234 Corruption

[MichaelB]

CORRUPTION
(Robert Hartford-Davis, 1968)
Release date: 16 August 2021
Limited Edition Blu-ray (UK Blu-ray premiere)

Pre-order here

In the 1960s, director Robert Hartford-Davis (The Black Torment, The Fiend) teamed up with producer/cameraman Peter Newbrook (The Asphyx) to make a series of low-budget films capitalising on the cinematic crazes of the day. In 1968, the duo stridently ventured into the surgical horror subgenre with Corruption, a grim update of Eyes Without a Face, transposed into the scenic south-coast seaside town of Seaford, via Swinging Sixties London.

In a surprising performance, Peter Cushing (Captain Clegg, The Revenge of Frankenstein) stars as a high-class plastic surgeon who is driven to murder as part of a demented quest to rebuild the decaying visage of his fashion model wife (Sue Lloyd, The Ipcress File), who has been severely scarred at a party.

A film that pushed the envelope of gore and sleaze in its era, Corruption is presented on home video for the first time in the UK.


INDICATOR LIMITED EDITION BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES

• 2K restoration from the original negative
• Two feature presentations: the theatrical version (92 mins); and the more graphic international version (91 mins)
• Original mono audio
• Audio commentary with Peter Cushing biographer David Miller and English Gothic author Jonathan Rigby (2013)
• The BEHP Interview with Peter Newbrook (1995): career-spanning audio interview with the producer and cameraman, made as part of the British Entertainment History Project, featuring Newbrook in conversation with Alan Lawson and Roy Fowler
• The Guardian Lecture with Peter Cushing (1986): audio recording of an interview with the legendary actor recorded at the National Film Theatre, London
• Interview with actor Phillip Manikum (2021)
• Interview with actor Billy Murray (2012)
• Interview with actor Jan Waters (2012)
• Whatever Happened to Wendy Varnals? (2013): interview with the English actor
• Stephen Laws Introduces ‘Corruption’ (2021): appreciation by the acclaimed horror author
• Edgar Wright trailer commentary (2013): short critical appreciation
• Original UK theatrical trailer
• Original US theatrical trailer
• TV spots
• Radio spots
• Image gallery: promotional and publicity material
• Director’s shooting script gallery
• New and improved English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing
• Limited edition exclusive 80-page book with a new essay by Laura Mayne, archival articles and interviews, an overview of contemporary critical responses, and film credits
• Limited edition exclusive replica production stills
• UK home video premiere
• Limited edition of 5,000 copies
• Extras subject to change


#PHILTD234
BBFC cert: TBC
REGION B
EAN: 5060697921458

[M Sanderson]

Been looking forward to this one. Heard it’s a very nasty thriller and a great restoration. This one will get my full support.

[colinr0380]

It got a rather packed Grindhouse edition in the US a couple of years ago and it was interesting to finally see it as one of the lesser celebrated films inspired by Eyes Without A Face. It is quite a nasty film in the sense that its in that late 1960s, early 1970s trend of psychosexual-killer films with more explicit violence (Frenzy feels key in this. But Boris Karloff in The Sorcerors also comes to mind as a 'modern' role for a horror icon of an earlier style. Or Michael Gough heading up Horror Hospital in 1972), and it was quite notorious at the time for being the film that Peter Cushing disowned, perhaps because the character he plays is quite different from his more urbane figures of Van Helsing or Frankenstein in his other horror films. He does not seem to mention it in his autobiography, though it does at least get listed in his filmography at the back of the book.

Plus its not one to watch if you are

Spoiler

afraid of primitive laser eye surgery!

I wonder if this edition will replicate the "Corruption is not a woman's picture! Therefore no woman will be admitted alone to see this film!" taglines.

[MichaelB]

Final specs:

[Finch]

Beaverruption

[therewillbeblus]

It is quite a nasty film in the sense that its in that late 1960s, early 1970s trend of psychosexual-killer films with more explicit violence ... and it was quite notorious at the time for being the film that Peter Cushing disowned, perhaps because the character he plays is quite different from his more urbane figures of Van Helsing or Frankenstein in his other horror films.

I thought this was pretty terrible, with moments of promise in reflexively liberated shots of grindhouse violence and explosions of sexuality. The counterculture context is played up to extremes of allure and repulsion via bursting colorful visuals in unfiltered phantasmagoric psychedelia and lens-manipulations creating an at-times nauseating effect. It's a trashy film, and not necessarily in a good way. For example, the fisheye camera angles are overused and inconsistently effective, rendering those initially enticing kill scenes repetitive and obnoxious over time. The baddies who show up in the last act overstay their welcome as irritating A Clockwork Orange-forerunners, and the entire section is a superfluous inclusion to what could have otherwise been a fine hour-long lean and ultraviolent Cormanesque affair. Also, the ending makes zero sense- its ambiguity is stupid and itself ambiguous... perhaps the worst version of the worst kind of twist ending I've seen.

Cushing probably disowned the film because his character isn't really a "character" at all- whatever happened in the editing process obfuscated any characterization whatsoever. His energy is so disconnected from his actions in any given scene- he wavers between serious or silly moods, can come across as pathetic, occasionally surrendering his will, or other times becoming enlivened and ferociously animated. What's more, the different responses are triggered by seemingly similar acute situations of threat, which could have colored in a fractured, erratic character, but he's never given attention for exploration. The camera itself doesn't even appear interested in him when he cowers in defeat, confusingly missing said opportunity for a turbulent unease at his unpredictable that could have infected the viewer with discomfort in a better film. Instead, we're left with a hollow subject that emits its flaccid energy back at us.

[Boosmahn]

Any recommendations on which version to start with? (Alas, TWBB, this had already been ordered by the time your post went up.) Maybe the director has a preferred version?

[MichaelB]

Any recommendations on which version to start with? (Alas, TWBB, this had already been ordered by the time your post went up.) Maybe the director has a preferred version?

The US cut is closest to what the director intended.

The only difference between that and the Continental cut is the scene with the prostitute, which is far more graphic but less well integrated into the film as a whole.

[Boosmahn]

The US cut is closest to what the director intended.

The only difference between that and the Continental cut is the scene with the prostitute, which is far more graphic but less well integrated into the film as a whole.

Thanks, I'll watch that one! Looking at what's been said about this film (not to mention its plot and look), I'm curious if it will out-grime Scalpel, the sleaziest movie I've ever seen.