Review: Corruption

Peter Cushing plays a well-respected surgeon with a hot young model fiancé (Sue Lloyd). Said hot young fiancé has a close encounter with a hot photography lamp during a scuffle between Cushing and the pants-man photographer (Anthony Booth). She suffers severe burns and a great deal of accompanying physical pain and scarring as a result. Wracked with guilt, sorrow and anguish, Cushing toils away trying to come up with a method of restoring his beloved’s youthful, gorgeous skin. Eventually he does indeed devise a new method, but it’s one involving a laser device and the pituitary glands of the recently dead. Kate O’Mara plays Lloyd’s loving sister, and Noel Trevarthen plays a professional colleague of Cushing’s. Wendy Varnals turns up as a young girl Cushing and Lloyd meet at the beach, whose acquaintances include Billy Murray (not the American comedic actor Bill Murray) and a hulking David Lodge.

 

Although it’s not at all the sleazy, “Frenzy”-esque killer-thriller I’d been expecting from the stills and trailer I’d seen, this 1968 film from director Robert Hartford-Davis (“The Black Torment”, “The Take”, “Black Gunn”) is solid stuff. It’s not 90 minutes of a dishevelled-looking Peter Cushing murdering prostitutes. Instead, it’s more of a classic “Eyes Without a Face” flick…in which Peter Cushing murders a prostitute or two. It’s not out of some bloodlust or purely evil intent, though. He’s committing evil acts for the love of his physically scarred young fiancé, and it has driven him to the point of beyond all reason. He needs dead bodies to assist him in his new laser-assisted plastic surgery techniques to help fix her up. And keep her that way. He also rarely looks dishevelled, for that matter though you’re still getting a different Peter Cushing than normal. He even loses his temper and raises his voice from time to time. The genteel actor (on and off-screen apparently), never struck me as the volatile type, so it was an interesting thing to witness here.

 

At first glance this character would seem more fitting for long-time friend and frequent co-star Christopher Lee, but I think that may be why Cushing was cast. He lends the expert surgeon gone-to-seed an air of professional respectability and trustworthiness. I will say that the early scenes of him driving around in a snazzy sports car and attending far-out 60s parties are a bit tough to take. Speaking of amusing, we get a very funny small turn early on by Vanessa Howard (from Cushing’s subpar “The Blood Beast Terror”) as a dippy, ditzy hippy. She’s a hoot. In fact, the set-up is really quite amusing. It’s not just the idea of Cushing playing a sports car-driving surgeon with a hot fiancé. It’s also the scene where said wife (played by Sue Lloyd) gets burned and disfigured…by a falling photography lamp during a photo shoot with a pervy photographer (played dreadfully by Anthony Booth and an unconvincing wig). And then there’s the subsequent scream by dopey blonde Howard immediately cutting to an ambulance siren. Yes, it’s a stylistic steal/homage to “The 39 Steps” of all things (there it was a train whistle instead of a siren). Bloody marvellous, pretentious stuff, although the film sure does take its sweet time with the set-up. Perhaps a little too much time as it’s not until after the 30 minute mark that Cushing is murdering anyone. That’s maybe 10 minutes too long for my liking.

 

For the most part Cushing is quite at home in the role, which at the end of the day isn’t that far removed from his Dr. Frankenstein, just a tad more amoral and desperate. He’s really outstanding actually, and sells the character’s genuine anguish and frustration very well and then the transition into fear and panic of getting caught. At one point he’s too anxious that his hands shake so much he can’t perform the surgery. Crucially absent for much of the film is any remorse for taking lives. In fact, there’s one bit on a train where he gives an intended victim the most chilling and unsettling look I’ve ever seen from him. Sue Lloyd and Kate O’Mara are also strong as the fiancé and her sister, respectively. In fact the only duds in the very fine cast are the aforementioned Booth (who was Cherie Blair’s dad, apparently) and Kiwi-born Noel Trevarthen and his ridiculously posh-sounding deep voice as Cushing’s concerned colleague. I couldn’t take him seriously for a single second. On the plus side, look for an almost unrecognisable David Lodge as a grunting, hulking, sleazy thug in the film’s final third. Playing a creep named Groper (yet, Groper) Lodge seems a tad old to be hanging out with a young Billy Murray and co, but he sure does make an impression. Murray’s pretty good too, for that matter.

 

I like how the film keeps twisting and turning, there’s always a new wrinkle around the corner. By the time Murray, Lodge and co turn up the film has turned into somewhat of a different picture altogether, albeit seamlessly. Scripted by Derek and Donald Ford (“The Black Torment”), the final twenty minutes or so is pretty insane stuff with a surprisingly high body count. Unfortunately studio disagreements resulted in a coda that is truly regrettable. It’s clear that the film should’ve ended a scene earlier than it does.

 

Although not quite the sleazy and nasty exploitation affair I expected it to be, it’s still quite a grisly film. I don’t think Hammer would’ve touched this, not even in the 70s. There’s one very nasty suffocation/strangulation in particular that might have you never trusting Cushing on-screen ever again. Nice use of handheld camerawork and unsettling close-ups by cinematographer Peter Newbrook (also serving as producer, oddly enough), incorporated occasional fish-eye lens. I was far less enamoured with the jazzy music score by Bill McGuffie (The dreadful “Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150AD” with Cushing as Dr. Who), which although indicative of the 60s, is intrusive and doesn’t really jive with the story itself. It’s quite intrusive and overbearing.

 

It’s a tad slow to start and I expected something a little more crude and sleazy here from all of the marketing. However, once you get around that possible preconception, this is solidly entertaining mad scientist/doctor stuff. Cushing is excellent as the reputable surgeon driven to the unthinkable by love and devotion. Several of the supporting performances are also fine, especially Sue Lloyd as the rather demanding fiancé. Shame about that intrusive and out-of-place music score, but Cushing fans owe it to themselves to seek this one out. It’s no “The Skin I Live In”, but I liked this one nonetheless.

 

Rating: B-