An INCREDIBLY unispiring offering from José Mojica Marins. ‘Hellish Flesh’ is distinct to me in the sense that its the moment that I feel José finally got left behind in terms of creative influence and progression.

Throughout the 70s Josés work went from strength to strength visually. While I was always hesitant to praise his written ability (I always found his work a little overly simplistic and a bit ‘first year philosophy student’ for my taste personally) It cant be denied than from the early 60s through to the mid 70s, as a director and visual creative, he explored strange new spaces, pushed the boundaries of the censors and decency and while his later offerings would lean on sex and nudity as a crutch to help a weaker plot just about hobble over the line. There was almost ALWAYS SOMETHING in the way he chose to present his works that always endeared me to him.

The same cannot be said unfortunately for ‘Hellish Flesh’.

A film which feels like a yawn and a splutter manifest. ‘Flesh’ is essentially the key beats of the original ‘House of Wax’, ‘The Mad Magician’ and ‘The Abominable Dr. Phibes’ ran through Marins exploitation-esq filtering to produce a film that, by 1977, felt thoroughly uninspiring and like a director on the ropes.

The plot? A scientist (played by José) who’s developing an acid that (and I quote) ‘Can dissolve a big arm in seconds’, has been neglecting his wife, who has decided to commence an affair. After a while the man she’s cheating with can no longer carry on with the affair due to the guilt he’s feeling. So she hatches a plan to get rid of the husband by using his own ultra strong acid on him, before getting her lover to burn his laboratory to the ground with him still inside it.

Fortunately, our scientist survives (though heavily deformed due to an acid wash to the face and being burnt alive) and he swears distant vengence on the pair by slowly shadowing and haunting their waking moments.

And…thats the film. The scripts BEYOND derivitive for most of the runtime with only a few brief twinkles of originality dotted sparsly across the runtime. 90% of the movie is either Raquel (our scientists wife) guilt gushing about murdering her husband, or shadowy seedy softcore and nudity. Thats all this thing is. VERY rarely we cut to José, leering in the shadows, OR! we cut to graphic surgery footage and tortured screams…Thats the movie.

The pacing is SO slowburn as to be exhausting, it takes a third of the films runtime to even get going, and at least 6 minutes of this 82 minute film is just static opening title cards.

Its a repetitious watch and fairly mind numbing to say the least. scenes will cut between two locations for extended periods of time, and NOTHING will be happening in either of them! Which is insane. Im not kidding when I say a good chunk of the opening of this film is just José in a generic ultra low budget lab set just looking at beakers for 5 minutes more or less silently.

The act structuring is airey to say the least. This film feels more like a grab bag of assorted scenes than a coherent 3 act work. and tonally, it cant quite seem to commit to whether it wants to try and be a throwback to the universal monster movies and early 50s horror. Or an sleazy 70s exploitation flick. As such, it falls between two chairs, achieving neither and disspointing on both counts.

Non of the characters are particularly well written, most of them are either one note (see Raquel…the guilty, but stubborn wife) OR! they’re monosyllabic and basically just grunt their way through whatever lines are put in front of them with next to no feeling or passion.

The direction and cine feels phoned in as well, I’ve praised Josés work across all the films i’ve seen of his for pushing the envelope for better or worse and his determination to find his voice and style as a film maker…But this things DEATHLY dull for most of the runtime. Everything feels like it’s been a chore to put together for the people involved…Where once was moody and intricate lighting, here? is just low lit sets with little thought put into them. Where once was technicolour absurdist takes on hell and the underworld? here is filled with stock footage and people lounging in hotel rooms.

The most exciting scene in this entire film is simply a combination of the half a dozen or so half decent shots from this entire films runtime, quickly cut together into flash edits during the opening of the third act. and even that feels like a lazy way to make the film look sharper than it is because its essentially recycling.

In fact, the only original thing this film DOES manage to do well, is it’s FINALLY ditched off the old warbly, tinny and unpleasent operatic/classical score that’s been a staple of these films since the mid 60s. Here its still classical sounding orchestral stuff…But its cleaner, sharper sounding and a bit more interesting and kind on the ear. I welomed it…I just wish it was under better circumstances.

‘Hellish Flesh’ to me felt like a director, tired of the treadmill but unable to do much of anything else. A year after this film came out, ‘Halloween’ would release and redefine horror for the next 20 years (at least) and as such, its hard not to look at this film and feel its really quite dated.

I feel like José has been coasting since about 1972, developing a strong indentity, but within an increasingly creaky format. I suppose in modern terms it would be like finding someone who’s REALLY good at making Marvel movies…Its an era thats had its time and is thoroughly done…but our guy continues to plumb away at it, despite increasing redundancy.

‘Hellish Flesh’ is a slow, creaking offering that offers very little in the way of the innovation José was developing some 10 years prior. It feels tired. and I feel with one more ‘contemporary’ film to check out from this period of Josés filmography, things arnt going to get much better…

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/hellish-flesh/