With Peter Cushing as Dr. Knox billed as the lead, I felt that he did not get nearly enough screen time to justify the billing. The film starts out promisingly with Dr. Knox lecturing medical students in anatomy, scoffing at his fellow physicians for their hypocrisy and old fashioned ways, and receiving cadavers from two questionable fellows - Hare (Donald Pleasance) and Burke (George Rose)- as subjects for the study of his students and himself.This is where he goes wrong. He is paying for cadavers thinking them the product of morgue or grave robbing. Hare and Burke just see that they can get eight guineas per corpse. And every human being is a potential corpse. So why work so hard to dig them up if you can just find some homeless person with no friends or family, offer them a drink and a warm place by the fire for awhile and strangle them? Nobody will miss them and poof! Eight guineas! This is the rather predictable path similar films and even episodes of Night Gallery have trodden. What makes it good are the times that Cushing is on screen and his brilliant portrayal of a morally ambiguous figure, and the rather odd and unexpected ending that seems somewhat classist. Let's just say this couldn't have been made in the USA at the time because of the production code.The rather tiresome parts are the romances between minor characters that at first don't seem to have much purpose - actually one romance does - and the excessive footage in the bawdy pubs of impoverished London.Without Peter Cushing, I'd rate this a 5/10 - quite mediocre. With him it jumps a star to a worthwhile 6/10.

Well written and directed by John Gilling, this low budget British film is a surprisingly accurate rendering of the true story of body snatchers Burke and Hare in 1820's Edinburgh. Real names are used and the gruesome events are depicted as they occurred. A fine cast makes this a memorable film. Billie Whitelaw as a seemingly hardboiled, but vulnerable, prostitute , and John Cairney as her young medical student boyfriend are moving as the doomed lovers, fated to be kept apart by class divisions. Peter Cushing is in fine form as the sarcastic and brilliant Dr. Knox, who doesn't ask questions as to where all the fresh bodies are coming from. Donald Pleasence as Hare, and George Rose as Burke are both repellently funny and genuinely frightening in their murderous pursuit of a dishonest dollar. Pleasence plays Hare with a sly, roguish charm, but a creepy undertone of mental disturbance that's quite unnerving. George Rose has a grungy, thick-witted manner and grubby appearance that conceal a cunning criminal mind. Renee Houston has a great supporting role as Mrs. Burke, uneasy about her husband's activities, but all too willing to share in the profits. Though made on a low budget, the movie convincingly portrays the squalor, alcoholism and petty crime of the lower class street life of Edinburgh, contrasted with elegant formal dress parties held by the wealthy and respectable citizens. This is a suspenseful and very dramatic film that deserves a wider audience. Real life horror stories don't come much grimmer than this.

The Flesh and the Fiends, also known as Mania, is one of those pleasant surprises. It is a very good film with excellent acting, a thorough, thought-provoking script, suspenseful direction, and quite a jarring, almost twisted/perverted mood. I was genuinely surprised just how good this film was, because I had heard so little about it. But I can honestly say that I found it a highly enjoyable, disturbing, horrific film. Where to begin? Let's start first with the story. The story covers old ground here(The Body Snatcher with Boris Karloff for instance precurses this)about those two infamous body snatchers of Scotland Burke and Hare and the doctor who needs dead bodies to help find cures for the sick - Dr. Knox. This film is pretty faithful to those stories. What really helps this come alive is three characterizations done by three highly gifted actors: Peter Cushing, Donald Pleasance, and George Rose. Rose plays Burke and Pleasance plays Hare and I do not think I have seen two men play such vile, degenerate men as well as these two do. They both ooze oil and shed scales with their portrayals of heartless, cold, ignorant men who don't want to work and find that there is easy money in grave robbing. Soon they find it is even easier to just kill then dig up bodies(in fact they do not dig up ONE body in this film). Rose is snaggle-toothed and has a real weird twitching laugh. He is just plain repulsive and this is one of his finest characterizations in film. The same can be said for Pleasance who also plays a bad man with such conviction. Both he and Rose fit like gloves together. But as good as these two are, the real star of the film is that wonderful, under-appreciated British screen stalwart Peter Cushing, who makes cold stoicism seem so easy. Cushing plays Dr. Knox as a heartless man only concerned with science and who never really wants to think about where these bodies that he pays for come from. Cushing plays the role to the hilt in several scenes. My favorite is where he argues with "colleagues" about their medical shortcomings, saying, "incline your heads to the right Gentlemen. There you will find the door. I suggest you use it." I love his ability to be so arrogant and yet so witty and convincing. Cushing even goes through some kind of a catharsis in this film which he does as only he can. Director John Gilling, a great Hammer film director, shows us why he was to make such good films as Plague of the Zombies. He is very sure behind the lens and knows how to pace and create suspenseful scenes. Mania is a very good film that, despite its above-average acting and directing, should make you think a bit about several philosophical/moral/ethical questions. Questions that may have changed shape today but still exist in some form.

This is quite possibly the finest British horror-film ever made--except that it is entirely-true. The Flesh and the Fiends is nothing-less than a fairly truthful accounting of the original 'bodysnatchers,' Burke and Hare who resorted-to-murder after running-out of 'fresh' corpses for a Dr. Thomas Knox, of Edinburgh, Scotland. It is a scandalous-story that would never have been possible were it not for antiquated religious-notions that it was unholy to disinter the dead--even if approved by the deceased and their survivors--for the purposes of medical-inquiry. Shot in an shadowy-expressionist black, there are few films that top this in the horror-canon. Hammer had some great films, but this is really the capper. Burke and Hare just wanted money to drink and whore. In the squalor of early-industrial Britain, there were precursors to Jack the Ripper, and Burke and Hare could have taught Jack a few-lessons. Britain's early-industrial poverty spawned rampant-licentiousness, disease and violence. When human-life is considered worthless, you get a tendency for crime and murder of this type. Groan all-you-want, but these were the fruits of a form of gross economic-inequality that prevails today. And for those who don't know, Great Britain in the 1820s was the time of Charles Dickens. Dr. Knox was one of numerous aristocratic-doctors of his day who had to resort to the employ of bodysnatchers to obtain fresh-cadavers for his anatomical-research. Because of this, Flesh and the Fiends is also a tale of scientific-ethics--with a wrongheaded-ending! Dr. Knox was definitely aware at some point that Burke and Hare were murdering human-beings for money (this all paid-handsomely at the time), to provide him bodies. It doesn't get much darker than this. Would we even bat-an-eye today? In Houston (circa 1960s-1970s), the coroner's office was selling the cadavers of homeless Black men to the Department of Energy for radiation-experiments. Today, there are organized-crime groups who snatch-organs from the living and the dead for the highest-bidders! Egads, bodysnatching never-ended.The film: it was produced by a tiny independent English studio called 'Independents-International', and is regarded as their best-film.Directed by Hammer-director John Gilling, it was also a minor-hit, and is easily one of Peter Cushing's best-performances. Also noteworthy, is Donald Pleascence's performance of the deadly Hare, which is very nuanced. Cushing's performance is also nuanced, illustrating the moral-dilemma that Knox must have felt utilizing the kind-of cadavers Burke and Hare provided him. How can you lose with a movie that has him and Peter Cushing?! Everything about The Flesh and the Fiends is convincing, even for such a low-budget thriller. The original-negatives of the film were located in the 1990s, so most of the editions on DVD are superb, and contain the 'Continental version' that has plenty of flesh (and fiends) on-display. What a wild-romp, and yet what a chilling-parable of the abuses-of-power in a rotten-era of human-history. It's sad how things aren't very different. You could do worse than to watch this on those cold, Autumn-nights. This is a movie for true horror-lovers who realize horror is of human-origin. Be-sure to check the Brooksfilm (Mel's old-company) version of this story, 'The Doctor and the Devils' (1985). It's pretty good, too, though not-as-good as this. When I saw it as a kid, I thought it was about Jack the Ripper!