Corruption (1968)

 The last time I watched this Cushing "Eyes Without a Face" variation (I plan to watch this again in the coming months), Corruption (1968) was back in October of 2015, so it had been nearly five years. Shown late into the morning, Turner Classics featuring Peter Cushing as star of the month of October 2020, "Corruption" is quite a departure for his career at that time. I read he mentioned that it was the results of a corrupted script, disrupted by multiple people during the production...Cushing was attracted to the script, feeling it was very good when he read for the part. The opening party where Cushing is among all the young Swinging Londoners, very much a sore thumb sticking out among hippies, an art crowd, photographers, models, and the like, is surreal. It reminded me of Cushing in "Dracula AD 1972" with Beacham, such a contrast, seemingly an intellectual square opposite the London youth scene he is alien to. That his surgeon would stoop to unspeakable acts in order to recover the beauty of his young love's face, a model used to being photographically desired, producing some really unsettling results, gives "Corruption" a dark descent for a Cushing star vehicle. I dug the film but it can get really warped. If anything, much like "Dracula AD 1972" and "Dracula, the Satanic Rites", Cushing in this era of modern London, when we are so often accustomed to seeing him as a Van Helsing or Frankenstein centuries prior, has a novelty effect I find interesting. 3.5/5

My IMDb user comments from 2015:

Diabolical mad surgeon flick is unlike any Peter Cushing film you are liable to see. You can't help (and others have pointed this out) but couple "Corruption" with "Eyes Without a Face" as there is a select subgenre dealing with surgery and how deformity caused by accident can lead to some dark places. Cushing portrays as aging, but brilliant surgeon who is obsessed with a stunning model named Lynn (Sue Lloyd) he's engaged to marry. While she is perhaps too young for him and totally inserted in the "swinging 60s hippy youth culture" (also an oft-mentioned element of the film by others; which is rather fascinating considering how Cushing looks so incompatible to the active, rambunctious, loose, liberal, and noisy crowd gathered at a photographer's pad in London's party-hearty, lost-in-the-moment, spry youth scene), Cushing, a knighted, well-respected, gentlemanly, mannered, and seemingly held-together surgeon, would seem to be an odd match for her. But when a high-strung photographer (played by a demanding Anthony Booth with a personality that beckons the universe to center around him) wants all of Lynn's attention (and to get frisky and openly sensual in front of his camera as the party soon turns their eyes to them), Cushing's Sir John Rowan isn't so willing to just stand in the background and let all of this get out of hand. However, the photographer is determined to shoot her whether he likes it or not, so a scuffle ensues which results in a flood lamp (those lamps that emphasizes a great deal of light in the illumination of models) scarring the face of Lynn. This event sends Rowan into a quest to discover a method behind "curing" the facial trauma, which includes historical data from the Egyptians, fresh glands from murdered girls, and a laser that eventually does more than what is intended (as the ending tells us with bodies dropping like flies as it moves uncontrollably from one side of the room to another).

Certainly the film will be most notable for the central performances of Cushing and Lloyd. Cushing shocked me in this film considering the kind of character he embodies. This picture of a notable authority in the medical field, having to nurture a career of calm and intellect, rational and clear-minded, just becomes folly for a narcissistic model totally beholden to this monstrous vanity was quite unlike any part Cushing has really ever played. That his surgeon would commit the ghastly crimes which require beheading young women, and that Lloyd would urge and demand him to keep doing so just so she could maintain her good looks gives the film this nasty quality that makes you almost want to take a shower just to clean it off you. Both actor and actress dedicate wholly to their parts, that's for sure. Lloyd becomes so crazed, it becomes camp, especially at the end when she turns on Cushing, wanting to use the leader of a gaggle of hoods who raid their seaside cottage for loot in order to forcefully convince further facial gland surgery! The camera-work is quite in-your-face and flashy, with a style that adds pizazz to the insanity that unfolds. The ending is compellingly enigmatic offering perhaps a worst case scenario to the good doctor if he allowed himself to become overwhelmed with jealousy. Whether or not what we have just seen actually happens is left for us to guess.

Noel Trevarthen is Steve, Cushing's surgical colleague and moral compass while Kate O'Mara is Lloyd's sister, the reasonable member of the Nolan family. They have the misfortune of interrupting the killer laser struggle, not accomplishing what they hoped to. The final chapter of the film kind of introduces this posse of degenerates (a neanderthal used as muscle, a hungry gal with rude disregard for manners, the husband of a young woman that stayed the night at the cottage, soon ran down and strangled in a fight with Cushing, demanding to know where she is) out of the blue and it sort of feels like plot ambush considering how unexpected it is...perhaps intended as this leads to the downfall of the film's villains.