but once the evils are unleashed, it becomes truly chilling.

THE CREEPING FLESH is one of my all-time favourite British horror films. Sure, it's a low budget product that feels inferior in terms of production values to a lot of Hammer fare, but it absolutely drips with Gothic atmosphere and dread and it has a complex and unusual storyline to boot. It's a shame that it's so hard to get hold of these days; the British DVD is long out of print and I had to make do with my old VHS for many years until recently picking up a Spanish DVD. It's the sort of film that cries out for a proper Blu ray restoration.

It's hard to go wrong with the dream-team threesome of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in the lead roles (playing brothers, no less!) and Freddie Francis working as director. The latter makes sure this is a beautifully-shot film with great laboratory backdrops and costumes. The plot is a little reminiscent of HORROR EXPRESS at first, with Cushing retrieving an ancient skeleton from New Guinea, but when the regeneration storyline kicks in (with more than a nod to CARRY ON SCREAMING) the film really gets going.

Much of the running time consists of a lengthy sub-plot involving psychiatry and a condemnation of common practice at the time; this gives Lee one of his most subtlety villainous performances. The exploration of hereditary madness leads to some unforgettable set-pieces. The monster stuff is great too, especially at the ghoulish climax. Cushing veers towards playing the annoying ninny from AT THE EARTH'S CORE on occasion, but by the end he's really invested you in his character. I'd argue that THE CREEPING FLESH is a great film that deserves better recognition.