Flesh and Fantasy (1943)

An anthology of three loosely connected occult tales, with ironic and romantic twists.

Welcome Vinegar Syndrome Labs (VSL) to the VS Sub-Label family! As with each of our sub-labels we are hoping to expand and defy expectations with the diversity of films we restore and release. As the name implies, VSL will serve as a kind of testing area for releasing genres and eras of film that one might not immediately expect to come from VS. The ultimate objective of VSL will be to see if these types of films will find an audience, and if so, pursue and release more of them…and even if not, still serve as a means of restoring more of the weird, rare, and unusual movies you might not expect from Vinegar Syndrome.

A trilogy of tales of love and death.

First, a drowning during Mardi Gras leads to a bitter woman’s masked reckoning. Next, an upstanding citizen is driven to madness and murder by a palm reader’s prophesy. Finally, a circus tightrope walker is haunted by dreams of a mysterious woman and his own death.

One of the first horror anthology films made by an American studio – and two years before DEAD OF NIGHT – award-winning director Julien Duvivier (PÉPÉ LE MOKO) delivers FLESH AND FANTASY, three strange and at times surreal stories of the supernatural with an all-star cast that includes Edward G. Robinson (Soylent Green), Barbara Stanwyck (Double Indemnity), and Charles Boyer (Gaslight), who also co-produced. Stunningly photographed by Oscar® winner Stanley Cortez (THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER) and lushly scored by Oscar® nominee Alexander Tansman, Vinegar Syndrome Labs presents the Blu-ray debut of this landmark in 1940s genre filmmaking, newly restored in 2K and featuring insightful critical appreciations along with rare archival materials.