1985 film by Paul Verhoeven
Flesh and Blood is a 1985 erotic historical adventure film directed by Paul Verhoeven, and starring Rutger Hauer, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tom Burlinson, Susan Tyrrell, Ronald Lacey, Bruno Kirby and Jack Thompson. The script was written by Verhoeven and Gerard Soeteman. The story is set in 1501 in early modern Italy, and follows two warring groups of mercenaries and their longstanding quarrel.
The script is partly based on unused material for the Dutch television series Floris, which was the debut for Verhoeven, Soeteman and Hauer. The film, originally titled God's Own Butchers, was also known as The Rose and the Sword on early VHS releases. It was Verhoeven's first English-language film.
Upon its release in August 1985, Flesh and Blood was a box office bomb, earning only US$100,000 on a US$6.5 million production budget. The film has since garnered a small cult following. The director's biographer called it "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."
Plot summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.