Le Corrupteur

Dark and twisted but not in the good way. Heavy doses of female hysteria and misogyny. Just very mean spirited. Cruel treatment of animals as well. Supposedly about innocence lost. But only at the cost of the viewer.

Although the sets and cinematography are scrupulously suggestive of the early 20th century in the United Kingdom and the performances quite good, The Nightcomers never quite gels as a Gothic horror classic. Maybe we see a bit too much of ourselves and don't like to think of the implications of what we're watching.

The children of a wealthy British family are left orphaned by the deaths of their parents in a motor car crash. A cousin who is the closest relation to the father Harry Andrews is at the estate to tidy up affairs, but has no desire to stay there or act as a parent to these two. Never mind, they are amply provided for with cook and governess who are Thora Hird and Stephanie Beacham. The father had a valet played by Marlon Brando and since there is clearly no need for one now he's relegated to the gardener's duties.

Brando's delightful Irish gardener Quint bonds with the kids. He's full of blarney and charm, but that cheerful exterior hides a rather complex and sadistic being. The kids catch him and Beacham in some kind of bondage game as Brando initiates Beacham into the finer points sadomasochistic sex. Both children take careful notes. The kids are played by Christopher Ellis and Verna Harvey.

In the end what happens sets the stage for Henry James's classic Gothic horror tale The Turn Of The Screw. That was brought to the screen ten years earlier as The Innocents which starred Deborah Kerr as the new governess for the kids. According to The Nightcomers, The Innocents would be the last thing anyone would have entitled that film.

Fine performances, wonderful sets and cinematography, yet the film just lacks a spark to consider it a classic. Marlon Brando's fans will want to see it though.

As with many Winner films it is necessary to not make the mistake of expecting his film to be exactly as you expect, or very much like it at all actually. Forget Henry James, forget The Innocents and just enjoy Mr Winner's take on how the children lost their innocence. The SM and bondage scenes were more explicit than I remember on a previous viewing and it may be that the earlier video had been trimmed. Certainly here there is no mistaking the powerful relationship between Brando and Beacham and I for one found the playing out of these scenes by the children fairly powerful. I suppose the pace is a little slow which is perhaps particularly noticeable because of how quickly does the effective ending unfold. Not for purists but if you are looking for that something just a little bit different……UPDATE 7.2.17 Just watched this again, on blu ray this time and enjoyed it even more. Once again I felt the bondage scenes more explicit than I remember from before! Funny thing memory.

In the Victorian England, the teenagers Flora (Verna Harvey) and her brother Miles (Christopher Ellis) have just lost their parents in a car accident in France. Their tutor (Harry Andrews) decides to leave the children alone in their huge mansion under the care of the old housekeeper Mrs. Grose (Thora Hird), the governess Miss Jessel (Stephanie Beacham) and the gardener Peter Quint (Marlon Brando). Miles and Flore are very connected to Peter, who misleads their education with twisted concepts of love and death, but the orphans believe and are fascinated by his knowledge. Peter is the lover of Jessel, and they use to have sadomasochistic sex. When Peter sees their kink bondage night of sex, he has a corrupted and perverted sexual initiation. When Mrs. Grose writes to the master of the house to fire Miss Jessel and Peter Quint, Flora and Miles plot a dark scheme to keep them together in the property.

"The Nightcomers" is a very dark tale about finding sexuality and losing innocence in a very twisted way. The performances of the cast are top-notch, but Marlon Brando leads the story with his usual competence. I have never had the chance to read "Turn of the Screw" or see "The Innocents" to make any comparison, but I really liked this unknown and underrated movie. The bondage scenes are very impressive, with Marlon Brando and Stephanie Beacham showing a great chemistry. It is impressive to see that Verna Harvey was twenty-years old in 1972. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Os Que Chegam Com a Noite" ("The Nightcomers")

Marlon Brando's THE GODFATHER comeback was more of a legacy accreditation for his entire resume, blending with the years-past STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE and ON THE WATERFRONT types as if all the bad films in-between didn't exist... and perhaps this might be one that he could have avoided...

Strangely enough, the title NIGHTCOMERS would have befitted the adaptation of Henry James's enigmatic supernatural short story TURN OF THE SCREW ala 1961's THE INNOCENTS as two ghosts (our lovers here, when alive) come at night, appearing before the same children with their caretaker: the latter arriving at the tail-end and, like ROGUE ONE years later, connecting to its famous source... but was the James story (or its adaptation) relevant for an entire prequel/backstory?

In the director's chair is the (at that time) creatively offbeat Michael Winner, using his usual zoom shots and symbolic set-ups, who may have been envious of former collaborator Oliver Reed's art-films by time-period sex-exploitation director Ken Russell, who'd have fit better since NIGHTCOMERS more comfortably plays with sadistic lust than the kind of psychedelic horror popular during the early seventies, heavy on off-putting violence and short on plot: Which has Henry James's two spoiled, death-obsessed (and not very inspired) literary children residing in a rural gothic English manor of Bly...

Their parents are dead and an aloof uncle turns them over to Stephanie Beacham, a religious caretaker, deliberately contrasting to Brando's Quint as an Atheist groundskeeper... donning the same unkempt hair and Irish accent he'd use in THE MISSOURI BREAKS, another film in which he seems part of a totally different picture...

And here his frolicking, childish behavior is both infectious to the adoring kids as well as the movie's entire cadence: But had there been more sympathy and perspective on Beacham's naiveté, Brando's reckless rebellion would have provided more shock value instead of seeming so natural and commonplace: Basically, watching THE NIGHTCOMERS is like electricity being electrocuted.

The best thing is Jerry Fielding's brooding, haunting music, similar to his STRAW DOGS score. And yet, like the Brando thriller NIGHT OF THE FOLLOWING DAY, another maligned pre-GODFATHER outing, there is a comfortable surrealism that feels as if this particular NIGHT was also intended for a very selective cult-movie audience all along.