L'ossessione del mostro

After an accident a successful surgeon (played by horror legend Peter Cushing) has to commit murder to preserve the once beautiful face of his fiance (Sue Lloyd). For a start we have here a very odd couple, Cushing being old enough to be Lloyd's father in real life, though I guess she could be a gold digger! When they attend a Swinging Sixties party in London (where the accident happens) Cushing looks uncomfortably out of place, which is intended, but for a fan such as myself who is used to seeing him in Hammer horror movies playing Baron Frankenstein or Van Helsing it just felt strange, and somehow wrong. Naturally it all goes pear shaped - "The more you succeed the more you feel failure" (Cushing). The action moves from London to the couple's cottage on the coast, where near the end we get a frankly bizarre home invasion/robbery. One of the heavies is called Groper, played by David Lodge he looks like he's walked straight of the set of a Carry On movie. Then there is the ending, I'm not giving it away but all I will say is Cop Out! I have waited years to see this but ultimately felt disappointed, despite Cushing giving his usual excellent performance. I did watch the cut UK version with less violence and nudity and would still like to see it uncut, until then it's only a 5/10 for me.

This is one of those UK lost flicks that is really worth hunting down. It's so rare that a flick with the legendary Peter Cushing never had a proper release after the VHS rage. And again he gives a perfect performance as Sir John Rowan a surgeon.

When John got into a fight with a photographer picturing his wife suddenly one of the spots falls on her face. Heavily burned he feels guilty and discovers that he can restore the scarred face of his girlfriend by murdering other women and extracting fluids from their pituitary gland. Sadly the effect of repairing the face doesn't goes on forever and he has to kill again. But he got mixed emotions about it.

There are two versions of this flick around, both are hard to get, the first one the normal version and the second one the uncut strong version. The latter I saw and it is in the first killing, the whore, that there are differences. In the normal, cut, version you only see a knife and some dolls when he is killing the whore but in the strong version she goes naked and is stabbed to death and beheaded by the surgeon. And for the time being I can understand that it was rather gruesome.

All acting was good and some faces did make it, for the horror buffs Billy Murray (Rik) will be recognized in Doghouse (2009) and Dead Cert (2010). A rather good example of British horror worth hunting down, if you will ever find it....

Gore 1/5 Nudity 1/5 Effects 2/5 Story 3/5 Comedy 0/5

I've always had a deep admiration for British actor Peter Cushing. He was, after all, able to convincingly portray such a wide range of characters on screen from Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Frankenstein, instilling each role with cool intelligence plus an element of human pathos. When one thinks of a Hammer horror film from the late 1950's through the ensuing fifteen years, inevitably(apart from his frequent co-star Christopher Lee)Cushing's name comes first to mind.

While CORRUPTION is not a Hammer film,(Columbia Pictures,surprisingly, is the distributor) it is a sheer delight for Cushing fans. Here, he portrays a respected surgeon who slowly goes insane, all for the love of his fiancé played by Sue Lloyd with her kitty claws rendered even sharper than the good doctor's scalpel. After a tragic accident which effectively ends her modeling career, Dr. Cushing works obsessively to repair the damage to poor disfigured Sue's face. Realizing the cure is to be found in the female pituitary gland, he wantonly murders and decapitates young, pretty lasses to achieve his goal.

After each of Cushing's kills in this flick, the camera graphically provides a distorted, fish eye lens view in which we see this eminent physician with hair disheveled and a manic look which has to be seen to be believed. Eventually, an overwhelming sense of guilt and shame reduces the doctor to a quivering mess of nerves as he tries to find solace in the bottle. He certainly won't find it in Sue. She has issues of her own which, in comparison, make Dr. Cushing look almost sane. The climax to all this blood & spatter is provided by a high powered laser(part of the cure,apparently, for Sue's face) which looks more at home in GOLDFINGER than a spartan medical lab.

CORRUPTION is a florid feast for the eyes,too, as we see swinging 1967 Carnaby Street fashions worn by both sexes. Anthony Booth really camps it up as an Andy Warhol wannabe portraying a fashion photographer who tries to shoot a nudie-cutie roll of film with Sue Lloyd to devastating results. Since this is 'Swinging London' there are mini-skirted girls aplenty, with special mention to bimbette Shirley Stelfox whom no party would be complete without. She doesn't wear flowers in her hair, but under her eyes.

CORRUPTION is a delirious roller coaster of madness, mayhem and a minimum of mirth. Character actor David Lodge does appear as a cretinous villain called 'Groper.' Watching him salute(don't ask why) is one of the highlights.

Anyway, after seeing CORRUPTION, don't be surprised if you feel uneasy opening the freezer door of your fridge. Some cold cuts are better left untouched.

This is the sixth imitation within the genre of Georges Franju's marvelously lyrical hybrid of art cinema and horror, EYES WITHOUT A FACE (1959) – which just happens to be one of my all-time Top 20 movies. For the record, the others have been the Italian Gothic piece MILL OF THE STONE WOMEN (1960), the erotic French-made THE BLOOD ROSE (1970) and three from notorious (and incredibly prolific) Spaniard Jesus Franco – THE AWFUL DR. ORLOFF (1961), THE DIABLOICAL DR. Z (1965) and FACELESS (1988). Furthermore, some time ago I had also acquired another Italian stab at the same theme – ATOM AGE VAMPIRE (1960) – but, in its case, the DivX was faulty and I couldn't get the thing to work properly!

Anyhow, director Robert Hartford-Davis has somewhat mysteriously acquired an aura within the ranks of British horror cinema history not unlike that of the much younger Michael Reeves; other exploitation fare of his include THE BLACK TORMENT (1964), THE SMASHING BIRD I USED TO KNOW aka SCHOOL FOR UNCLAIMED GIRLS (1969), INCENSE FOR THE DAMNED aka BLOODSUCKERS (1970) and THE FIEND aka BEWARE, MY BRETHREN (1972). Although I am aware that TCM USA had shown CORRUPTION (presumably in its correct Widescreen aspect ratio), the version I watched as a DivX came via a soft-looking, washed-out, full-frame transfer courtesy of some obscure outfit called Midnight Video with forced Asian subtitles to boot!! The film itself, while no neglected masterpiece, is good enough to survive these deficiencies and different enough from its prototype to stand on its own two feet.

The lead roles are portrayed by Peter Cushing and Sue Lloyd who are both excellent: Cushing is the middle-aged surgical genius married to a much younger beauty who is reluctant to put her modeling career behind her. This exhibitionistic trait proves her undoing as, during a groovy party sequence (the Swinging Sixties also served as backdrop for the contemporaneous THE SORCERERS [1967] – coincidentally directed by the afore-mentioned Michael Reeves and starring another horror legend on his last legs, Boris Karloff!), Lloyd suffers partial but permanent facial disfigurement when a spotlight topples squarely on her face – following an unprecedented outburst of jealous rage in public from the usually calm and collected Cushing which culminates in a scuffle with a fashion photographer (Anthony Booth). Remorse-stricken, Cushing oversteps his bounds at the hospital where he works in search of a miracle cure but when this withers after a few days' success (with the improbable help of a laser beam dreamed up by ancient Egyptians!), he takes to scouring London's red-light district for possible 'live' donors of the required organ specimen.

Lloyd's sister (Kate O'Mara) – who, unaccountably, seems to live at her married sibling's house – is inconveniently (for Cushing) engaged to a suspicious colleague of his. To avert undue attention from their clandestine activities, they take a trip to a house by the sea but, even here, they are needful of an urgent transplant which presents itself in the lone figure of a bathing and seemingly innocuous youngster but she escapes their grips during the night before they can make 'use' of her. So, egged on by his increasingly batty and nagging wife, it's back to the drawing-board for Cushing…or, rather, the train station as he follows a blonde into her carriage and does her in (cutting her head off and stuffing her lifeless body unceremoniously under the seat) when they are left all alone.

Back at the seaside cottage, the ingénue bursts in on Cushing as he is 'playing around' with the blonde's head on the kitchen table – cue a jazzed-up three-way chase sequence across the beach and cliff-tops which ends, inevitably, in the girl's death (but not before she slams Cushing down with a rock in the face). A short while later, it transpires that the girl was married and her husband and his gang of misfits (including a butch and busty blonde and a gruff John Lennon-lookalike!) in search of "bread" crash the couple's household; Lloyd, completely insane by now, spills the beans about Cushing's involvement in the girl's death (even if it was she who actually killed her) and coerces the leader of the gang into forcing her reluctant husband to perform the usual operation on her face.

However, another scuffle breaks out in the operating room as a result of which the laser beam goes berserk and literally slices everybody up (including O'Mara and her doctor fiancé) who appear on the scene unheralded at the very last minute. The ending of the film seems to suggest that all the events that we've been witness to might just be somebody's feverish dream but one can't be too sure but, thankfully, this ambiguity dos not hamper the film's overall effectiveness or render it a cop-out (as usually happens in cheat ending cases like this). Hartford-Davis' direction is only occasionally flashy – particularly during the killings (although an unwilling participant, Cushing was rarely ever this unhinged) and afore-mentioned chase sequence. The latter third of the film – in which the gang impinges on the couple's seaside home – is its least successful element but that part is still relieved by its crazy ray free-for-all coda.

The film seems to have been available for some time in a longer, more exploitative Continental variant which went under the dubious title LASER KILLER! By the way, the cinematographer-producer of CORRUPTION was Peter Newbrook who would himself later helm a notable and cerebral British horror film – namely THE ASPHYX (1972).

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."Corruption" aka "Laser Killer" is a surprisingly sleazy British shocker.The murder of semi-nude Soho prostitute is quite nasty and depraved.Peter Cushing's performance as an insane surgeon is brilliant."Corruption" ain't tasteful and restrained.To put it simply it's an exploitation flick with incredibly noble Peter Cushing in the main role.That's why it's worth checking out.Connect it with "Diversions" and have fun.7 eyes without a face out of 10.