While putting the finishing touches to a fantastically creepy painting, Anthropologist Emmanuel Hildern (Peter Cushing) is visited by a fellow man of science. Hildern recounts a haunting tale of his discovery of a highly advanced skeleton, found at a lower level than Neanderthal man, in Papua, New Guinea. The remains, were brought back to England, and sequestered in Hildern's laboratory. While washing a finger of the skeleton, he witnessed flesh forming on the ancient bone. He removed the digit and his experiments on it lead him to believe that what he had in fact discovered, were the ancient remains of something unimaginably evil.

Peter Cushing is heart-breakingly fragile as Emmanuel Hildern, much of this emotion perhaps deriving from the recent death of his own wife, Helen. In contrast you feel nothing for Christopher Lee, as James Hildern, who is ruthless and conniving. a thoroughly disagreeable chap indeed. Cushing and Lee always worked better when they were opposing forces rather than when they were on the same side.

A personal favourite of mine, I encourage you dear reader to seek out a copy and indulge your wicked side with this superior macabre fantasy.

The Sunday Times - "It employs the twin pillars of our native horror cinema... As a matter of fact, I thought Mr Cushing gave one of his best performances; and the screenplay, too, was on a higher level of invention than usual."

Reviewers across the Atlantic in the US were also impressed. Village Voice wrote, "The Creeping Flesh is directed with unexpected sensitivity and sophistication." and "The entire production is professionally crafted and the cast is tops, exploiting to the fullest their... characters." was Variety's opinion.

THE CREEPING FLESH, John Heyman's World Film Services co-production with Tony Tenser's Tigon Films, began shooting in January 1972. Location work was shot near Tower Bridge, London and at Thorpe, in Surrey, England. The interior settings were adapted by the Art Director George Povis from sets left over from The House That Dripped Blood (1970).

Make-up was handled by Hammer regular Roy Ashton.

Also for Amicus; The Skull (1965) based on Robert Bloch's short story 'The Skull of the Marguis De Sade', The Psychopath (1966) and The Deadly Bees (1966), both written by Bloch. Freddie Francis also directed The Ghoul (1974) and Legend of the Werewolf (1975) for Tyburn, the film company owned by his son, Kevin Francis.

THE CAST

This on-screen partnership, which turned into a deep friendship, spanned many years, their last co-starring work being on The House of Long Shadows (1982), which also starred Vincent Price and John Carradine. Some of their greatest films together were those early Hammer Horrors as well as The Gorgon (1964), She (1965) and later the under-rated, The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973). For Eugene Martin they starred in Horror Express (1971), and for Amicus in Dr. Terror's House of Horror's (1965) and I, Monster (1971).