- Directed by Freddie Francis
- Written by Peter Spenceley, Jonathan Rumbold
- Stars Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Lorna Heilbron
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 32 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6tstRiA8jY
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
There is creeping flesh here, but that’s about it as far as the monster goes. He gives us the finger, but then doesn’t show up until the end of the movie, where he wants it back.
Synopsis
A man paints a picture of a reptilian-humanoid-looking monster as the credits roll.
Doctor Emmanuel Hildern is interviewing a new assistant. He asks whether the doctor believes in evil as an entity, a disease that spreads over the whole world. He believes that evil can be cured like any other disease. The old doctor shows his notes to the new guy and explains that the story all began three years ago…
He had just returned from New Guinea, and he brought back a special skeleton that he thought would revolutionize the study of mankind’s evololution. He greets his daughter Penelope. Waterlow is there as well, ready to conclude his own final experiment. The workmen carry in a huge crate holding the special skeleton.
Emmanuel and Waterlow open the box and it’s a big skeleton with a huge skull. Emmanuel explains that the large brain cavity indicates that this creature was smarter than we are. It’s older than the Neaderthal, but it’s more advanced; somehow, the beings vanished from the Earth.
Penelope says she had to let two of the servants go, since they’re out of money. Now they’re down to only two servants! Emmanuel thinks his latest discovery will turn that around.
Emmanuel opens a letter from his brother; his wife and Penelope’s mother, has passed away in his absence. We see the letter came from the insane asylum that his brother runs. Brother James mentions that Penelope has believed her mother to be dead for years. It turns out both brothers will be competing for the same scientific prize. Oh, and James has decided not to finance any more of Emmanuel’s lunatic expeditions. We’re told that one patient, Lenny, has escaped.
Emmanuel goes in to clean up the dirty old skeleton. He soon notices that where it gets wet, skin starts to regenerate. It’s flesh… and it’s creeping! Emmanuel cuts off the fully-regenerated finger and watches it wiggle on the table.
Back at the asylum, James goes into the cells to figure out how Lenny escaped. When one of the prisoners gets the upper hand on him, James shoots the man in the back several times. Lenny is still at large, and there’s a manhunt out in the woods.
Next morning, Waterlow goes into the lab and almost washes the skeleton before Emmanuel stops him. Penelope tricks Waterlow into leaving her the keys to the house, which includes her mother’s room, which has been declared off limits to her.
Emmanuel reads old legends about “The evil one,” and this skeleton may well be him. This skeleton wasn’t supposed to be exposed to rain for another 3,000 years. Somehow, he thinks this knowledge will abolish all evil. He takes some blood cells from the finger, and they’re still alive. He mixes some of his own blood in with it. It makes a protective skin around each of the cells. It looks like they have an inoculation against evil itself. He decides to inject the monkey with the creature’s blood to see what will happen.
Meanwhile, upstairs, Penelope explores her mother’s forbidden room and finds out that her mother was committed to an asylum; she has actually not been dead all these decades.
Emmanuel catches Penelope in her mother’s room, and she is not happy. We get a flashback to young Emmanuel and Madeleine. We soon see that Madeleine wasn’t insane; she was just a slut. Somehow, her promiscuity eventually did drive her insane (syphilis?). They dragged her out to the asylum, where she died just recently. Emmanuel fears that Penelope may follow in her footsteps, so he gives her the barely-tested anti-evil inoculation.
Crazy Lenny makes it to town and attacks people in the bar.
The next morning, the monkey broke out of his cage and died. Penelope is gone, and she now has hair like her mother. Emmanuel drives all over town looking for her, but she’s in the bar flirting with rich men. One man takes her upstairs and tries to take her dress off and more. She claws him, and the man leaves. She goes downstairs and dances like a madwoman. When a sailor gets carried away, she cuts his throat and runs off.
Penelope runs off from the bar with dozens of angry sailors in pursuit. She hides in a warehouse– the same warehouse where Lenny is also hiding. She pushes him off the ledge and into the crowd below. The police finally show up and capture Penelope. They take her to the asylum.
At the asylum, James complains that he can’t experiment on normal human beings, so his research into insanity isn’t progressing. James looks at Penelope’s blood, and realizes there’s something strange going on. James brings her home to Emmanuel’s house– in chains. James waits in Emmanuel’s lab and notices the creature’s blood is the same as Penelope’s. He reads the lab notes as well. He figures out exactly what’s been going on and demands to work with Emmanuel on his project. James threatens blackmail, so Emmanuel has few choices.
That night, James sends a goon to break in and steal the skeleton. Waterlow interrupts the robbery and is murdered. The man carries the skeleton out to James’s carriage, but he drags the hand through a puddle. Emmanuel notices that thunderstorms are approaching as well; he hops on a horse and pursues James.
The driver is awful, and the carriage tips over in the rain. It’s not long before the skeleton starts regenerating and moving. James runs to the asylum for assistance while Emmanuel finds the carriage and the creature. He runs home in a panic.
Penelope wakes up and kills the maid who has the keys. Meanwhile, the creature shuffles toward the house. Penelope unlocks the door and lets it inside. It appears to want its finger back, but Emmanuel burned it up. Emmanuel eventually opens the door and lets it into his room; it may have some form of mind control. It takes his middle finger to replace its own.
Outside, James picks up Penelope and then goes in to find Emmanuel crying over the mess he made.
Back in the present, Emmanuel tells the new doctor all this. Turns out, the new doctor is one of the workers at the asylum, which is where he’s been committed. He’s not really James’s brother, and the woman in the next cell isn’t really his daughter. “Hopeless case, I’m afraid,” James says on the way out. We see that Emmanuel is indeed missing a finger.
Commentary
The stop-motion of the creeping flesh regrowing was pretty good for 1973. That amputated finger didn’t really look like a finger if you know what I mean.
Despite the majority of the cast and crew being former Hammer people, this was not a Hammer film. It’s got a pretty violent, although not explicit, rape scene, which was a bit much for the time.
James’s assistant says, “It all sounds like nonsense to me,” and he’s got a point. The science here is fantasy at best.
The little twist at the end isn’t a huge surprise, but it does make you rethink everything that went on.
It’s good, but not one of the era’s best.