The Flesh and the Fiends, also known as Mania, is one of those pleasant surprises. It is a very good film with excellent acting, a thorough, thought-provoking script, suspenseful direction, and quite a jarring, almost twisted/perverted mood. I was genuinely surprised just how good this film was, because I had heard so little about it. But I can honestly say that I found it a highly enjoyable, disturbing, horrific film. Where to begin? Let's start first with the story. The story covers old ground here(The Body Snatcher with Boris Karloff for instance precurses this)about those two infamous body snatchers of Scotland Burke and Hare and the doctor who needs dead bodies to help find cures for the sick - Dr. Knox. This film is pretty faithful to those stories. What really helps this come alive is three characterizations done by three highly gifted actors: Peter Cushing, Donald Pleasance, and George Rose. Rose plays Burke and Pleasance plays Hare and I do not think I have seen two men play such vile, degenerate men as well as these two do. They both ooze oil and shed scales with their portrayals of heartless, cold, ignorant men who don't want to work and find that there is easy money in grave robbing. Soon they find it is even easier to just kill then dig up bodies(in fact they do not dig up ONE body in this film). Rose is snaggle-toothed and has a real weird twitching laugh. He is just plain repulsive and this is one of his finest characterizations in film. The same can be said for Pleasance who also plays a bad man with such conviction. Both he and Rose fit like gloves together. But as good as these two are, the real star of the film is that wonderful, under-appreciated British screen stalwart Peter Cushing, who makes cold stoicism seem so easy. Cushing plays Dr. Knox as a heartless man only concerned with science and who never really wants to think about where these bodies that he pays for come from. Cushing plays the role to the hilt in several scenes. My favorite is where he argues with "colleagues" about their medical shortcomings, saying, "incline your heads to the right Gentlemen. There you will find the door. I suggest you use it." I love his ability to be so arrogant and yet so witty and convincing. Cushing even goes through some kind of a catharsis in this film which he does as only he can. Director John Gilling, a great Hammer film director, shows us why he was to make such good films as Plague of the Zombies. He is very sure behind the lens and knows how to pace and create suspenseful scenes. Mania is a very good film that, despite its above-average acting and directing, should make you think a bit about several philosophical/moral/ethical questions. Questions that may have changed shape today but still exist in some form.