A band of medieval mercenaries take revenge on a noble lord who decides not to pay them by kidnapping the betrothed of the noble’s son. The young girl becomes obsessed with her captors.
EN
“Viewed in this way, Flesh + Blood is a crucial Verhoeven film, because the fight between logic and spirituality is one that is very familiar to the director; these are the elements still fighting for priority in his own mind. ‘For all its pessimism, its delight in the perverse, its fixation on disease and vice, Flesh + Blood has one glorious merit: it’s alive... If the movie is a failure, it’s the sort of failure one would gladly trade for dozens of pallid, reasonable, predictable successes. It’s offensive, but it surges at you, upsets you, forces out contradictory responses,’ the Los Angeles Times wrote immediately after the American premiere on Friday 30 August 1985.”
Rob Van Scheers1
“To a certain degree, there is Arnold Schwarzenegger, but I only worked with Arnold once, while with Rutger it was in many films. At a certain moment after Flesh + Blood, which was not a very happy shoot, we seperated. I think the fact that I have been concentrating on actresses ever since was because Rutger was gone. We had a falling out. Later, we resumed our friendship, but it was too late to make another film with him.”
J. E. Smyth in conversation with Paul Verhoeven2
