Purely Joyful Movie!

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Did anyone else watch the true horror rarity that TCM showed recently? The film was "Corruption" (1968), and as a matter of fact, it is so rare that I had never even heard of it before. This film is another retread of the great French horror film from 1960, "Eyes Without a Face," but it branches off into different directions from that earlier classic. Here, the great Peter Cushing stars as a prominent surgeon who is dating a much younger woman, a fashion model (Sue Lloyd, whose work I had just admired in "The Ipcress File"). He attends a swinging party with her (yes, the film does take place during the swinging mod London of 1968) and gets into a fight with a fashion photographer there. During the fight, a floodlight crashes down on his girlfriend's face, burning and scarring her. Cushing swears to restore her looks. He removes the glands of a cadaver at his hospital and inserts the glandular fluid into his girlfriend's face, also using a laser in the process. The treatment works, but only temporarily, and Cushing soon realizes that he must procure glands from LIVING specimens. Thus, he murders one beautiful blonde woman while on a moving train, and, in his cottage in the country (beautiful shots of the White Cliffs are featured in the film), lures in a female hippie drifter to be his next victim. The picture ends with as bonkers a spectacle as one could wish for, with just about all the film's major characters, as well as some nasty house invaders, killed off by that wildly out-of-control laser beam. This film was directed by somebody named Robert Hartford-Davis, who does a marvelous job here. The print of this obscure movie that TCM showed the other night looks fantastic in wide screen, with brilliant colors and high-def images. I believe the film was recently issued on the Grindhouse Releasing label. Cushing, need I even say, is just terrific in this role as the doctor who becomes increasingly unhinged during his mission to restore his girlfriend's looks, only to repent when things have already gone too far. There is really no predicting where this bizarre film will turn next, and the picture surely does have some surprises up its sleeve...right up to those head-scratching final 30 seconds. Very much recommended for your viewing pleasure!!!

Diabolical mad surgeon flick is unlike any Peter Cushing film you are liable to see. You can't help (and others have pointed this out) but couple "Corruption" with "Eyes Without a Face" as there is a select subgenre dealing with surgery and how deformity caused by accident can lead to some dark places. Cushing portrays as aging, but brilliant surgeon who is obsessed with a stunning model named Lynn (Sue Lloyd) he's engaged to marry. While she is perhaps too young for him and totally inserted in the "swinging 60s hippy youth culture" (also an oft-mentioned element of the film by others; which is rather fascinating considering how Cushing looks so incompatible to the active, rambunctious, loose, liberal, and noisy crowd gathered at a photographer's pad in London's party-hearty, lost-in-the-moment, spry youth scene), Cushing, a knighted, well-respected, gentlemanly, mannered, and seemingly held-together surgeon, would seem to be an odd match for her. But when a high-strung photographer (played by a demanding Anthony Booth with a personality that beckons the universe to center around him) wants all of Lynn's attention (and to get frisky and openly sensual in front of his camera as the party soon turns their eyes to them), Cushing's Sir John Rowan isn't so willing to just stand in the background and let all of this get out of hand. However, the photographer is determined to shoot her whether he likes it or not, so a scuffle ensues which results in a flood lamp (those lamps that emphasizes a great deal of light in the illumination of models) scarring the face of Lynn. This event sends Rowan into a quest to discover a method behind "curing" the facial trauma, which includes historical data from the Egyptians, fresh glands from murdered girls, and a laser that eventually does more than what is intended (as the ending tells us with bodies dropping like flies as it moves uncontrollably from one side of the room to another).Certainly the film will be most notable for the central performances of Cushing and Lloyd. Cushing shocked me in this film considering the kind of character he embodies. This picture of a notable authority in the medical field, having to nurture a career of calm and intellect, rational and clear-minded, just becomes folly for a narcissistic model totally beholden to this monstrous vanity was quite unlike any part Cushing has really ever played. That his surgeon would commit the ghastly crimes which require beheading young women, and that Lloyd would urge and demand him to keep doing so just so she could maintain her good looks gives the film this nasty quality that makes you almost want to take a shower just to clean it off you. Both actor and actress dedicate wholly to their parts, that's for sure. Lloyd becomes so crazed, it becomes camp, especially at the end when she turns on Cushing, wanting to use the leader of a gaggle of hoods who raid their seaside cottage for loot in order to forcefully convince further facial gland surgery! The camera-work is quite in-your-face and flashy, with a style that adds pizazz to the insanity that unfolds. The ending is compellingly enigmatic offering perhaps a worst case scenario to the good doctor if he allowed himself to become overwhelmed with jealousy. Whether or not what we have just seen actually happens is left for us to guess.Noel Trevarthen is Steve, Cushing's surgical colleague and moral compass while Kate O'Mara is Lloyd's sister, the reasonable member of the Nolan family. They have the misfortune of interrupting the killer laser struggle, not accomplishing what they hoped to. The final chapter of the film kind of introduces this posse of degenerates (a neanderthal used as muscle, a hungry gal with rude disregard for manners, the husband of a young woman that stayed the night at the cottage, soon ran down and strangled in a fight with Cushing, demanding to know where she is) out of the blue and it sort of feels like plot ambush considering how unexpected it is...perhaps intended as this leads to the downfall of the film's villains.

Corruption is directed by Robert Hartford-Davis and written by Derek and Donald Ford. It stars Peter Cushing, Sue Lloyd, Noel Trevarthen, Kate O'Mara and David Lodge. Music is by Bill McGuffie and cinematography by Peter Newbrook.When an accident badly scars the face of his young fiancée, skilled surgeon Sir John Rowan (Cushing) discovers a way to restore her face to normal by using a serum derived out of the pituitary gland. Unfortunately the treatment is only successful for a short period of time, and so the doctor is sent on a murderous spree of gland harvesting so as to keep his betrothed beautiful.Heads you win...I wasn't sure if I had been dreaming the other night? I found myself in the swanky and swinging 1960s, where mini-skirts and energetic dancing was the norm. Into this garishly flecked world was Peter Cushing as a mad surgeon type, cutting off heads, wrestling with naked women, hanging around with prostitutes. He has got a trophy wife, where Sue Lloyd is 26 years Peter's junior, and Sue is playing a conniving - come - psychotic - bitch. There was even some sort of bonkers laser weapon, and a home invasion sequence where carnage ensues, and all around is the faint whiff of Guignol excess, but the delirium is disgustingly enjoyable. A corruption of the soul most pleasing...But I did have a touch of influenza, dosed up to eyeballs with medicine and grain mash liquor, so I'm sure it was all a dream/nightmare/hallucination. But then again maybe not? 7/10

Talking to a friend about Horror related movie clips that they had recently discovered on Youtube,the one which instantly stood out from the pack was a "deleted scene" from a near forgotten 1967 Horror movie starring Peter Cushing!. Checking round online for info about the film,I was shocked to discover that this movie is said to be the only one the Peter Cushing (who agreed to do the movie,due to it being filmed near by to where he was looking after his very ill wife.) found truly unsettling to work on.Quickly finding out that no edition of this distinctive film was available on Amazon,I decided to do an extensive search,until I eventually ran into the completely uncut "France cut"! of the movie,which would give me a chance to view this corrupt operation in full.The plot:Getting himself caught up in a shoving match with a photographer over the photographer wanting the female model to "show more skin",surgeon Sir John Rowan accidentally causes a camera light to fall and land on his girlfriend and wannabe model Lynn Nolan.Pushing everyone else to the side,Rowan rushes to pull the now set a blaze light off Nolan.Reaching her in the nick of time,John is able to save Lynn from certain death,but is sadly unable to save half of Nolan's beautiful face from being burnt.Taking it upon himself to look after Lynn's every need,Rowan soon begins to relies that no matter how much of his heart he gives to her,Nolan will always see her self as a "beast" due to the damage that he has done to her.Finding all his other ideas to fail in repairing Lynn's skin,Rowan begins to consider about doing an "expirmeant" on Nolan,which will involve him having to kill young women,so that he can cut out glands from their faces and put them into Lynn's,so the she can finally see herself to be as beautiful on the outside as John sees her on the inside.View on the film:Opening this terrifically psycho film on the sight of Peter Cushing being in the middle of a "happening" party,director Robert Hartford- Davis gives the movie a real grubby sticky feeling which is most prominent in scenes such as Sir John Rowan operating on the unlucky victims,and also when one of the paternal victims (a prostitute) shows Rowan that she wont take his murdering ways laying down!.Along with the moments of grubbiness,Davis shows a real skill in building up tension for two of the best scenes in the film,with a scene on a train having Davis cleverly use the "steam" soundtrack to match the increasing heartbeats of the characters,and also turn a simple "walk along the beach" into a sped-up proto-Slasher moment.Being the centre of attention in a wonderfully mix 'N' match cast,which features the future father in law of Tony Blair, (Anthony Booth) a star from the Carry On series (David Lodge) and an unexpectedly great,mean and cunning performance from Soap star Sue Lloyd,Peter Cushing's clear unease over the activates that Sir John partakes in Derek and Donald Ford's well paced mad scientist turned on its head plot,helps to give Rowan a more "natural" personality then simply being a crazy doctor.With the growing relationship between Lynn and John being the main thread of the story,Ccushing always impressively makes sure that Rowan's reasons for going to these extremes,as Cushing shows John to always give Lynn,a quiet tender hopefulness,which eventually leads to Rowan being blinded in seeing Nolan slowly becoming increasingly cunning and deranged.