Corruption (1968) US 1 Sheet Poster

A tragic accident with a lamp disfigures Lynn’s face and ends her modelling career. Sir John Rowan, a brilliant surgeon, who was partially responsible, works obsessively to repair the damage. However, the only cure is to be found in fresh female pituitary glands, and in order to make amends, he wantonly murders young women to make Lynn briefly beautiful, until the effects wear off again.

Robert Hartford Davis’s swinging sixties take on Franju’s Les yeux sans visage (1960) would not have worked without another committed performance Peter Cushing. For the only time in his career, he worked with nude actresses – a murder scene with Jan Waters was reshot with a naked Marian Collins, and Cushing wipes his bloody hands on her breasts – the original is still a better scene. Even if Hartford Davis ordered all of his works destroyed at his death, Corruption is still his most handsomely shot film (by Peter Newbrook, who also directed The Asphyx). They worked together eleven times through the decade. After each kill, the camera uses a fisheye lens in which we see Cushing’s distorted, manical features as the enormity of his crimes overwhelm him. Add to this a Jacobean climax, a surgical laser going haywire and a final nonsensical twist, and you have one of the best Cushing-centric films of the 60s.

Aka: Laser Killer, Carnage, Perversa Obsessão

Condition: FINE

Cast: Peter Cushing, Sue Lloyd, Noel Trevarthen, Kate O’Mara, Anthony Booth, David Lodge, Vanessa Howard, Valerie Van Ost, Billy Murray, Wendy Varnals, Marianne Morris – Vampyres (1974)