The Flesh and Blood Show (1974)

One of my all time favorites.

Let's be realistic.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

This murky offering from infamous British horror director Pete Walker isn't really a bad film, it's just not great. The first half of the movie is by far the weakest of the two, a slow-paced bit of to-ing and fro-ing which is so poorly-lit that you actually have to sit about two inches away from your television screen with the brightness turned up to full to make out anything that's going on. The straightforward plot is that of a slasher movie, although bear in mind that this film was released about six years before the slasher film boom so any similarities are purely coincidental. Walker livens up the fairly dismal proceedings with lashings of gratuitous nudity from most of the well-proportioned female cast members as one would expect from a director who previously made THE FOUR DIMENSIONS OF GRETA; indeed the film's opening sequence sees an appealing blonde-haired girl answering the door to her house in the nude! Quite why she would do this is anyone's guess...For a while it's fun to play spot the familiar face, the cast being full of fresh-faced young actors and actresses mainly notable for their television roles in the '70s. Ray Brooks (the voice of Mr Benn) is the would-be producer of the group. Jenny Hanley (SCARS OF Dracula) is a "proper" actress who comes looking for a bit of stage work and finds only death and mystery, whilst Luan Peters, Candace Glendenning, Judy Matheson, and Penny Meredith fill out the rest of the performers who seemingly spend more time in bed with male cast members and technicians than actually rehearsing. Finally, there's David Howey as John, the bleedingly obvious red herring, and cheeky chappie Robin Askwith who gets some ripe dialogue in what amounts to a rather minor part. Patrick Barr is simply excellent in his part as Major Bell, a retired war veteran who lives alone with his dog and gets excited about the prospect of a theatre group inhabiting the long-abandoned pier.Although Walker is heavy on the nudity, gore fans should seek their dirty thrills elsewhere as what (very) minor gore there is on offer here is almost completely obscured by darkness. Not that the film needs it, mind you: weird characters, bizarre actions, and a mildly creepy atmosphere propel this one along nicely until a fairly major plot revelation about an hour in. Then, surprisingly, things pick up towards the end, incorporating an excellent black-and-white flashback sequence (originally 3D) which plays as a nice little mini-film in itself, and a clever, well-acted finale which shares more than a few similarities with the following year's THEATRE OF BLOOD.My only complaint with THE FLESH AND BLOOD SHOW is that Walker should have worked harder to make the final revelation a little bit more surprising as some of it is easy to guess. The film isn't really scary (but then, not many British horror films are, to be honest) and is far from the disturbing, graphic masterpieces like FRIGHTMARE that Walker became famous for later on in his career. But as a somewhat enjoyable, mildly effective proto-slasher yarn with an appealing cast, it deserves a look.

"The Flesh and Blood Show" is about a bunch of young actors all willing to take part in a stage theatre that's situated in a small ocean town, and soon as they arrive strange things start to happen and people start disappearing and surprise, surprise they are being watched by an unknown strange figure.To be honest when I came across this movie, I actually got it confused with "Blood and Black Lace" (which I still haven't seen), and being a keen fan of early slasher movies and especially British slasher movies, I was willing to give this one a go. To be honest I was kind of disappointed, for a start there is frankly not enough blood or horror or tension to fulfil any basic needs and there are too many false scares and could have done with a higher body count.But there are some good points to this movie, including the night-times attack on one of the women, was nicely done and quite nerve racking and the whodunit angle was nicely done along with the lengthy explanation at the end was a nice touch.All in all not a terrible entry but doesn't quite keep the viewer interested all the way through, but still better than half the crap that comes out these days.

The Flesh and Blood Show is set in England where a group of young & aspiring actor's are hired by a production company to rehearse & perform a play which they intend to open in London, the company send all the actor's to a small seaside town where an old abandoned theatre sits on the end of a pier. It's in this old theatre that the actor's will get to know each other & rehearse the play, Mike (Ray Brooks) is acting producer & it's his job to organise everything. Once all the cast have arrived they decide to live in the theatre will rehearsing, the first while while they are trying to sleep a loud screams wakes everyone up & they soon discover that that one of their number is missing & set out to look for her. Mike thinks he finds her decapitated head but after returning with local police it has vanished, puzzled Mike has to forget it but other member's of the cast also disappear as the theatre's terrible past comes back to haunt the present...This British & American co-production was produced & directed by Pete Walker & was his first attempt at horror, I have to say that The Flesh and Blood Show is a rather standard murder mystery horror with added nudity. While there's a fair bit of naked flesh on show there's not much blood on offer, at over 90 minutes The Flesh and Blood Show is a fairly dull film that hasn't aged well either. The murder mystery aspect is pretty poor, there's no great surprise as to who the killer is & there's meant to be a double twist at the end but the film just sort of finishes before the script has a chance to do anything with it. The kills are forgettable & I am not sure what that opening sequence of blood dripping down wooden supports & into the sea has to do with anything, the character's are all sex crazed teens who enjoy playing annoying jokes on each other which provide lots of those tiresome 'fake' scare scenes where something initially threatening turns out to be a practical joke. The revelation of the killer at the end is pretty dull & his motives for murder are weak, he goes a little bit crazy as well quoting all sorts of classic lines from various plays that sound out of place here & only slow things down even more. Overall The Flesh and Blood Show is an unsatisfying murder mystery that doesn't deliver on the mystery or the slasher aspects of the story, while not the worst example of it's kind I can't say I would ever want to see it again.The Flesh and Blood Show definitely has the 70's feel to it, lots of old looking buildings with lots of dark corridors for people to endlessly walk down although the fashions don't fare so well with some hideous outfits including tight fitting canary yellow trousers. There's a fair amount of nudity here with virtually every female member of the cast going topless at least once while the gore is tame with only a severed head & a bit of blood splatter on show. The film has a decent atmosphere & looks alright but I doubt I will remember anything about it in a week. Origianlly shot partially in 3-D, the flashback sequence at the end was originally shown in 3-D but was simply black and white for most home video releases.Filmed on location in Cromer in Norfolk here in England, written by Alfred Shaughnessy who went on to be script editor on British sitcom Upstairs, Downstairs (1971-1975). The acting is OK but nothing special here, Robin Askwith appeared in a number of British horror & sex films during the 70's while Ray Brooks narrated both Mr. Benn (1971) & King Rollo (1980) & was more recently in Eastenders.The Flesh and Blood Show is a pretty forgettable murder mystery horror film that looks alright & isn't terrible but just isn't great either. Not much of a mystery to solve, not much gore to get excited about & a rather slow pace at times means The Flesh and Blood Show is a minor entry in British horror.

"The Flesh and Blood Show" bookends Pete Walker's 'golden period' of horrors, with "Schizo" (1976) at the other end; it is a gruesome piece of film-making that shows improvements in Walker's work from "Die Screaming, Marianne" - and yet he is still limbering up, in truth.Patrick Barr - to be used again by PW - is excellent here, playing 'the Major', the first in a line of Walker protagonists who appear to be harmless English eccentrics, but are actually... well, that would be telling! The youth characters may be rather stereotyped, but that is part of Walker's approach: to set a licentious, permissive youth against a resentful and uncompromisingly vengeful older generation. It is much to Walker's credit that few if any characters could be described as typical heroes. And he doesn't take sides; the photography indeed mimics the voyeur's view at times - implicating the audience, using the trick first deployed by Michael Powell in "Peeping Tom" (1960).The out-of-season seaside setting - Cromer, apparently - fits aptly into this dialectic. The troupe of young actors' arrival seemingly doubles the ageing population of the resort, who can seemingly only dream of the past. It can even be argued that there are pre-echoes of Alan Bennett's use of Morecambe in "Sunset Across the Bay" (BBC, 1975) - though of course, lacking quite the same sad humour and dry insight.Still, it is an serviceable enough shocker. Not as bizarrely gripping as Walker's subsequent Melodramas of Discontent, but a decisive step in that direction. And with a script by Alfred Shaughnessy (one of the prime wits behind LWT's "Upstairs, Downstairs") and a suitably eerie score from Cyril Ornadel (who composed all of the music for ATV's seminal "Sapphire and Steel"). Oh, and Robin Askwith... who is enjoyably absurd in horror films (see also the ludicrous "Horror Hospital" from the following year), where he is rather more horrific in myriad dire sex comedies to come.