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The Creeping Flesh

The Creeping Flesh

Horror · Science Fiction · 1973

A Victorian scientist returns to London with his paleontological bag-of-bones discovery from Papua New Guinea. Unfortunately, when exposed to water, flesh returns to the bones, unleashing a malevolent entity on the scientist's family and friends.

Movie details

The Creeping Flesh

“A terrifying journey through the nightmare worlds of evil, insanity, and terrible revenge.”

1973 Horror · Science Fiction 1h 32m

Critical arithmetic

One number, for now.

TMDB

5.9 / 10

Community rating

A Victorian scientist returns to London with his paleontological bag-of-bones discovery from Papua New Guinea. Unfortunately, when exposed to water, flesh returns to the bones, unleashing a malevolent entity on the scientist's family and friends.

CriticWise case file

What this film says about your taste.

Not a recommendation score. A measure of how closely the film’s taste signals resemble yours.

The archetype split

Who fights over The Creeping Flesh?

The split comes from the same five-axis model used by the test, not audience ratings or review sentiment.

Taste neighbourhood

Nearby on the taste map.

TMDB supplies the candidates. CriticWise reorders them by craft, strangeness, prestige, emotion, and pace.

Island of Terror

Island of Terror

Horror · 1966

When a small island community becomes overrun with creeping, blobbish, tentacled monsters that liquefy and digest the bones from living creatures, the community struggles to fight back.

Blood of the Vampire

Blood of the Vampire

Horror · 1958

A man and wife are terrorized by Mad Scientist Dr. Callistratus who was executed but has returned to life with a heart transplant. Along with his crippled assistant Carl, the 'anemic' Mad Scientist, believed to be a vampire, conducts blood deficiency research on the inmates of a prison hospital for the criminally insane to sustain his return to life.

Return of the Fly

Return of the Fly

Horror · 1959

Fifteen years after his father's experiments with matter transmission fail, Philippe Delambre and his uncle François attempt to create a matter transmission device on their own. However, their experiments have disastrous results, turning Philippe into a horrible half-man, half-fly creature.

Willard

Willard

Horror · 1971

A social misfit, Willard is made fun of by his co-workers, and squeezed out of the company started by his deceased father by his boss. His only friends are a couple of rats he raised at home, Ben and Socrates. However, when one of them is killed at work, he goes on a rampage using his rats to attack those who have been tormenting him.

The Evil of Frankenstein

The Evil of Frankenstein

Horror · 1964

Once hounded from his castle by outraged villagers for creating a monstrous living being, Baron Frankenstein returns to Karlstaad. High in the mountains they stumble on the body of the creature, perfectly preserved in the ice. He is brought back to life with the help of the hypnotist Zoltan who now controls the creature. Can Frankenstein break Zoltan's hypnotic spell that incites the monster to commit these horrific murders or will Zoltan induce the creature to destroy its creator?

The Blob

The Blob

Horror · 1958

A drive-in favorite, this sci-fi classic follows teenagers Steve and his best girl, Jane, as they try to protect their hometown from a gelatinous alien life form that engulfs everything it touches. The first to discover the substance and live to tell about it, Steve and Jane witness the blob destroying an elderly man, then it growing to a terrifying size. But no one else has seen the goo, and policeman Dave refuses to believe the kids without proof.

The Black Sleep

The Black Sleep

Horror · 1956

In 19th century England, a noted brain surgeon rescues a former student from being hanged on a false conviction for murder, and spirits him away to an ancient, repurposed abbey far in the countryside. There, he connives his pupil into assisting him in mapping the functions of the various parts of the human brain, using living subjects who are under a terrible animation-suspending drug called "black sleep". Subsequently, the student, along with the daughter of one of the subjects, discover that most of these subjects have survived but are being kept in a dungeon-like cellar, in various stages of physical and mental derangement...

The Asphyx

The Asphyx

Fantasy · 1972

Hugo is a brilliant turn-of-the-century scientist, loved and respected by his family and friends, admired by his colleagues. But he is a man quickly becoming obsessed with a curious and frightening question...What is the mysterious apparition found in the photographs of his dying subjects?

Phase IV

Phase IV

Horror · 1974

Arizona ants mock the food chain on their way to a desert lab to get two scientists and a woman.

The Tingler

The Tingler

Horror · 1959

A pathologist experiments with a deaf-mute woman who is unable to scream to prove that humans die of fright due to an organism he names The Tingler that lives within each person on the spinal cord and is suppressed only when people scream when scared.

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Names above the title

The people responsible.

Directed by

Freddie Francis

Written by

Jonathan Rumbold · Peter Spenceley

Peter Cushing

Peter Cushing

Emmanuel Hildern

Lorna Heilbron

Lorna Heilbron

Penelope Hildern

Christopher Lee

Christopher Lee

James Hildern

George Benson

George Benson

Waterlow

Catherine Finn

Catherine Finn

Emily

Hedger Wallace

Hedger Wallace

Doctor Perry

Duncan Lamont

Duncan Lamont

Inspector

Court is in session

Put The Creeping Flesh on trial.

Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.

The defence The Arthouse Gremlin

“Its refusal to behave is the point.”

The strange choices create the kind of friction that follows you out of the theatre and into the argument.

The prosecution The Prestige Tourist

“Oddness is not depth.”

A film can break every rule and still leave nothing behind but the memory of how hard it tried to be singular.