The Flesh and the Fiends

The Flesh and the Fiends US title Mania is a 1960 British horror film directed by John Gilling. It stars Peter Cushing as 19thcentury medical doctor Robert Knox, who purchases human corpses for research from a murderous pair named Burke and Hare George Rose and Donald Pleasence. The film is based on the true case of Burke and Hare, who murdered at leastpeople in 1828 Edinburgh, Scotland and sold their bodies for anatomical research.

Meanwhile, drunken miscreants William Burke George Rose and William Hare Donald Pleasence discover that a lodger at Burkes boarding house has died still owingin rent. When they find that the body can make them a handsome profit, they begin a career of murdering locals and selling them to the medical school. When Jackson goes to a local tavern to give Burke and Hare their pay, he becomes involved with tempestuous local prostitute Mary Patterson Billie Whitelaw, who is also wellknown to the killers.Over time, Jackson and Mitchell begin to suspect that the bodies supplied by Burke and Hare are victims of foul play. Despite their concerns, Dr. Knox dismisses any attempt at going to the police. When Jacksons new girlfriend Mary becomes their latest victim, Jackson discovers her body in the lecture room and he too is killed when he confronts the murderous duo. When they murder a wellknown mentally ill youth Melvyn Hayes, however, they quickly become murder suspects and are caught by an angry mob. Hare agrees to turn Kings Evidence against his former partner and is set free, though vindictive locals catch him and burn out his eyes. Burke is executed by hanging, still complaining that Dr. Knox never paid him for the final body. Knox, for his part in the killings, is the object of widespread public outrage, but ultimately not punished or censured by his colleagues to whom Dr. Mitchell eloquently defends him. Though he is free to continue lecturing, he ultimately feels guilt over his part in the horrors, admitting to his devoted niece Martha June Laverick that the murder victims seemed so small in my scheme of things. But I knew how they died. The film ends with Knox, who assumes his lectures will now be empty, instead finding himself greeted with applause from a packed hall of students. Apparently a changed man, he begins his lecture with the Hippocratic Oath which includes the promise to never do harm to anyone. ........

Source: Wikipedia