Kyla's Blog

Monday Movie Musings - Flesh+Blood August 25, 2025

I watched the following film cuz Rutger Hauer, and about two weeks after watching, I played my song The League at a gig and there was a filmaker in the audience who also loves Rutger Hauer and he hadn’t seen salute of the Jugger, but he brought this film up and we were able to connect over how good it is.

It also has made us decide to watch Showgirls at some point. I remember it being universally panned at the time, but Paul Verhoevan stands by it and I’m assuming that the studios probably tried to sell a different film than they got and that’s why it didn’t hit right. Will report back.

Flesh+Blood (1985) Rated R

7/10

Solid and gritty medieval fare

Date Watched: Apr 5, 2025

Note, I put a Spoiler Tag on this on IMDb, but I’m not sure I needed to.

The best part about this movie is everyone in it sucks. There’s no good guys or bad guys. Just people, doing their thing for their own reasons.

It’s filled with unwashed plague ridden filth, rape and pillaging, religious fervor, plague gore, medieval medicine gore, a few laughs even, a fair bit of despair, and life goes on.

I enjoyed the story, I thought it was well written and well acted. Apparently the love triangle was a concession to the studios, but I thought it was handled really well. It made sense to me that Agnes would do what she had to do to survive, and that a guy like Martin would get caught up in all the excitement.

I also appreciated that there was a very regular every day depiction of a gay couple in this film, and I liked that the ending continued with the theme that people are people and amid hardship and strife, life still goes on.