God knows I love Pete Walker films, even the dodgy ones, but 'The Flesh & Blood Show' just doesn't do it for me, which is awful, as all the component parts are there, they're just badly and lazily bolted together.
The action all takes place at Eastcliffe On Sea (actually Cromer in Norfolk), where a group of young, hairy actors are brought together by a mysterious production company to improvise a play that will apparently be staged in the West End at some point (the bits we see are awful, so it would probably have been a very short engagement). The rehearsal space is an abandoned pier and, because they're skint, the lads and lasses of the company kip there as well. It's a cold, damp, eerie place, and something bad happened there that no-one can quite remember.
One by one, the girls disrobe and get murdered, and then everyone else looks shifty and nutty in order to satisfy a daft twist ending that could have made sense if it hadn't been so badly botched. Walker seems to lost his way entirely at times: virtually every opportunity for a decent sequence is compromised by poor editing or filming, or, in dramatic terms, relies on the most incredibly illogical behaviour. It's horror by numbers, random numbers at that, and he's so much better than that.Also, for a film that runs for a 100 minutes, it's also extremely slack, and the last half an hour, including a final 3D flashback (the 'Scooby Doo' moment of explanation), is interminable.
It has a fair cast (the silky voiced and always likeable Ray Brooks, foxy Luan Peters, Jenny Hanley, Candace Glendenning, sexy Jane Cardew), good music, a great location and the germ of an idea, but it never flowers into anything decent. Balls.
Here's the trailer.
