Corruption (1968)

• Year: 1968
• Released: 01 Dec 1968
• Country: United Kingdom
• Adwords: N/A
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061520/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/corruption
• Metacritics:
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: English
• MPA Rating: Approved
• Genre: Horror
• Runtime: 91 min
• Writer: Donald Ford, Derek Ford
• Director: Robert Hartford-Davis
• Cast: Peter Cushing, Sue Lloyd, Noel Trevarthen
• Keywords: surgeon, doctor, pituitary gland, proto-slasher,

	5.8/10
	0% – Critics
	0% – Audience

Corruption Storyline

A surgeon discovers that he can restore the beauty to his girlfriend’s scarred face by murdering other women and extracting fluids from their pituitary gland. However, the effects only last for a short time, so he has to kill more and more women. It is ultimately a killing spree which ends with considerable death and disaster.—Jonathon Dabell

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Corruption Movie Reviews

A sleazy slice of insane surgical horror from the 60s.

Marketed with the ridiculously misogynistic tag-line ‘This is not a woman’s picture! No women will be allowed in alone!’, Robert Hartford-Davis’s Corruption is hugely enjoyable 60s horror trash which should prove to be of particular interest to fans of Peter Cushing, who gives an uncharacteristically manic performance as Sir John Rowan, an eminent surgeon who, after accidentally scarring his beautiful girlfriend, turns to murdering women to obtain the fresh pituitary glands necessary to repair the damage.

The normally reserved star of countless Hammer horrors slugs it out with an Austin Powers style photographer (played by Anthony Booth, ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair’s father-in-law) at a swinging sixties party, decapitates a blonde babe before shoving her headless body under a seat in a railway carriage, and, on the uncut version of the film known as Laser Killer, even smears blood all over a dead prostitute’s tits. And if that isn’t enough to whet your appetite for this bonkers take on George Franju’s classic Les Yeux Sans Visage, viewers are also treated to a gang of psycho Sgt. Pepper rejects (which includes Eastender’s star Bill Murray, and Carry On regular David Lodge as the completely demented Groper), a penultimate scene that sees everyone killed by a malfunctioning laser, and an outrageously daft twist ending that makes a mockery of all that has gone before!

In addition to all of this sleaze and craziness, Corruption also benefits from surprisingly well defined lead characters: although it is the guilt-ridden Rowan who does the actual killing, the real villain of the piece is his narcissistic fiancé Lynn Nolan (Sue Lloyd), whose lascivious behaviour at the party causes the fight that results in her accident, and who ultimately drives Rowan to murder. The poor surgeon is merely her pawn: a middle-aged man so completely obsessed with the young woman he has fallen in love with that he will do anything to keep her happy.

Since it is currently unavailable as an official release, a good quality copy of Corruption is hard to find. However, hunting down the film is highly recommended, whatever the format or condition.

Cushing and Lloyd save it

Story of a brilliant doctor (Peter Cushing) in love with a beautiful younger woman (Sue Lloyd). During a fight at a party they’re at, Lloyd becomes disfigured when a flood lamp falls on her face. Cushing becomes obsessed at restoring her beauty and will do anything to do it–even murder.

Plot wise this has been done before (most notably in the French film “Eyes Without a Face”) but this isn’t totally without merit. Cushing is excellent as a man who is driven to murder for his lover. You can see that he hates doing it but feels he has to. Lloyd, surprisingly, is not an innocent woman. She knows he’s killing for her and actually spurs him on! Aside from those two performances though this is pretty by the numbers…except for an incredibly silly ending which had me laughing out loud! Also there is incredibly inappropriate music blaring sometimes on the soundtrack that’s totally out of place. This is pretty much forgotten and it’s easy to see why. Worth catching though for Cushing’s acting alone.

The Beastly Peter Cushing

Veteran actor Peter Cushing depicts Sir John Rowan, an utmost genius and respectable surgeon. The passion for his work is only surpassed by his obsessive love for the lewd photo-model Lynn Nolan. When her pretty face gets badly burned in a very banal accident that Rowan jealously caused at a jet-set party, he swears to restore it. He performs an initially successful operation, using tissue and a particular facial gland of a recently deceased young woman, but the results are only temporary. In order to strengthen and prolong the effect of the gland, our doctor needs to use living tissue instead…

The plot of “Corruption” is one of the most derivative and clichéd ones in horror cinema. In 1959, in France, director Georges Franju delivered the penultimate genre landmark “Les Yeux Sans Visage” – “Eyes without a Face” – and particularly during the next two decades, the tale of fanatic scientists and obsessive surgeons murdering innocent young women in order to restore and maintain the youthful beauty of their own mutilated wives or daughters has been copied numerous times, most notably by Jess Franco (“The Awful Dr. Orloff), Sidney Hayers (“Circus of Horrors”) and Terence Fisher (“The Man who could Cheat Death”).

This version, helmed by Robert Hartford-Davies, isn’t exactly what you’d call a masterpiece, but it definitely contains a couple of elements that make it noteworthy and recommendable for horror fans. For starters: the almighty Peter Cushing! He’s one of my personal favorite actors of all times and, even though he played a lot of villainous roles in his lengthy career, this one feels rather special. Due to his naturally elegant charisma and typically British appearance and behavior, Cushing usually depicts the ‘sophisticated’ type of villains. You know; the type of evil mastermind who invents fiendish schemes but uses grisly minions to do the nasty work. His character here also seems very sophisticated (so much even that his choice of muse is highly implausible), but when he’s forced to stalk and murder another poor victim to steal her glands, Dr. Rowan transforms into a relentless maniacal beast! The sequences in which the prowling Cushing goes berserk and literally butchers young girls, consecutively a prostitute and a random blond beauty on the train, are excessively vile and misogynic. Cushing, with pure insanity in his eyes and his hair all messed up, savagely stabs them to death and cuts off their heads in ways that are quite graphic for a British film released in 1968. Still, I’m thankful for Cushing’s performance as well as for the gory make- up effects, since the rest of the movie is mediocre at best. The protagonists, Sir John Rowan and Lynn, are a mismatched couple, to say the least, and the extended finale set at Rowan’s beachside cottage is overlong and exaggeratedly far-fetched. Like they haven’t got enough trouble already, Rowan and Lynn are held captive by a troop of anti-menacing thugs and the whole thing ends rather hectically (and foolishly…) with an out-of-control laser machine. In case you’re a fan of qualitative British horror from the sixties and seventies, I advise sticking to the Hammer productions or the Amicus anthology films. If, however, you watched all of those already and you want to see a different side of Peter Cushing, then I warmly recommend “Corruption”.