The Creeping Flesh

"A terrifying journey through the nightmare worlds of evil, insanity, and terrible revenge."

1973 1h 32m EN

😐

5.9

MID

🍅

83%

FRESH

⭐

6.1

IMDB

★5.9TMDB · 116🍅83%Rotten Tomatoes★6.1IMDB · 4,634

HorrorScience Fiction

Synopsis

Spoiler shield

A Victorian scientist returns to London with his paleontological bag-of-bones discovery from Papua New Guinea. Unfortunately, when exposed to water, flesh returns to the bones, unleashing a malevolent entity on the scientist's family and friends.

“A terrifying journey through the nightmare worlds of evil, insanity, and terrible revenge.”

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Cast

Peter Cushing
Emmanuel Hildern
Lorna Heilbron
Penelope Hildern
Christopher Lee
James Hildern
George Benson
Waterlow
Catherine Finn
Emily
Hedger Wallace
Doctor Perry
Duncan Lamont
Inspector
Kenneth J. Warren
Charles Lenny

Credits

Behind the camera

Director: Freddie Francis
Writers: Peter Spenceley, Jonathan Rumbold
Languages: English
Countries: United Kingdom

Want more? Switch to Cinephile mode in the header for DP, composer, budget, box office, production companies, keywords, and release history.

Did you know?

Fun facts 🍿

1 / 7

ERA

Did you know

53 years old — a genuine piece of film history.

MoodPlayr · trivia#01

2 / 7

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Directed by Freddie Francis, shot by Norman Warwick. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.

MoodPlayr · trivia#02

3 / 7

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Original score by Paul Ferris. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.

MoodPlayr · trivia#03

4 / 7

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Editor Oswald Hafenrichter shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.

MoodPlayr · trivia#04

5 / 7

CAST

Did you know

Peter Cushing and Lorna Heilbron and Christopher Lee carry the top of the cast.

MoodPlayr · trivia#05

6 / 7

FACT

Did you know

Marketing tagline: "A terrifying journey through the nightmare worlds of evil, insanity, and terrible revenge.".

MoodPlayr · trivia#06

7 / 7

WILD

Did you know

IMDB entry: tt0068424 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.

MoodPlayr · trivia#07

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Freddie Francis directs. Norman Warwick behind the camera. Paul Ferris scores. Oswald Hafenrichter cuts. Runs lean at under 100 minutes. Produced in United Kingdom. Dialogue in English.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

153 years old — a genuine piece of film history.
2Directed by Freddie Francis, shot by Norman Warwick. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
3Original score by Paul Ferris. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
4Editor Oswald Hafenrichter shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
5Peter Cushing and Lorna Heilbron and Christopher Lee carry the top of the cast.
6Marketing tagline: "A terrifying journey through the nightmare worlds of evil, insanity, and terrible revenge.".
7IMDB entry: tt0068424 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
8Classified under 11 themes, including "skeleton", "monster", "reincarnation", "insane asylum".

The technical file

Cinematography: Norman Warwick
Original score: Paul Ferris
Editing: Oswald Hafenrichter
Makeup / hair: Roy Ashton
Runtime: 92 min · 1h 32m
Status: Released
Original language: EN
Certification (US): PG
IMDB: The Creeping Flesh (1973)
Rotten Tomatoes: 83% 🍅 Fresh
IMDB rating: 6.1/10 · 4,634 votes
MPAA: PG

Also by

Freddie Francis

Trailers & featurettes

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Community reviews

What people are saying

talisencrw2016-05-09
★ 8/10
I love both the horror films of Britain's Hammer Studios and the pairings of Sir Peter Cushing and Sir Christopher Lee so very much. Though this is one of their latter and lesser-known, it doesn't disappoint. Very much worth purchasing and rewatches for the horror connoisseurs amongst you...
CinemaSerf2023-05-27
★ 6/10
Right until the end, I was convinced that this was just a bit of nonsense. At the end, though, a great deal of it falls into place and through it still isn't really very good, this film made a lot more sense. In a nutshell, "Hildern" (Peter Cushing) returns from Papua New Guinea with some artefacts (human ones). When they get wet, they reanimate into a rather nasty skeleton that wreaks havoc. Determined to stop this evil from spreading, the professor tries to use it's blood to immunise his young daughter from it's effects - bad move! Meantime, his half-brother Christopher Lee - who has been supervising the care of his sibling's mentally ill wife for some years, has his own agenda not just for the treatment of the wifely insanity, but also for our marauding bundle of bones. The script offers us just a little too much half-baked, amateur psychology but there is still enough gravitas delivered by Messrs. Cushing and Lee to make the conclusion worth the wait. This genre was losing it's appeal by 1973, the colour photography robbing the storyline of much of its eeriness and jeopardy and at times this looks more akin to a "Sherlock Holmes" style of investigative costume drama, but it is still worth a watch.