The Flesh and Blood Show 1972

Carol Edwards, [Candace Glendenning], and Jane Pruitt, [Judy Matheson], are among a group of unemployed actors gathered by an anonymous producer to perform a stage play titled The Flesh and Blood Show. The performers arrive at the Dome Theatre, a dreary, abandoned venue on a windswept seaside pier, where rehearsals are slated to begin. Inside, they are met by John, [David Howey], and Tony Weller, [Tristan Rogers], along with Mike, [Ray Brooks], the play’s director, and Angela, [Penny Meredith], who have already arrived. Julia Dawson, [Jenny Hanley], is yet to come, a newcomer who has recently forged a film career, and her presence will soon intertwine with the cast’s uneasy dynamic.

With local hotels closed due to the off-season, the company is forced to stay in the theatre during rehearsals, turning the space into a claustrophobic backdrop for their ambitions and frailties. On the first night, Carol and Tony sleep together, leaving Jane to share a room with Angela, who makes advances toward her that John witnesses. In the stillness of the night, Angela disappears, and the group is jolted awake by distant screams. Mike makes a grim discovery: Angela’s severed head lies in the basement, while her body appears to be strapped to a prop guillotine. He keeps this horrific find a secret, even as a gloved figure is seen fondling the severed head elsewhere in the building. When police are summoned, they find only mannequin heads scattered about and no trace of Angela’s body, dismissing Mike’s account as a trick of the mind. A note, supposedly written by Angela, claims she had to quit the play.

Julia arrives in the small hours and, as she walks with Mike the next day, she confesses a sense of déjà vu while inside the theatre. Mike then opens up about the night before, recounting Angela’s gruesome discovery. That same night, after a violent confrontation between Carol and Tony, she wanders along the pier and is confronted by a cloaked figure who brandishes a butcher knife before the attacker flees. Mike later learns that John is now missing as well, and Inspector Walsh begins to probe a string of troubling incidents—Dome Theatre’s eerie atmosphere amplifying every clue.

Meanwhile, Sarah Hales, a new arrival who stays with her aunt, Mrs. Saunders, is hired as Angela’s replacement. Mrs. Saunders, a kindly if enigmatic presence,, becomes a focal point for the troupe as Major Bell—who is actually Sir Arnold Gates—observes the rehearsals. The locals recount the theatre’s dark history: during World War II, Gates’s deranged co-star Harry Mulligan and Gates’s wife Pamela vanished, leaving behind a chilling mystery that hints at deeper sins.

As the nights grow more tense, Carol returns to retrieve a costume from the basement and is locked in by Tony as a prank. A flashlight-wielding figure nears, revealing two skeletal remains, and Carol is attacked. Two fishermen later discover Carol floating near the pier, gravely injured and then dying in hospital, prompting Walsh to press the case further. Mike insists the killer is not a mere product of fear, arguing that John may be connected to Angela’s fate, and the investigation widens.

During a tense rehearsal, someone begins to manipulate the stage lights, and a nude corpse appears in an upper wing—Sarah’s body, or so it seems—prompting panic in the dressing rooms. A voice recites lines from Othello, and the figure steps into view as Major Bell. A dramatic flashback unravels the truth: Bell is, in fact, Sir Arnold Gates, who once attacked his wife and co-star Harry after an affair. He bound and starved them in a locked room beneath the theatre, then departed with his young daughter. Gates wanders the theatre in a fugue, until Inspector Walsh arrives and apprehends him. In the final revelation, Julia is Gates’s daughter, the child he abandoned after killing Pamela and Harry, a chilling twist that binds the present tragedy to the theatre’s haunted past and confirms that the cycle of violence has circled back to consume the living.