CAST: Peter Cushing (Dr. Robert Knox), Donald Pleasence (Willie Hare), June Laverick (Martha), Dermot Walsh (Dr. Mitchell), Renee Houston (Helen Burke), George Rose (Willie Burke), Billie Whitelaw (Mary Paterson), John Cairney (Chris Jackson), Melvyn Hayes (Daft Jamie), June Powell (Maggie O’Hara), Andrew Faulds (Inspector Mc-Culloch), Philip Leaver (Dr. Elliott), George Woodbridge (Dr. Ferguson), Garard Green (Dr. Andrews), Esma Cannon (Aggie). Directed by John Gilling.
SYNOPSIS: In Scotland, 1828, the medical field faces a dilemma — there are not enough cadavers for medical students to practice on and learn about the human body. This need gives rise to a new illegal business known as grave robbing or “body snatching.” At the Academy of Dr. Knox in Edinburgh, students are enthralled by the teachings of Knox, a brilliant surgeon and leader in the medical field. In order to procure enough cadavers for his students and further his research, Knox takes to paying grave robbers for their services. During this time, Knox’s niece Martha returns to the Academy from school in France and becomes smitten with Knox’s assistant, Dr. Mitchell who cares for her in return. Meanwhile, in a tavern in town, local ne’er-do-wells William Hare (Donald Pleasence) and Willie Burke are lamenting about their current lack of money when they see the wealth obtained by a local pair of grave robbers employed by Knox. They then follow Knox’s medical student, Chris Jackson who just paid the grave robbers, out of the tavern where they attempt to mug him before being scared off by Mary Paterson, a local prostitute. Upon returning to a room and board Burke runs with his wife Helen, Burke and Hare sense a golden opportunity when they find out that one of the tenants died overnight. In response, they bring the dead man’s body to Dr. Knox who is delighted with the freshness of the corpse. He then pays Burke and Hare and they soon are enjoying their newly-found wealth by celebrating in a local tavern. But when the money is spent, Burke and Hare decide they can make a steady income by committing murder and bringing the bodies directly to Knox. Dr. Mitchell, however, is concerned that a vengeful medical board will end Knox’s career if they find out about his dealings with Burke and Hare, but Knox is content to look the other way as long as fresh bodies keep arriving. Eventually, Burke and Hare draw too much suspicion to themselves by murdering Mary Paterson and a local boy and are arrested for their crimes. Hare turns King’s witness against Burke who is convicted and hanged. After being let go by the police, Hare is attacked by locals who burn his eyes out. Knox is brought up on charges by the medical board but exonerated after Dr. Mitchell defends him. Realizing the error of his ways, Knox returns to teaching at the Academy and soon implores his students to consider the Hippocratic Oath of their profession.
COMMENTARY: Flesh and the Fiends is truly a “horror film” in that it is based on real events. This film of course exploits the events and even starts with the caption “We make no apologies to the dead… It is all true” which only increases the audience’s thrills. A popular but lurid story known as the West Port murders had already been filmed as Robert Wise’ The Body Snatcher (1945), and subsequent versions have been released up until the current day. Writer-director John Gilling hit pay dirt with his adaptation of the real-life murderous duo of Burke and Hare who terrorized the city of Edinburgh from November 1827 until October 31, 1828. This film actually follows very close to the actual facts and includes the real-life characters of Dr. Knox, William Hare, Willie Burke, Helen McDougal (Burke’s mistress), Mary Patterson, and some of the victims including James Wilson, a.k.a. “Daft Jamie.”
Perhaps to make Pleasence’s character of Willie Hare more of a brutal monster, The Flesh and the Fiends lets the viewer know that Hare did in fact have a wife and child, and although Gilling’s script tones down the number of killings that occurred in reality, Burke and Hare managed to kill sixteen people, unlike the six depicted in the film. To give a bit more justice to the evil Willie Hare, his eyes are burned out, but this is only based on unconfirmed rumors. By most accounts, Hare was never punished for his horrendous crimes and eventually died a pauper in London in 1858. [82] Ironically, Burke’s body was donated to science and is still on display at the University of Edinburgh School of Medicine. Dr. Knox, who redeems himself in the film, did not do so in real life, for he continued to employ body snatchers for his research until the passage of the Anatomy Act in 1832. Not surprisingly, his popularity waned among his students.
Although it does cut down on the number of victims, The Flesh and the Fiends certainly pulls no punches by starting out with a shocking opening scene of a man’s body being ripped from the grave and flopping around on the ground in a state of rigor mortis. Burke and Hare’s method for smothering their victims is horrendous and eventually gave rise to the term “Burking” or to “murder, as by suffocation, so as to leave no or few marks of violence.” [83] While many dead bodies, smothering deaths, and stabbings may be more commonplace in films of today, in 1959, such things on the screen were truly shocking for audiences. Another shocking part, at least for those who saw the film in Europe, are scenes of nude prostitutes and additional violence. These so-called “continental” versions were not that uncommon, as Europeans were considered more permissive concerning explicit scenes. In addition, the film features quite a bit of dark humor, one example being when Knox examines a dead drunk woman whom Burke and Hare just delivered and exclaims that he would rather have the bodies pickled externally because this one is liable to explode.
Although Pleasence had been acting in films since 1954, Flesh and the Fiends is truly the first in which he practically steals the whole film, due to his tour-de-force performance. Pleasence was given second billing after Peter Cushing who had by 1960 gained a reputation as a “horror” star, something that Pleasence would also experience later in his career. Producers Robert S. Baker and Monty Berman formed Triad Productions with John Gilling in order to make Flesh and the Fiends which marked the first instance of a company “borrowing” Peter Cushing from Hammer Films, where he had been starring in a number of remakes like The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Horror of Dracula (1958), both of which ushered in a new wave in horror cinema. Pleasence had acted with Cushing in an earlier horrific tale — George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four which the BBC adapted in 1954. Perhaps as a nod to that production, Pleasence’s character has a deathly fear of rats just like Cushing’s character of Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four.
As William Hare, Pleasence creates a character that serves as the real brains behind the murderous operation. He is especially unnerving in that he apparently lacks a conscience and is willing to take advantage of everyone, including Burke, his good friend and partner in crime. You can almost see the wheels turning inside Hare’s mind when he sees one of Burke’s recently deceased tenants and begins thinking of capital investment. Perhaps the most telling scene related to Hare’s personality is when he gives the signal to Burke to smother an elderly woman and then dances mockingly in front of her as she dies. George Rose and Pleasence, Burke and Hare respectively in the film, would team up again many years later in the English comedy-drama theatre production of Wise Child (1971) by Simon Gray.
As a film character, William Hare is a hypocritical psychopath who will stop at nothing to get his way and despite getting paid rather handsomely for selling the bodies of his victims, Hare is also a sadist who finds it enjoyable to force Burke to do all of the dirty work. Melvyn Hayes as “Daft Jamie” who ends up as one of Burke and Hare’s victims, said of Pleasence and Rose, “Working with them was great! Nice people if you’re going to get murdered in a pigsty.” [84]