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6
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10
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Guest
Review by Troy
Howarth |
A
theatrical troupe is hired by a mysterious employer
and sent to a dilapidated theater for rehearsals;
while there, a maniac begins picking them off,
one by one...
After
carving out a niche in the sexploitation market,
independent British producer/director Pete Walker
began to delve into the horror genre with 1970's
quaintly psychedelic Die
Screaming, Marianne. The emphasis there was
more on Les Diaboliques-styled
plot twists than on ghoulish shocks, but 1972's
The Flesh And Blood Show
provided a better glimpse of the kind of visceral
horror that would soon become his stock in trade.
The
story takes its cue from Agatha Christie's venerable
Ten Little Indians —
a group of strangers are invited to a remote locale,
where they fall prey to an unseen assassin. While
Walker's subsequent horror pictures tended to
phase out the carnal aspect, his background in
sexploitation is abundantly evident here —
softcore groping and plentiful nudity dominate
the first half of the picture, and while there
is plenty of mayhem, the gruesome excesses evident
in Frightmare (1973)
and House Of Whipcord
(1974) are kept in check. Fortunately, the actresses
are of an attractive variety (Luan Peters, Jenny
Hanley and Judy Matheson all filled appropriately
tight bodices for Hammer earlier in their careers,
but it would take Walker to convince them to show
a bit more) and the acting is of a generally competent
variety. Walker's direction isn't as assured as
it would become in later films, but he manages
some nice moody passages and keeps the action
moving at a decent clip.
Ultimately
the film is perhaps most interesting as a precursor
to the slasher films that would dominate the genre
beginning in the late 1970s. Like Mario Bava's
seminal Twitch
Of The Death Nerve (1971), it anticipates
such later hits as Halloween
(1978) and Friday The 13th
(1980) in its depiction of a group of horny teens
being dispatched by a homicidal maniac. Unlike
the Bava film, however, its emphasis on sex instead
of violence makes it very much a film of its day,
closer to the nudie films of Walker's earlier
career than to the vicious and nihilistic tone
of his later films. The gratuitous inclusion of
a 3-D climax doesn't help matters —
it comes off as a silly gimmick at best, a tacky
distraction at worst. Even so, taken on its own
terms, The Flesh And Blood
Show has enough going for it to warrant
a look. Fans of Walker's other horror films are
bound to find some entertainment value in it.
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Shriek Show's release of
The Flesh And Blood Show,
as part of their Pete Walker Collection,
marks the film's DVD debut. While the other Walker
titles are ported over from the Anchor Bay UK
Walker box set, this particular title is unique
to the Shriek Show collection. The 1.85/16x9 transfer
is acceptable, though the source material is a
little rough. Color and detail are adequately
rendered, but the print shows a lot of wear and
tear — scratches
and nicks are often in evidence, though the film
is present fully uncut, retaining some surprisingly
frank male and female frontal nudity. The mono
audio is clear, and despite some minor background
hissing evident during quiet passages, it sounds
about as good as one could reasonably expect from
a low budget film of this era.
Likely
because SS had to put this release together from
scratch, it doesn't have the benefit of a Walker
commentary track. However, a featurette-length
interview with Walker fills the gap well enough.
In addition to the interview, extras include a
theatrical trailer for the film and other titles
in the Walker Collection, along with a still gallery.
11/25/06
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