The Creeping Flesh (1973)
Freddie Francis' Hammer esq film is pretty much a Tigon production in all but name. It's depiction of evil as a skeletal figure which grows it's own flesh back when exposed to water has similarities to Blood on Satan's Claw from a couple of years previous, it also shares the same desperately bleak feel as well. In fact this is a grim an entry in the Gothic cannon as British horror gets.
Despite being perhaps one of Peter Cushing's less heralded roles i do think he gives one of his best performances even though he's partly in Frankenstein mode and comes across as sympathetic yet obsessed with his work. A special mention to Lorna Heilbron too. Notably a tv actress, she's terrific as Cushing's daughter and is largely at the centre of the plot throughout in fact the middle and final thirds are as much about what happens to her as Cushing.
Christopher Lee actually top bills the film even though he's not in it that much although when he is he plays a proper bastard as an asylum's curator.
The film is well directed at a swift pace by the excellent Freddie Francis. Francis uses many long shots and gives the film a sense of bleak desolation as the creature stalks the countryside in the form of a black hooded putrefying ghoul. However he also seems to return to shots used previous such as the creatures eye view as it attacks Cushing in a sequence strikingly similar to his 1965 film The Skull.
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