Film

The Flesh and the Fiends

A 1960 horror film that dramatizes the true story of Burke and Hare, the Edinburgh murderers who supplied corpses to an anatomist. Peter Cushing anchors a bleak, methodical examination of how intellectual ambition can rationalize evil. It's grittier than Hammer's gothic fantasies—a slow-burn moral corruption story that treats its subject with unusual seriousness.

TMDb rating3.3

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you enjoy period true-crime stories told with a dry, sly eye, where Cushing's cold precision and Pleasence's sniveling charm carry the unease more than gore does.

Skip it if you want shocks and gore up front; this is talky and deliberate, with its horror arriving in brief, grubby flashes and long stretches of petty scheming.

What it asks of you: Ninety-four minutes at an unhurried pace, with dread built slowly from waiting and tense conversation. It rewards patience more than it rewards attention to any single scare.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Psycho1960

Hitchcock's masterpiece about murder and madness, released the same year, with equally sophisticated direction and a protagonist audience won't quite trust. A perfect pairing for anyone ready for intelligent horror.

But The shower scene overshadows everything else for modern viewers. Knowing it might feel like watching a historical artifact rather than an immediate threat.

Psycho poster

Peeping Tom1960

A British film (also '60) about voyeurism and murder that's equally unflinching about pathology. Like Fiends, it refuses to sensationalize; both films are uncomfortable by design.

But Even more alienating than Flesh and the Fiends. The protagonist is harder to watch, and the film's clinical coldness might feel punishing rather than illuminating.

Peeping Tom poster

The Haunting1963

Robert Wise's psychological horror about an old house and a woman's unraveling sanity. Shares Fiends' preference for dread over gore, and both films trust the audience to sit with discomfort.

But Slow-paced even by '60s standards. The horror is entirely internal and atmospheric—if you need a clear external threat, this will feel like nothing happens.

The Haunting poster

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Flesh and the Fiends

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Abominable Dr. Phibes1971

Both dramatize real historical murderers with theatrical flair, but Phibes inverts the tone entirely—making gothic artifice out of what Fiends treats as moral realism.

Vincent Price as an aristocratic avenger murdering those he holds responsible for his wife's death. Like Fiends it turns a historical murderer (the real Phibes is loosely based on Harvey Crippen) into a protagonist we understand, but this time through pure camp exuberance rather than realism. Same idea—how do we reckon with someone's humanity when they've committed atrocity—expressed in a completely different register.

But Wildly theatrical and playful about suffering. If you want seriousness and gravity, this cheerful artifice will seem tone-deaf and trivializing.

The Abominable Dr. Phibes poster
More like this (8)

The Innocents1961

Jack Clayton's film about a governess and two children in a haunted house that may or may not be haunted. Ambiguity, psychological depth, and a similar refusal to provide easy answers about morality and sanity.

But More subtle than scary. Long stretches of tension with no payoff if you're looking for cathartic horror beats.

The Innocents poster

Freaks1932

Tod Browning's genuinely shocking film about circus performers that questions who the real monsters are. Like Fiends, it indicts so-called civilized society and redefines monstrosity.

But The disability representation is of its era and deeply uncomfortable. Some scenes exist partly to titillate rather than illuminate, which undermines the film's moral argument.

Freaks poster

Diabolique1955

Henri-Georges Clouzot's French thriller about two women plotting a murder. Similar interest in ordinary people committing extraordinary crimes, with mounting psychological tension and no heroes.

But The ending strains credibility. It's also deeply misogynistic by modern standards, which matters when the plot centers on women as victims and perpetrators.

Diabolique poster

The Bad Seed1956

A child as a vessel for evil—a transgressive idea handled with genuine unease. Like Fiends, it examines how charm and intelligence can mask something rotten at the core.

But Heavy-handed moralizing and a studio-mandated ending that collapses the whole argument. The psychology feels dated and oversimplified.

The Bad Seed poster

Night and Fog1956

Alain Resnais's 32-minute documentary about concentration camps. Shares Fiends' commitment to historical atrocity without sensationalizing it, and similar exploration of how ordinary systems enable extraordinary evil.

But A documentary about the Holocaust, so the subject matter is unbearable by design. Some people aren't in the headspace for it, and that's completely reasonable.

Night and Fog poster

The Krays1990

A more recent true crime film about notorious British criminals. Like Fiends, it finds the human weight in historical monstrosity and doesn't flinch from moral complexity.

But More violent and sexualized than Fiends. The stylization works against rather than for the subject matter, and the film sometimes seems to revel in the violence it's depicting.

The Krays poster

F for Fake1973

Both explore how expertise and social position allow someone to get away with transgression—Knox through scientific authority, Welles through the authority of the cinema itself.

Orson Welles's essay-film about forgery, authorship, and what we believe. Shares Fiends' fascination with how authority figures—Welles as narrator, Knox as anatomist—manipulate perception and credibility. But instead of narrative horror, this is a playful interrogation of truth itself.

But It's structurally chaotic and intellectually demanding. If you watch a film to follow a story, this will feel like watching someone show off rather than tell you something.

F for Fake poster

In Cold Blood1967

Both are rigorous true-crime films from classic cinema that treat murderers as human beings without excusing what they've done, but they reach very different conclusions about why people kill.

Richard Brooks's adaptation of Capote's true-crime novel about a real Kansas farmhouse murder. Like Fiends, it's a procedural treatment of actual violence that respects the victim and refuses sensationalism. But it's American, it's shot in stark black-and-white, and it carries a very different moral weight—less about the grandiose rationalization of crime and more about random, senseless evil.

But The killers are sympathetic in ways that feel wrong. There's no grand intellectual justification, just poverty and damaged childhoods, which some viewers experience as excuse-making.

In Cold Blood poster

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