I've talked about Hammer studios movies before, so I won't go into how great they are again, but it seemes every time I think I've seen all the pairings between Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, I find another one.
I remember seeing the beginning of the Creeping Flesh years back, but for some reason I never caught the ending. Crackle.com came through for me again since I've run out of DVD's for my little movie review experiment, but I currently have more on the way, so tomorrow night shouldn't be a problem. Well, I have one DVD left, but I am saving it for Halloween night. Or perhaps during the day, doubtless Halloween night will probably be a busy one. I'd say I was scarping the bottom of crackle'com's barrel to come up with this one if the movie wasn't so good, but you just can't go wrong with a hammer horror flick.
Peter Cushing stars in this one as Emanuel Hildern, a scientist researching the origins of man. So, something of a bioarchaeologist then, if I'm allowed to make up professions at random. On one of his recent expeditions, he unearths a huge skeleton of a malformed humanoid beast of some kind. At first thinking it some form of early caveman, he takes it back to his lab and tries to research the history of the people of New Guinea, where he found the thing. Noticing the skeleton is a bit grimy, he washes off a finger to get a closer look at the multi-jointed, large fingers, and immediately, flesh begins to grow back over the exposed bone. Emanuel immediately chisels the living finger away from the rest of the skeleton, and begins experimenting on it.
Emanuel discovers some interesting things about his new find. Basically, the blood cells from the now-living flesh surrounding the finger bone are parasitic in nature, and will invade and destroy the normal cells of the living host and take it over. Also, he finds out from the history of the people of New Guinea that the "Evil One's" bones will be exposed to the "tears of the sky god, and evil will once again walk the land." Or something to that effect. So basically the doc figures out that exposing the skeleton to water or rain is what makes the flesh grow back, and if the whole skeleton gets exposed to rain, then the Evil One from the New Guinea legends will walk again. Needless to say, the good doc doesn't want this to happen, and tries to make an antiserum from the blood and injects it into a monkey to test it, hoping he can somehow cure the world of all evil. After waiting a bit, he tests some of the monkey's blood and it appears his antiserum is working!
Meanwhile, the doc has this daughter who he keeps a virtual prisoner inside his home. Basically, the girl's mother went batshiat insane and he's worried that contact with the outside world will make her go the same way as her mother, so he's told her for years that her mother is dead. However, he's recently found out from his brother, James (Christopher Lee), who runs an asylum, that the girl's mother has truly died, and the girl finds the paperwork about her death and freaks out about it a little, understandably so. Unfortunately, the doc thinks the girl is going insane, too, and injects her with his evil antiserum. Again unfortunately, the serum is not a success, and only delays the evil infecting the host, so he's actually infected his daughter with evil. She goes a bit crazy, and she's brought to James' asylum, where James discovers her blood is infected with something and realizes it has something to do with Emanuel's work. Always envious of Emanuel's brains, James finds out it has something to do with Emanual's latest find, and tries to steal the skeleton during a thunderstorm... :-o
This movie was made in 1973, towards the end of hammer studios reign as kings of horror, but from what I hear, recent efforts are ... shall we say, resurrecting Hammer studios from the ashes to return and terrify us again? ;-) At least, that's what I hear.
I should have some really good movies to review the next few days, what with Halloween weekend coming up and my new DVD's coming in, so I am going to have to narrow it down to five final choices and review one each night.
No comments:
Post a Comment