Corruption

Let's all be glad that Grindhouse has released a really pristine DVD of the elusive "Corruption". This really, really odd relic from 1968 looks very much like tableaux from some department store windows, from the fashions to the stilted action that takes place. Nothing looks real, seems real, or sounds real.

"Corruption" is pretty much a product of it's time. It appears to be a Hammer Films product, from the starring presence of Peter Cushing to the claustrophobic interiors, but it's actually a Columbia Pictures release. In the genre of "crazy doctor tries to restore woman's face with bad science", this movie is the stepchild of "Eyes Without A Face" and even "Atom Age Vampire" as well as a pinch of "The Leech Woman" thrown in from years earlier. This time, the old story is dressed up in mini-skirts and groovy Carnaby Street duds, featuring an incredibly vain "model" who's the much younger girlfriend of surgeon Peter Cushing. At a happening party hosted by a thinly veiled Andy Warhol wannabe, the model is disfigured by an overheated photo lamp falling on her face. Unfortunately, her doctor boyfriend is responsible for the accident by attempting to punch out the Warhol stand-in, who was trying to get nudie shots of the model. Vain, and now disfigured, said model wants to die but the love-struck doctor saves her face by using nefarious surgical and laser treatments. Naturally, the treatment doesn't last long, so the doc has to stop using corpses for his raw materials and turns to murder.

The twist here is that the vain girlfriend knows all about the sources for her treatment, and eventually goads the doc into committing more crime to make her pretty. These two lovebirds retreat to a seaside getaway, where they encounter the cleanest hippies on film, who attempt robbery but meet karma at the end of a laser. This laser, which is the low budget version of the device used on James Bond in "Goldfinger" appears to be a psychotic dental drill that cuts up and then sets fire to everything...and everybody.

"Corruption" is worth a look for cultists, who've heard about this but never seen it. Unavailable for many years, the new Grindhouse Releasing DVD is crisp, clean, and beautifully transferred. Included in the extras are the "French scenes" in which a topless prostitute is brutally murdered. Cushing brings his usual gravitas to the role of a doctor who'd do anything for love. The hippies are more thugs, despite the Nehru jackets and vinyl mod hats. The ending of this tale of depravity is pretty weird for 1968, tip-toeing into more graphic violence than usual. Mild by today's standards, but probably a shocker in it's time.

Of real interest here is actress Kate O'Mara, who would achieve everlasting fame as Patsy Stone's ancient Eurotrash sister in TV's "Absolutely Fabulous". It's difficult not to think of Ab Fab while Kate attempts to bring some sanity to the murderous goings-on. Worth seeing for Peter Cushing, and an incoherent hit-man hippie named Groper who must have won the second-runner up prize in a John Lennon lookalike contest. Watching him kill an apple is the scariest thing in this movie. Points for what's in the freezer!

I've always had a deep admiration for British actor Peter Cushing. He was, after all, able to convincingly portray such a wide range of characters on screen from Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Frankenstein, instilling each role with cool intelligence plus an element of human pathos. When one thinks of a Hammer horror film from the late 1950's through the ensuing fifteen years, inevitably(apart from his frequent co-star Christopher Lee)Cushing's name comes first to mind.

While CORRUPTION is not a Hammer film,(Columbia Pictures,surprisingly, is the distributor) it is a sheer delight for Cushing fans. Here, he portrays a respected surgeon who slowly goes insane, all for the love of his fiancé played by Sue Lloyd with her kitty claws rendered even sharper than the good doctor's scalpel. After a tragic accident which effectively ends her modeling career, Dr. Cushing works obsessively to repair the damage to poor disfigured Sue's face. Realizing the cure is to be found in the female pituitary gland, he wantonly murders and decapitates young, pretty lasses to achieve his goal.

After each of Cushing's kills in this flick, the camera graphically provides a distorted, fish eye lens view in which we see this eminent physician with hair disheveled and a manic look which has to be seen to be believed. Eventually, an overwhelming sense of guilt and shame reduces the doctor to a quivering mess of nerves as he tries to find solace in the bottle. He certainly won't find it in Sue. She has issues of her own which, in comparison, make Dr. Cushing look almost sane. The climax to all this blood & spatter is provided by a high powered laser(part of the cure,apparently, for Sue's face) which looks more at home in GOLDFINGER than a spartan medical lab.

CORRUPTION is a florid feast for the eyes,too, as we see swinging 1967 Carnaby Street fashions worn by both sexes. Anthony Booth really camps it up as an Andy Warhol wannabe portraying a fashion photographer who tries to shoot a nudie-cutie roll of film with Sue Lloyd to devastating results. Since this is 'Swinging London' there are mini-skirted girls aplenty, with special mention to bimbette Shirley Stelfox whom no party would be complete without. She doesn't wear flowers in her hair, but under her eyes.

CORRUPTION is a delirious roller coaster of madness, mayhem and a minimum of mirth. Character actor David Lodge does appear as a cretinous villain called 'Groper.' Watching him salute(don't ask why) is one of the highlights.

Anyway, after seeing CORRUPTION, don't be surprised if you feel uneasy opening the freezer door of your fridge. Some cold cuts are better left untouched.

This is one of those UK lost flicks that is really worth hunting down. It's so rare that a flick with the legendary Peter Cushing never had a proper release after the VHS rage. And again he gives a perfect performance as Sir John Rowan a surgeon.

When John got into a fight with a photographer picturing his wife suddenly one of the spots falls on her face. Heavily burned he feels guilty and discovers that he can restore the scarred face of his girlfriend by murdering other women and extracting fluids from their pituitary gland. Sadly the effect of repairing the face doesn't goes on forever and he has to kill again. But he got mixed emotions about it.

There are two versions of this flick around, both are hard to get, the first one the normal version and the second one the uncut strong version. The latter I saw and it is in the first killing, the whore, that there are differences. In the normal, cut, version you only see a knife and some dolls when he is killing the whore but in the strong version she goes naked and is stabbed to death and beheaded by the surgeon. And for the time being I can understand that it was rather gruesome.

All acting was good and some faces did make it, for the horror buffs Billy Murray (Rik) will be recognized in Doghouse (2009) and Dead Cert (2010). A rather good example of British horror worth hunting down, if you will ever find it....

Gore 1/5 Nudity 1/5 Effects 2/5 Story 3/5 Comedy 0/5

Veteran actor Peter Cushing depicts Sir John Rowan, an utmost genius and respectable surgeon. The passion for his work is only surpassed by his obsessive love for the lewd photo-model Lynn Nolan. When her pretty face gets badly burned in a very banal accident that Rowan jealously caused at a jet-set party, he swears to restore it. He performs an initially successful operation, using tissue and a particular facial gland of a recently deceased young woman, but the results are only temporary. In order to strengthen and prolong the effect of the gland, our doctor needs to use living tissue instead…

The plot of "Corruption" is one of the most derivative and clichéd ones in horror cinema. In 1959, in France, director Georges Franju delivered the penultimate genre landmark "Les Yeux Sans Visage" – "Eyes without a Face" – and particularly during the next two decades, the tale of fanatic scientists and obsessive surgeons murdering innocent young women in order to restore and maintain the youthful beauty of their own mutilated wives or daughters has been copied numerous times, most notably by Jess Franco ("The Awful Dr. Orloff), Sidney Hayers ("Circus of Horrors") and Terence Fisher ("The Man who could Cheat Death").

This version, helmed by Robert Hartford-Davies, isn't exactly what you'd call a masterpiece, but it definitely contains a couple of elements that make it noteworthy and recommendable for horror fans. For starters: the almighty Peter Cushing! He's one of my personal favorite actors of all times and, even though he played a lot of villainous roles in his lengthy career, this one feels rather special. Due to his naturally elegant charisma and typically British appearance and behavior, Cushing usually depicts the 'sophisticated' type of villains. You know; the type of evil mastermind who invents fiendish schemes but uses grisly minions to do the nasty work. His character here also seems very sophisticated (so much even that his choice of muse is highly implausible), but when he's forced to stalk and murder another poor victim to steal her glands, Dr. Rowan transforms into a relentless maniacal beast! The sequences in which the prowling Cushing goes berserk and literally butchers young girls, consecutively a prostitute and a random blond beauty on the train, are excessively vile and misogynic. Cushing, with pure insanity in his eyes and his hair all messed up, savagely stabs them to death and cuts off their heads in ways that are quite graphic for a British film released in 1968. Still, I'm thankful for Cushing's performance as well as for the gory make- up effects, since the rest of the movie is mediocre at best. The protagonists, Sir John Rowan and Lynn, are a mismatched couple, to say the least, and the extended finale set at Rowan's beachside cottage is overlong and exaggeratedly far-fetched. Like they haven't got enough trouble already, Rowan and Lynn are held captive by a troop of anti-menacing thugs and the whole thing ends rather hectically (and foolishly…) with an out-of-control laser machine. In case you're a fan of qualitative British horror from the sixties and seventies, I advise sticking to the Hammer productions or the Amicus anthology films. If, however, you watched all of those already and you want to see a different side of Peter Cushing, then I warmly recommend "Corruption".

After reading the plot description, I was expecting a British take on the French classic 'Eyes Without a Face'. There's a great deal of Eyes Without a Face rip offs going around; Jess Franco's pair The Awful Dr Orloff and Faceless being among the best of them, and there's nothing wrong with basing a film around that premise; but Corruption doesn't bring much, if anything, new to it and that's a shame as considering the people involved, this could have been a lot better. The film does carry the British style well, although clearly it was a much cheaper production than a lot of the Hammer films. The plot focuses on Sir John Rowan, a doctor who finds himself in a precarious position after an accident involving his wife. Unfortunately, the accident left her badly burned, and feeling responsible; the doctor tries to do something about it. He discovers that if he extracts fluid from women's pituitary glands, he can restore his wife's face - however, the effects are only temporary, leading the doctor to murder again and again to keep his wife beautiful!

Corruption is directed by Robert Hartford-Davis, a capable if not brilliant director behind decent horror 'The Black Torment' as well as rubbish such as Incense of the Damned. As mentioned, it's obvious that Hartford-Davis didn't have much of a budget to work with, although his direction is competent enough, if not particularly enthralling. The film's big draw is, of course, Peter Cushing who takes the lead role as the murderous doctor. Being a horror fan, I am naturally a big fan of the legendary Peter Cushing and always enjoy watching his movies. He doesn't put in a particularly great performance here, although he is still good to watch. It's really a shame he isn't better since the role is quite meaty and could have been made more of. The film was released in 1968 and considering that, the gore is fairly shocking; although the film hasn't aged too well and not a lot of the budget was spent on special effects. The film doesn't stay completely interesting for the duration but it never slows to a standstill or becomes completely boring. I can't recommend anyone goes out of their way to track this one down; but it's worth seeing if you can find it.