CORRUPTION (1968)

DIRECTED by  Robert Hartford Davis

SCREENPLAY by  Derek Ford

STARRING  -  Peter Cushing as Sir John Rowan,  Sue Lloyd as Lynn Nolan,  Tony Booth as Mike Orme,  Wendy Varnals as Terry,  David Lodge as Groper.

PLOT -  Sir John Rowan is one of England's leading plastic surgeons, he has everything - Money, power and prestige - he is also engaged to a woman 26 years his junior - top fashion model - Lynn Nolan.

One night, John and Lynn attend a fashionable party in the heart of swinging London. There they encounter sleazy photographer - Mike Orme. Mike suggests a photoshoot of Lynn whilst the wild party is happening, Lynn agrees. Sir John becomes angry with Mike's flirtatious and suggestive behaviour towards his fiancee and a fight breaks out. A lighting rig is knocked over in the brawl and falls onto Lynn, burning and scaring her face in the process. 

Consumed with guilt over his part in the accident - Sir John becomes obsessed with healing Lynn's scarred face and giving her back her lost beauty.  He discovers a process whereby transplanting the Pituitary gland from a dead patient, mixed with the application of Laser technology results in Lynn's injuries being completely healed.

Or so it would seem. However, the process is unstable and Lynn's disfigurement returns. Realising that the stolen Pituitary gland needs constantly replenishing, and encouraged by the increasingly unstable Lynn, Sir John embarks upon a killing spree - beheading young women and stealing thier vital Pituitary glands in an attempt to maintain Lynn's looks.

Sir John and Lynn spiral downwards into a cycle of corruption, madness and murder - and then things start to get REALLY bizarre...

DIALOUGE  -  Mike (to a newly healed Lynn who is trying to get her modelling career back on track) -  " I made you. "  Lynn - " You think you made me ? It was me that made you, sweetheart. MY FACE !!! Who are you ? CAMERAS ! LIGHTS ! LENS ! The only thing you ever had was ME ! MY FACE !!! " 

PERFORMANCES - What can I say about Peter Cushing that hasn't been said countless times before ? The man was a legend - and rightly so. Whether he was playing Baron Frankenstein, Van Helsing, Grand Moff Tarkin or an alternative take on Doctor Who, Cushing always without fail gave a brilliant performance. This film is no exception.

In fact, this could be one of his best performances, especially considering that Cushing later went on record to say he hated this film, feeling that it was "sleazy" and very violent for his tastes. That was the measure of the man - even in a role he felt uncomfortable playing, he never gave anything less than his 100 percent commitment and effort.

If anything, Cushing's discomfort adds to his performance and this comes over onscreen - adding layers of realism to the proceedings. Whether he's standing around in a frenzied, drug fuelled party full of people thirty years younger than himself, looking sober, straight laced and massively out of place, or brutally murdering a prostitute, there is a constant sense of unease positively burning outwards from Cushing's portrayal of the troubled Sir John.

This really becomes apparent during the murder scenes. Cushing seems to almost devolve from the calm, cultured gentleman into a wild eyed, frenzied, drooling madman. His usually immaculate hair hanging down in straggly strands over his sweaty face. Breathing heavily and panting as he takes yet another innocent, young life. This time, the monster Cushing has created is himself.

Sue Lloyd is equally good as Lynn. At first coming over as a sophisticated and charming woman, her character too devolves into something a lot baser and crueler than she initially starts out as.

 As the trauma of holding back her encroaching disfigurement begins to mentally take hold of her, Lynn becomes vain, narcissistic and increasingly manipulative of John - even going so far as to blackmailing him into killing more innocent women just so she can have a few more days or hours of beauty. In the end she becomes totally unhinged, shaking and giggling maniacally as she turns into a full blown killer in her own right.

Although he's only a minor supporting character, a special mention must be made of David Lodge's performance as the wonderfully named Groper.

Groper is a member of a gang of crooks who break into Sir John and Lynn's holiday home - lured there by a young girl called Terry who the couple earlier tried to kill. The gang hold John and Lynn captive as they search for the missing and now dead Terry.

Groper is a totally insane creation and performance - he seems to be a mentally retarded powerhouse, the strong armed enforcer of the gang. Clad all in black,  wearing a train drivers hat and sporting a Victorian styled walrus moustache and sideburns combo, coupled with round coke bottle thick glasses, Groper is a bizare looking figure. He crushes whole Apples in his bare hands and giggles like an insane child as he menaces Cushing and Lloyd, every moment he's on screen you just cannot take your eyes off him in case you miss some new insane quirk that surfaces itself. They should have given Groper his own spin off series of movies, I'd have quite happily watched the continuing adventures of a fruit bothering, slavering madman.

SFX - The odd splash of blood and a (not very convincing) severed head. A dummy also gets thrown off a cliff doubling for one of the characters.

SEX & VIOLENCE  - Very little in the way of sex. In the European cut of the film, the prostitute who Sir John kills is topless (and played by a completely different actress), in the UK cut that I saw she is fully clothed.

The violence while not massively bloody or gory is however, very disturbing. Its all down to the sheer brilliance of Cushing's acting in these scenes  - that insane, leering face filmed through a distorted fish-eye camera lens. It's all you need and it sells the horror of these scenes perfectly.

RATING  - With its amazing performances, off-kilter visual style, madly inappropriate frenzied Jazz soundtrack, quirky 60's sensibilities and bleak visceral murders - Corruption is one of those films that leaves you wondering what the hell it was you've just spent the last 91 minutes of your life watching. It's like an episode of "The Avengers" crossed with a Snuff movie. When you watch this film you enter a twisted world where first degree burns can be healed by glands from the dead, fired out by lasers and where common or garden burglars dress like Bond villains. It's an insane masterpiece of utter sleaze mixed with disturbing art and I loved every intense, crazy minute of it. 

Guess what I'm going to give it...That's right - 5 drooling, mad-eyed Cushing's out of 5....Oh, and if you think the entire movie is certifiably insane after you've watched the first 90 minutes, just wait until you see the final, 91st, minute - then it gets REALLY weird...

Oh, and it's too extreme for Women to watch alone...apparently.