Watch Corruption For Free

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

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!!!

Once again a predictable horror film is lifted by the presence of Peter Cushing in the starring role who makes this film something of a minor classic. CORRUPTION tells the old story of a surgeon whose wife/girlfriend is facially scarred, and who must take tissue/organs from other living women in order to replenish the features of his wife. Of course the plot is borrowed from EYES WITHOUT A FACE yet refreshingly updated to the modern (well, '60s) day in swinging London, a place populated by mini-skirted dancers, sleazy photographers and jazzy music. Cushing is the upper-crust surgeon who is seriously out of place in the film's opening snazzy party, yet you know from the start that his character will change and sure enough, it's not long before he's rolling up the shirt sleeves to adopt his more familiar Baron Frankenstein role of grisly surgeon.However, CORRUPTION is a little bit more complicated than that. You see the script focuses on a little something called characterisation which a lot of movies miss. Cushing isn't a cold-blooded killer in this film, in fact he HATES killing. It makes him feel sick! The driving force behind the murders is his girlfriend Lynn, who is just like Lady Macbeth in Macbeth. Due to her vanity and her obsession with modelling, she demands Cushing to repeatedly restore her face when it decays and has no moral scruples about him killing in order to do so. Sue Lloyd plays Lynn, and is pretty good in the role although she does go somewhat over the top at the end.The film's first murder is a real shocking scene. In fact it was filmed in two versions, the soft and the hard. In the "soft" version - released in Western countries - we see Cushing enter the home of the prostitute and stab her in the stomach whilst embracing. This is bad enough as it is, but in the film's "hard" version - released in Europe - the previous version seems tame by comparison. Here, the prostitute takes her top off before wrestling Cushing to the ground. He ends up stabbing her and smearing blood over her naked torso. The next moment we see him sawing the head off her corpse like in a scene from BLOOD FEAST! If you never imagined old-fashioned Cushing in a splatter movie then this is the scene to see. It's certainly the sleaziest and most explicit scene he's ever shot.Well, Cushing is great in this film. He walks a fine line between being scary and being sympathetic. Watching him go into a despairing frenzy (with his hair all out of place and his clothes ruffled) as he kills the girls is pretty heartbreaking stuff. Then again watch the scene in the train carriage where he stares at the blonde girl. You can't get any creepier than that! This just goes to prove what a great actor Cushing was. Despite being a brutal murderer he also elicits the audience's sympathy and you end up rooting for him at the finale. A fine performance which goes above the call of duty, and which would be more at place in an A-film instead of a B-movie.The supporting cast is a pretty interesting one too, with lots of offbeat characters. For instance check out 'Groper' one of the members of the gang at the end of the film: you can't get much sleazier or more disturbing than this violent and dirty old man! Diana Ashley, Valerie Van Ost and Vanessa Howard lend glamour as potential victims. Kate O'Mara also pops up in a bizarrely non-glamorous role as Lynn's sister, Val. The highlight is seeing Tony Booth appear as a glamour photographer demanding his model to strip her clothes off.In all, this is an above average film bolstered by strong characters and a tour-de-force turn from the ever-haunted Cushing. The murders are truly disturbing without being graphic (apart from in that continental version, heh) and the ending is fantastic. A modern horror film which rises above the trappings of the genre thanks to an intelligent script and a good cast, this is definitely director Robert Hartford-Davis' best movie, and a near-classic at that. Probably the nearest that Cushing ever got to a strong contemporary horror, although this came probably about twenty years too early for our country's weak-stomached watchers.

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.

Sir John Rowen is a world renowned plastic surgeon . Invited to a groovy sixties party in London by his fiancé Lynn who is a model he gets in to a violent argument with a party guest during which a lamp falls and disfigures Lynn This is a film I remember very well from childhood . Peter Cushing was part of my childhood life due to one of his films being constantly shown on Friday nights on ITV and I'm sure everyone who's commentated on this page knows what I'm talking about . This stuck out because it's not often you see Cushing playing a bad guy . Even in the Hammer FRANKENSTEIN series he's not someone who struck me as all that bad but in CORRUPTION he's a serial killer and that's why he comes across as being cast against type . Of course as an adult I might have considered Rowen as being more of an anti-hero driven by his desire for Lynn but as an adult I noticed how mean , nasty and incredibly daft CORRUPTION is as a film It's an obvious reworking of the Jack The Ripper theme where a brilliant surgeon goes around murdering women because the only woman that matters in the world is the one you love . The idea is sound but nothing in the film itself seems credible . Sue Lloyd plays Lynn as a character who veers from being a bit of slapper to out and out psycho . Perhaps it's alluding to MACBETH but it's a film never sophisticated and certainly not subtle enough to suggest this and Cushing and Lloyd never make a couple who don't bare much grounding in any reality Reality isn't the film's strong point . When Rowen and Lynn attend a right on happening party in swinging sixties London and within seconds some young hippy chick is hitting on Rowen with a chat up line of " Hey how's your kiss of life ? " Let me get this straight - some girl who doesn't look older than 18 is trying to chat up a bloke who looks 60 ? " I've never taken powder or pills but I've attended raves where the ravers were all off their heads on ecstasy and this has never happened to me . On top of that we've got Tony Blair's father in law pretending he's David Baailey cross bred with Austin Powers with cool lines of dialogue " Hey baby undo your dress take it off " . Come to think of it maybe Rowen got invited to the party because he can dish out prescriptions of penicillin ? The guests look like they could use some As it transpires the party took place as a plot function because the film needs an inciting incident where Lynn is disfigured and gives a reason for Rowen to become a serial killer and murder young woman and take their pituitary glands so he can restore Lynn to her previous beauty . I know you have to suspend disbelief in these type of films but the way things work out in this film it might be easier to suspend disbelief in the tooth fairy . Take the scene where Rowen murders a woman on the train . He sits in the carriage with her and she instantly becomes terrified even though he's done absolutely nothing to yet suggest he means her any harm . Obviously he's about to murder a fortune teller . Mind you he does stab her to death and cut her head off and he hardly gets any blood on him so that's convenient he killed someone with a lack of blood The whole film continues in this vain such as Rowen chasing a young woman called Terry who is wearing high heels and a skin tight micro mini skirt who moves at the pace of a dead snail and yet seems unable to catch her . Terry as it turns out was a honeytrap used by a gang of hip young crooks one of whom is called Groper and is played by the prolific and middle aged David Lodge and there's no way you can believe any crook would be hanging around with Groper who communicates by grunting , laughing , eating apples , sticking a glass in peoples faces and smashing things up . The film ends with every major character who appeared in the film being killed by a laser probe followed by a flashback to the inciting incident . Except it's not a flashback because the continuity is entirely different . Perhaps everything up to this point has been a premonition by Rowen and he finds his premonition is about to be come true ? In a way this might make an internal sense I've got to be honest and say this must have been one of the meanest , misogynistic and misanthropic films of the 1960s . It's absolutely deranged film making and yet there's something about that makes it rather watchable and you find yourself not enjoying it but unable to not continue watching . It's possibly because it is such a mental film that it has an almost hypnotic quality on this audience member