The Flesh and Blood Show

The plot is a familiar one. A bunch of people go to an abandoned building to stay there, and some of them start dying.

Even taken more specifically, this is a group of young actors who go to an old theater, and are killed for reasons relating to the theater's past. The Clown at Midnight (1998) is similar.

The movie has a lot of dialog, which isn't of much interest. People go off wandering, and sometimes they come back and sometimes they don't. They visit an older couple, and I didn't get a sense of where their house was in relation to the theater, which seemed to be on an island. Police actually are contacted fairly easily early on. The actors continue to stay at the theater far beyond what is sensible.

There's a fair amount of female nudity, even some full frontal nudity. There is even some full frontal nudity from one of the men. Deaths are not depicted very graphically, to the extent they are barely on screen at all. The killer is a heavy breather, with a black mask and gloves.

The music throughout reminded me of the incidental music from the original Scooby Doo series!

There's a flashback scene which is rather surprising, that has a couple having sex in front of a young girl. The girl's scenes were quite obviously edited in (i.e. she wasn't in the room with the nude actors), but it was still a little shocking. That scene was a little better than the rest of the movie, although it started off with a staging of Othello, which was not too involving. There's another good scene in which some of the actors think one of them is shining a spotlight, but it then shines on the person they though was handling it, who was nude. Being a little thick, they don't immediately realize the spotlight must be handled by someone else, nor do they notice how the nude figure doesn't appear to have any life in it.

At the end of the Monterey Home Video, there were trailers for The Slasher is the Sex Maniac, Night After Night After Night, and The Grim Reaper, all of which looked much better. Although I've seen a cut version of The Grim Reaper AKA Antropophagus (1980), and didn't think it was all that hot, but then the trailer for it was all of five seconds long or so. The other trailers were of ordinary length.

Walker's first horror film is an intriguing and enjoyable mix of sex and chills set in an abandoned theater; interestingly, in the accompanying interview on the DVD, he states that the nudity was deemed obligatory at the time if the picture was to hope for a distribution deal (particularly since Walker was his own financier).

The plot starts off by having eight out-of-work actors being convened to the aforementioned remote location by a mysterious employer; though they occasionally indulge in the kind of silly yet pretentious improvisational exercise also at the core of Jacques Rivette's insanely-long (13 hours!) OUT ONE: NOLI ME TANGERE (1971), they're often just interested in getting laid and the girls in particularly act like sluts most of the time!! At first, I was annoyed by this apparent laziness in scripting (by Alfred Shaughnessy, a respected if little-known director in his own right) – but, then, it's revealed that this was the reason these young and 'morally corrupt' folk were called upon to begin with (as the continuation of a notorious incident from the wartime era which had actually caused the theater's closure).

The male members of the cast are effectively enough led by Ray Brooks (from Richard Lester's Swinging London comedy THE KNACK [1965]) and also include Robin Askwith (soon to rise to dubious prominence with the smutty "Confessions" films) and veteran Patrick Barr (who turns in a bravura performance, particularly once his true identity is exposed). As for the girls, they all look great in and out of clothes – particularly Jenny Hanley (who, interestingly, discovers to have an inextricable link of her own with the gloomy theater) and Luan Peters (who escapes the murderer{s}' clutches the first time but not the second).

The film attempts a reasonable imitation throughout of the Italian Giallo style (that country, then, paid it the compliment by borrowing its single setting for Lamberto Bava's popular but third-rate DEMONS [1985]) – though it culminates with a rather unnecessary 3-D gimmick (which Walker had already utilized in the lackluster "Rashomon"-type sex comedy THE FOUR DIMENSIONS OF GRETA [1972]). For the record, of the director's horror outings, I've yet to get my hands on SCHIZO (1976) and HOME BEFORE MIDNIGHT (1979)

"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.

I have been a fan of director/producer Pete Walker's 1970's horror films in the past. I never knew he had a filmography of what shall I call them 'sexploitation' films earlier in his filmmaking career.

Now this 1972 UK film has elements of sexploitation in a slasher horror film as several members of an acting group are murdered at a disused theatre at the end of an old pier in a seaside town in England, out of season to add to the ambience of proceedings!

Now my review title is a play on the Confessions films which were hugely successful in the 1970s starring Robin Askwith who is incidentally in this film as well as one of the young actors. Askwith plays a typical Timothy Lea type character from the Confessions franchise and points to the 'sexploitation' scenes in this film, which is a shame in my opinion. It puts the UK film industry of the period in a bad light. Mixed in with the gore of a slasher horror are scenes of the characters in semi-naked scenes.

Atmospheric and a mediocre early Pete Walker horror. I have found his later 1970's films better if I am honest. This film is very low budget. Scream (1996) it isn't!

Performers auditioning for a British "Grand Guignol" show are murdered in mysterious ways in this deranged horror directed by Pete Walker("Frightmare","Schizo","House of Whipcord").The film is pretty creepy and offers a nice amount of sleaze.There are decapitations,drownings,psychotic elderly tramps,naked women and some gruesome killings.The cinematography is pretty gloomy and the location sets are suitably eerie.A must-see if you're a fan of British horror!