A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

.Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

And without Mr. Cushing this would be a sorry little film indeed. Inspite of some nice Cornish backgrounds and the aforementioned star this is a film which gets more demented the longer it goes on, has a very dated 60s party scene (with a spontaneous fashion-shoot happening which kick-starts the plot) and a gang of thugs that have to be seen to be believed.The film does have its moments, notably Cushing's murder of a prostitute - all sweaty wrestling and stabbing, with female toplessness in the ahem, continental version - and a superbly acted train murder with Valerie Van Ost getting more and more creeped-out over our eminent surgeon's behaviour. But this goes for nothing when the thugs raid Cushing's holiday home. They are the most pathetic gang ever put on screen. They even have David Lodge as a gimpy fiend - a performance so unintentionally funny it should really have made it into a comedy.Cush and his rather young-for-him fiancée (Sue Lloyd), turn up at a swinging sixties party which is almost as hilarious as Mr. Lodge. "If you want to get struck off you've come to the right place." Our hero, as mentioned, is a gifted surgeon you see, which comes in handy when he gets into a fight with Tony Booth (Van Helsing versus the Scouse Git from Alf Garnett!) accidentally causing a powerful lamp to topple and ruin Ms Lloyd's face.If Polanski's Repulsion showed men as sexist pigs, this film shows women as conniving obsessed-with-their-looks Lady Macbeths. Only a young-looking Kate O'Mara bucks this trend.Cushing does a bit of research and with the aid of some pilfered glands he restores his girlfriend's good looks. It wears off though, and he resorts to murder to keep her beautiful.Much of this is ripped from the old Bela Lugosi disaster THE CORPSE VANISHES, and also THE MAN WHO COULD CHEAT DEATH. It ends in a death by laser body pile up, with virtually the entire cast getting it. With a better script this might have worked but all I was left with was a sense of bemusement! Not one of Cushing's better vehicles.

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.

Among the wackier films starring Peter Cushing. Surgeon Cushing is forced to steal pituitary glands from women in order to restore the face of his maimed girlfriend Sue Lloyd. Lloyd, a swinging model, becomes more and more demanding as her face gets more and more scarred. There's plenty of ensuing debauchery in director Robert Hartford-Davis clever movie. It's part horror, part love story, part home invasion movie and even part mod (there's a very BLOW UP like party scene and the music by Bill McGuffie is a lot of fun). This is very blunt, in your face (no pun intended) thriller. Cushing and Lloyd have great chemistry and there's a gang of goons headed by Phillip Manikum that has to be seen to be believed. If they weren't so nasty, you'd mistake them for Harvey Lembeck and his crew from the Beach Party movies.

After a model's face is burned by a lamp during a scuffle between a surgeon and a salacious photographer, the doctor (who had hopes of marrying the girl) promises to do everything he can to restore her beauty. Screenwriters Derek and Donald Ford concocted this twisted British blood-letter, a violent though somewhat muted variation on 1960's "Les yeux sans visage". Here, the mad doctor doesn't need to kill innocent lovelies for their faces--he needs their pituitary glands! Peter Cushing amusingly begins the picture a dapper, celebrated professional, and his descent into madness is quite a jolt; Sue Lloyd (who resembles Jill St. John) is also good as the vain, shrewish woman who becomes totally dependent on the need for fresh victims. The Swinging London atmospherics are heavily put-on, and the jazzy score from Bill McGuffie is occasionally inappropriate or over-emphatic. The third act, with the doctor and his girlfriend descended upon by thugs at their seaside home, becomes too hysterical, leading to an unsatisfying wrap-up. Still, a good-looking '60s slasher with some tightly-edited sequences and ghoulish suspense. ** from ****