The Flesh and Blood Show (1972)

If nothing else, this one gets points for truth in advertising—The Flesh and Blood Show features copious amounts of nudity and a smattering of gore. There’s also a story of sorts, but it’s probably kinder to focus on the ways in which producer-director Pete Walker delivers the goods. A prolific maker of U.K. sexploitation flicks, Walker tries to create a straightforward thriller about innocent victims trapped in a confined location with a killer, but he can’t help himself. Nearly every scene is designed to showcase the female form, so The Flesh and Blood Show features copulating, groping, ogling, stripping, and even a long sequence of a fully nude starlet running from a killer who demands that she meet her fate naked because she’s committed carnal sins. Clearly, nothing rings Walker’s bell more than persuading attractive actresses to disrobe, then training his camera on their private parts. And yet the funny thing is he’s not a bad director, per se. Individual scenes within The Flesh and Blood Show have genuine merits, from clever camera angles to moody lighting. All this is for naught, however, since the story is dreary and predictable and silly. When The Flesh and Blood Show begins, several young actors (male and female) receive notices from a mysterious producer that they’ve been cast in a new play. Traveling to an abandoned theater on a pier, the twentysomethings rehearse by day and screw by night. (Seriously, these characters seem averse to sleeping alone or even wearing clothes after sundown.) When someone starts killing the actors one-by-one in gruesome ways, the survivors inexplicably remain at the location and continue rehearsing, at least until the bizarre black-and-white climax during which the killer reveals his identity and does the bit of chasing the nude cutie around the theater. Whatever. Plenty of slasher flicks are just as dumb as The Flesh and Blood Show, but Walker somehow manages to make sex and violence dull simply because the pacing is slow and the tone is flat. While none of the actors is of special note, the ladies are all quite shapely, and Australian-born costar Tristan Rogers later became a fan-fave regular on the American daytime soap General Hospital.

The Flesh and Blood Show: LAME