Corruption (1968)

Touches You

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

After being severely scarred in an accident, a model forces her surgeon boyfriend to make her youthful again and tries to use experimental skin-grafts to do so only for the gruesome means of do so to force more attempts to fix them.This was a pretty nicely surprising film. One of the biggest factors is that it stays watchable throughout due to its constant series of action scenes mainly centered on the circumstances relating to the necessary procedures. These are spread throughout the film as a whole pretty nicely which is a great feat on its own but to also put the kind of gore and mutilation in here as it does makes for quite a nice time here, which is a strong plus. Beyond these, though, there is some really great scenes otherwise as the train murder is quite brutal which builds up nicely from the opening moments to the final crescendo of violence during the attack. Even better is the final chase from the laboratory mixing together a series of brawling, some laser randomly destroying everything in the vicinity out of the house through an open field down a cliff and covering most of the beach, concluding a long stalking sequence among rocks in the crashing waves. This is an incredibly long and exhilarating chase which is the highlight of the film. As well, the film's quite brutal surgery and continued usage of showing off the victims' scared, deformed face also gives the film some small gore effects here and there, and it becomes all the better for it. These here really help the film since there isn't a whole lot wrong with this one. One of the main flaws is that there's a little too much non-activity spent on dialog spouting the necessity of surgery or the morality of what's going on in the middle of the film. There's too much time here on these segments, and the repetitiveness of all these arguments really starts to get aggravating after a while, and they really make the middle seem longer than it really is. The other real flaw is that the ending feels a little out-of-place. The majority of the movie deals with completely non-related people coming into contact with their lives, and the fact that it all concentrates a huge chunk of time to something that spends so much time with the same people throws off the rhythm slightly. These, though, are the only things wrong with the film since the good points are much more impressive.Today's Rating/PG-13: Violence.

I saw this film 35 years ago in 1978 I was 15 it was on TV and it has stayed in my mind since, when I saw it I couldn't sleep for a week and the fridge that was staying shut, I haven't seen this film since but still remember a photo shoot light burning her face the train sequence and the head in the fridge, I suppose compared to today's graphic films this would be considered rubbish but at 15 it had a big impact on my life and I am still thinking and talking about it,I would like to see it again because I would probably laugh at why I couldn't sleep, HOPEFULLY. From what i remember it was a very basic storyline, girl gets face burned husband regrets and needs to kill women to keep his wife's skin good which only lasts a short time so needs to keep killing. Peter Cushing was again excellent and i always thought this was a hammer film production which i now know it isn't, all in all this film was probably rubbish which never see the light of day again but as a young man it had an impact on me that is still there age 50.

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.

As the '60's swung, movies changed. Comedies became rude, action films bloodily violent, sex films explicit, and horror? Well, you can guess. 1968 saw the release of George A.Romero's 'Night Of The Living Dead', a landmark picture which pushed the genre to extremes. Even old school horror superstars such as Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing felt the need to keep up with the times. The latter later described 'Corruption' as 'fearfully sick', and he was right. In its most notorious scene, a woman searches a fridge for food, only to find a severed head wrapped in plastic.Peter plays Sir John Rowan, eminent surgeon. At a party in which his fiancée, model Lynn Nolan ( Sue Lloyd ) is present, he becomes involved in an argument with a brash photographer ( Anthony Booth ), culminating in a flood lamp accidentally being knocked over. The bulb burns away half of Lynn's face.Rowan had been experimenting with new surgical techniques that require the theft of a pituitary gland from a corpse in the morgue. A colleague, Steve ( Noel Trevarthen ) warns him that if he does anything like that again, he will report him. Her beauty restored, Lynn is a complete woman once more. Both she and Rowan set off for a round the world cruise. But the treatment turns out not to be permanent, and Lynn becomes disfigured once more. Rowan decides to steal the pituitary gland of a living person, necessitating the murder of a number of women...Donald and Derek Ford's script is like a swinging London version of 'Frankenstein', with butchery and blood amidst the false eyelashes and mini-skirts. But whereas the Baron was a misguided genius driven by concern for Humanity, Rowan is motivated by a selfish desire to see the woman he loves restores to her former glory. Cushing turns in his usual first-rate performance, complemented by Sue Lloyd, superb as the insane 'Lynn'. She does not care how many women her fiancée has to kill as long as she looks pretty again.The director, Robert Hartford-Davis, does a fair job, though I suspect the same script in the hands of Michael Reeves could have been a cult classic. I suppose we should give thanks the film was not bastardised the way 'Incense Of The Damned' ( based on Simon Raven's classy vampire novel 'Doctors Wear Scarlet' ) was. The scene where sadistic hippies ( among them the comedy actor David Lodge, playing a half-wit ) invade a cottage and terrorise the owners anticipates 'A Clockwork Orange' by three years.The version I have on D.V.D. lacks the murder of the Soho prostitute, and the train killing is much shorter. Perhaps Anchor Bay could find the missing footage and reinstate it?What really grabs you about 'Corruption' is the ending. For years, horror movies traditionally ended with the hero saving the leading lady in the nick of time from being burned alive in a vampire's castle or whatever, yet this ends with the entire cast wiped out by an out-of-control laser beam ( where clearly most of the budget went ), including Kate O'Mara who plays Lynn's goody-two shoes sister. We then go back to the trendy party we saw at the beginning, and a freeze-frame of Cushing's face suggests the horrible story is some sort of macabre premonition.'A most unworthy vehicle for Cushing's talents", sniffed one critic. Fair comment, but the great man could not give a bad performance if he tried, and the film is worth tracking down for that alone. Great Bill McGuffie soundtrack too.