Flesh and Blood is a 1985 romantic 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 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.

[4] 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.

They meet for the first time and eat from a mandrake to magically fall in love, and later the entourage is attacked and robbed by Martin's band.

Using a new medical technique Steven learned (cutting the buboes on the infected body), Hawkwood cures his plague.

He cannot continue the siege alone but, before leaving for additional troops, he and the physician, Father George, catapult pieces of an infected dog into the castle.

[5] After tiring of attempting to have his controversial Dutch films subsidized by the government, Verhoeven looked elsewhere for funding for Flesh and Blood, eventually securing most of the budget from Hollywood studio Orion Pictures.

"[3] In addition to a cast featuring American, Australian, British, Spanish and Dutch actors, attempting to handle an international co-production funded by multiple sources who all wanted to take the film in different directions overwhelmed Verhoeven, who had also not storyboarded the film in a bid to achieve a "looser visual approach".

[3] There were a number of delays and disagreements because of the subsequent improvisational style of filming; many members of the cast and crew also arrived and left when they pleased to party on a local beach.

[3] One of the most notable disagreements was between Verhoeven and Hauer, who wanted to cultivate a reputation for playing heroic characters rather than villains, as he did in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982).

[3] This was at odds with Verhoeven's intent to portray the moral ambiguity of its characters and the Middle Ages as a "stinking time in which to live" to distance it from typical medieval fantasy depictions of the period.

Flesh and Blood's musical score was composed by Basil Poledouris, conducting the London Symphony Orchestra.

Verhoeven has hypothesized on the reasons for the film's failure at the American box office in the years since its release, including statements that it was "too cynical and downbeat" to be a hit.

[3] In addition to this, his previous films, notably Spetters (1980), had been protested by members of the Dutch public and it had become difficult to gain financing to shoot productions in his home country.

Club wrote in his review: "From the start of his career, Dutch director Paul Verhoeven has mostly focused on making violent, sexy genre pieces—often punishing, often absurd, and always placed in the context of a moralistic pessimism.

Verhoeven’s 1985 English-language film debut Flesh and Blood wallows in mud and misery, with Rutger Hauer playing an early-16th-century mercenary who leads a troupe of undesirables in a revolt against a deadbeat lord, and Jennifer Jason Leigh playing a virginal lady who’s kidnapped by the rebels and becomes Hauer’s (mostly) willing mate.