La Corruption de Chris Miller

I hate mimes, so I found the start of this film more disturbing when a guy dressed as Charlie Chaplin murders a nagging woman in a house, then continues to act like the silent film actor afterwards while moving the body, before inexplicably unmasking and running off into the night. The stuff of nightmares indeed.

This killer is terrorizing the local countryside inhabited by neurotic girl Chris Miller, who gets really upset every time it rains, and her stepmother Ruth. Both seem to be waiting for Chris's dad to return home, and seemingly spend their days languishing around the place, arguing and what not. Chris especially seems to get really upset at night, having flashbacks to a ballet class (with a weightlifter nearby) and then stabbing the nearest object she can find. Ruth does her best to calm Chris, even if her methods seem a little too familiar...

One day, annoying hippy drifter Baz or whatever turns up, giving Ruth a full frontal in the barn and then generally trying to charm the pants of her...which works! Chris at first seems a little jealous of this set up, but then when Ruth actively encourages Baz to put the moves on Chris, things don't quite add up and not everyone is as innocent as they appear to be...but is one of them the murderer, who has just carved up five people in one house with a scythe?

For a film with three main characters and not a whole lot of side characters to last almost two hours is a bit of an endurance test. There's almost an hour between the first murder and the slaughter of the family, and in between there we get to see the tension between Chris and her stepmother, the hippy guy making eggs, playing acoustic guitar, and bedding Ruth, and find out exactly what happened to Chris's dad and why Ruth seems determined to 'corrupt' Chris. It even goes some way to explain why Ruth lives in a place where it rains so much even though Chris goes nuts every time it does. But come on... At least there's a few mental things that happen later to keep you awake, like a brutal knife murder and a corpse being found due to peas growing from the body and cracking tarmac (and if you've grown peas, you'll know the plants can barely stand up on their own, never mind cracking tarmac!). This is a bit of an obscure one, and for those with plenty of patience. Of course, the bad copy I watched didn't help, as it rendered quite a lot of the dark scenes unwatchable.

Having been left by their husband and father , a disturbed wife : Jean Seberg and deranged stepdaughter : Marisol hire a drifter handyman : Barry Stokes at their secluded state. While six brutal murders terrorize the town . As a series of killings committed by a psycho murderer starts horrifying the villagers and things go wrong . See it with rains it pours ... blood!. See it with someone you can hold onto!

A thrilling and suspenseful movie about a lurid subject matter concerning two women trapped alone in a locked house and along the way a psychopathic killer is on the loose . Dealing with the peculiar and complex relationships among three main characters played by the French Jean Seberg , the Spanish Marisol and British Barry Stokes . Interesting and twisted screenplay by Santiago Moncada, a prolific and prestigious writer who wrote several stories in all kinds of genres during the 60s, 70s and 80s . Stars Jean Seberg who provides a solid and sensitive acting as the unsettling abandoned wife and the ex- prodigy girl Marisol who is pretty well as the tramautized daughter long time ago suffered a terrible event, while Barry Stokes is nice as as the hunky and suspicious drifter . And a good support cast with some familiar Spanish faces, such as : Perla Cristal, Gerard Tichy , Mariano Vidal Molina , Gustavo Re, Goyo Lebrero, Rafael Luis Calvo and director Juan Antonio Bardem himself.

It contains an intriguing and frightening musical score by the prestigious composer Waldo de Los Ríos who soon after , unfourtunately , committed suicide . Atmospheric musical score by Juan Gelpi, though an adequate remastering being really necessary because of the film copy is washed-out. Being completely shot on location in Comillas, Cantabria, Spain. The picture was competently directed by Juan Antonio Bardem . This director was a good and notorious filmmaker , being his film debut : Esa pareja feliz 1951 co-directed by Luis Garcia Berlanga , after that , he made Cómicos 1953 about stage world , following an enjoyable comedy : Felices Pascuas 1954 . And eventually shooting his big hit : Muerte de un ciclista 1955 . And of course , his another big success : Calle Mayor with Betsy Blair. Some years later, he made this La Corrupcion de Chris Miller that has a rating 6.5/10. Better than average Gialli film. The flick will appeal to Jean Seberg and Marisol fans.

The Corruption of Chris Miller was a hard one to come by for many years, which gave it a mysterious street cred that was impossible to live up to. It's part melodrama and part giallo without really mixing them very well. Besides a splattery opening and a random series of killings right before the final act, it's not much of a traditional giallo or murder mystery and mostly focuses on a woman and her stepdaughter who are charmed by a mysterious drifter who may or may not be a killer who's been going around terrorizing people.

The film is slow as molasses for most of its runtime and you want to tell out "hurry up and get to the good stuff!" I'm normally a person who can enjoy a nice slow burn movie with the rest of them, but there's slow and then there's plotless. Most of the film is just a series of longing glances between the characters or long montages or horseback riding. They seem to be trying to build the tension between stepmother, stepdaughter, and the handsome drifter, but the script never really handles those moments very well. With better dialogue, perhaps those scenes would crackle with sexual tension.

The film is most definitely well shot and the scenes that take place during rainstorms drip with mood, but right as the film starts to get interesting, it ends with no resolution whatsoever. I'm also not a stickler for an ending that's tied up in a neat little bow, but after all that build up, it would have been nice if we were given something a little more interesting.

This is one of the few entirely Spanish gialli and probably the only one that doesn't feature Spanish horror icon/werewolf Paul Naschy. It does have the doomed leftist American actress Jean Seaberg (a few years before she was driven to suicide by FBI harassment)and former Spanish child actress Marisol, all grown up here in all the right places. It has a very nasty murder committed by a guy dressed like Charlie Chaplin (I wonder what the late actor's estate thought of that?)and even more unbelievable scene where an entire family is wiped out by a mysterious figure in a rain slicker wielding a scythe. There is also a strange subplot where Chris Miller (the Marisol character) is traumatized by the sound of rain as the result of having been raped in a shower by a weight lifter (which would have made a great cameo for ex-weight lifter Naschy). Her stepmother (the Jean Seaberg character)is taking care of her but is also bent on "corrupting" her to get back at the girl's father for abandoning them (which might explain why she's relocated them to Spain where it seems to rain constantly).

The weak link in the movie is British pretty-boy Barry Stokes (it should have been Ray Lovelock)playing a drifter who insinuates his way into the lives and the beds of the two women and who they begin to suspect might be the mysterious killer. Stokes gives pretty much the same performance as when he portrayed an emotionless alien in "Prey", he is not the least bit menacing or believable as a potential killer, and, to top it all off, he provides the film's only nudity by shoving his bare butt into the camera (oh boy!). On the other hand, the end is pretty satisfying with some nice ironic twists.

This is by no means a perfect movie, but it certainly merits a DVD resurrection (the copy I saw looked like hell and may have been edited). It would probably be best to wait for that, but do check this one out if you like these kind of films.

I guessed the identity and motive of the killer in The Corruption of Chris Miller early on, but this didn't spoil my enjoyment of the movie as a whole, which is a trashy delight thanks to a wonderfully lurid story line, a few bloody set-pieces, and the presence of two very easy on the eye actresses: ex-child star Marisol as tasty temptress Chris (before watching I had assumed that Chris was a man, but how wrong was I?) and Jean Seberg as Ruth, Chris's sexy stepmother (which makes her a SMILF!).

Abandoned by her no good puppeteer husband, Ruth lives with Chris in her secluded country house. When she discovers a charming young drifter, Barney Webster, sheltering in her barn, Ruth initially threatens to call the police, but eventually takes the man into her home for breakfast, and into her bed for desserts soon after. When Barney sees Ruth's ravishing stepdaughter, he goes for the stepmom/stepdaughter combo, actively encouraged by Ruth, who wants to get back at her husband by corrupting his not-so-little girl. This volatile situation is heightened by some latent lesbian urges (Ruth's love for Chris runs a little deeper than she would care to admit), rivalry for Barney's affection, Chris's sudden bursts of stabbiness, and the fact that the ladies' house guest may be the psycho who has been carving up people in the surrounding area.

Opening with the messy murder of a woman by a man dressed as Charlie Chaplin, The Corruption of Chris Miller knows how to grab the viewer's attention, and with the introduction of the film's two lovely leading actresses, it's hard to say no to this sexually charged giallo-esque thriller, no matter how predictable the mystery is. The direction by Juan Antonio Bardem is reasonably stylish, with plenty of atmospheric rainy scenes (which terrify Chris, as we learn that she was raped in the shower when she was younger), and those well-orchestrated murders, which include the slaughter of an entire family by the sickle-wielding sicko, and the death of a major character from multiple stab wounds. Spanish censorship laws of the time prevent there from being too much in the way of nudity, but Marisol in her bikini is still reason enough to watch.