The Creeping Flesh

A scientist (Peter Cushing) believes the monstrous skeleton he unearthed may lead to a biological cure for evil, but his ambitious brother (Christopher Lee) has other ideas.

The Creeping Flesh opens with Peter Cushing walking around a laboratory with no walls or ceiling. This jarring visual is so distracting, I found it hard to concentrate on what he was saying. This is the first indication that despite the presence of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, this is not a Hammer production.

The second comes in Cushing’s performance. His character here feels an emotion fairly foreign to his Hammer characters: fear. Normally, Cushing is stone-cold as he stares down whatever terror the Hammer screenwriters have thrown at him, but in this movie he plays a much weaker hero, and his whimpering terror seems oddly out of place.

Still, The Creeping Flesh does bare more similarities than differences to a Hammer production. The tried and true plot device of the female lead who gets too curious for her own good is present, and Christopher Lee is his usual authoritative self, but unfortunately, the opening scene is an omen: The Creeping Flesh can’t escape the limitations of it’s budget.

The script calls for quite a few special effects shots which simply don’t work. The early Hammer scripts wisely sidestepped this issue by focusing on sets and atmosphere, but the reliance here on cheap special effects ultimately proves to be the movie’s undoing and obscure what could have been a multi layered thriller.