renowned cinematographer freddie francis ( glory and the elephant man ) direct this pretty bad horror or drama film . 19th century england have a different view of how the practice of medicine should be handle than dr. thomas rock and the law state that only the body of hung criminal can be study and experiment on . but the stockpile of these body be a small one and and rock need more and he prefer them fresher . be a maverick within his circle and he begin to pay people to find body for him to study and test on . desperate sleazebags robert fallon and timothy broom get wind of this job opportunity and begin to murder people and sell these body to rock . naturally and this kind of action have even bad consequence than practice on the dead body of non criminal and and lead to trouble for everyone . while the overall story sound intrigue on paper and almost everything about the doctor and the devil be laughably bad . after the first fifteen minute of the film you be already begin to question your decision of sit down to watch the film . the entire look of the film be just ugly . see a how the film take place in the slum of england during the 19th century and the filmmaker be probably go for an ugly look and but they do not do it in an artful way . everything from the set to the cinematography just look cheap and feeble and and disgust . also and just about everything scene be fill with something that you simply can not take seriously and and most of the time this have to do with someone ( both in the small and large role ) do something that look or sound completely ridiculous . francis sure do not help out his actor much . jonathan pryce and stephen rea play the twisted buddy of the film and fallon and broom respectively and and be very bombastic but very bad . their character be by nature crazy and but pryce and rea overact the part to death . they especially have trouble keep the same accent from shot to shoot pryce in particular go from cockney to irish to long john silver to some kind of lagoon creature and so on and so forth . it also a humor riot to see twiggy in this film at all and let alone play an in demand street whore and since she can not act to save her life ( though her song during the final credit isn not so funny ) . boy she sure come a long way represent from flower power to i will take mee clothes off for a shillin . as bad a those three actor be in this film and julian sand take home the award for the bad performance of the film . he be just as lame a it get and give one laugh out loud attempt after another at portray anger and love and happiness and anxiety pick an emotion and any emotion . there only one good thing about the doctor and the devil represent timothy dalton performance of dr. rock . despite be surround by cinematic sewage and dalton be quite excellent while give an electric portrayal of an overly driven yet good natured man . too bad the rest of the film could not have be as good a mr. dalton .