CORRUPTION - SLEAZE OR QUALITY?
Clichéd, sensational, and drab-looking. It’s hard to deny this 1967
Peter Cushing vehicle
directed by exploitation expert Robert Hartford-Davis deserves such
adjectives. It’s equally hard to deny it’s a unique and forceful
experience, even for those who hate its power. Why?
Here’s the plot – Sir John Rowan (Cushing), a brilliant surgeon, has to
recurrently kill people in order to make a serum to restore his
beautiful fiancée’s scarred face – a stock subject matter for a horror
film ( “The Corpse Vanishes”, a 1942 Monogram programmer for Bela
Lugosi comes to mind ) executed with the same graphic surgical emphasis
shortly before seen in George Franju’s respected “The Eyes without a
Face” (1959) and Jesus Franco’s not-so-respected rip-off, “The Awful Dr.
Orloff” (1962). Sir John then goes about carrying a
Jack-the-Ripper-type case of medical tools and murdering women. After an
explosive ending, the movie, apparently for want of somewhere else to
go, tacks on an epilog borrowed from another classic, Ealing Studio’s
“Dead of Night” (1945).
From this derivative platform, the script by Donald and Derek Ford (who
had previously used the Jack the Ripper motif in the fine “A Study in
Terror” where the infamous Victorian killer meets Sherlock Holmes)
departs to focus on its own interests. First, characterisation and
psychological nuance. Sir John is a case study in the pathology of
perfeccionism.
Before the opening credits are over we see him working
tirelessly on the operating table, commenting that “the more successes,
the more one fears failure”, and napping in a dimly lit, crammed library
dominated by a dignified bust – of himself? – with a book still open on
his lap.
Many have said it’s uncongruous for him to be infatuated with vain,
unpleasant Lynn Nolan (Sue Lloyd from “The Baron” teleseries ...). Well,
assuming this uptight, middle-aged bachelor hasn’t got where he is
without a fair amount of renounce the love of a beautiful model much
younger than himself would be enough to make him infatuated –
“obsessed”, as his colleague Dr. Harris (Noel Trevarthen) rightly points
out – with her. Not only is he making up for the lost years, she is
also another trophy, another “success” in his career. When he finds
himself guilty of the accident that horribly burns her face, there are
literally no lengths he wouldn’t go to to rescue her.
He doesn’t need to kill desirable girls. He chooses them. One could
argue they’re easier to handle than a strong male target. But when the
prospective victim is a younger girl whose life isn’t “lost”, he
resists. “I have sworn to preserve life, not to take it”, he says, his
face lit up by a table lamp. The assumption is that a life of contention
has groomed aggressivity toward sexually arousing women.
The movie
isn’t mysoginistic, the protagonist is.
As for Lynn, neither the script nor the actress overplays her femme
fatale function as with, say, Hazel Court in the Roger Corman Poe
adaptations. We believe in her physical and emotional pain (“People
turning away as they see me!...” She’s a model! The dialogue has the
intelligence of using the characters’ biographic and professional
backgrounds to tighten the screw) and she sounds truthful when she says
she’s chosen Sir John for “the man” rather than the money or title. And
Steve Harris is a find. As the nominal hero, he’s clever enough to
figure John’s actions and motives, but his Jiminy Cricket interventions
are tiring and ineffectual, and when he finally acts in the climax, he
does so in such a misjudged and clumsy way he just precipitates
disaster. In one blow the filmmakers make up a credible character,
subvert a pivotal cliché, and slap censorship and moralism in the face.
The film also sheds a new light on the old hat story by firmly setting
it in the kitchen sink places and realities of swinging London, with the
main result of providing a contrast between the old world represented
by Sir John and the emerging landscape of the 60’s. The final act when
the house is invaded by beatniks (a less conspicuous borrowing, this
from John Huston’s “Treasure of Sierra Madre”, but totally filtered and
legitimated) is remarkable in that each party is freaked by the other.
The demented Groper (David Lodge of “Carry On” fame), wearing a black
Sgt Pepper uniform is a sturdier, diabolical mirror image for John
Lennon, pointing out the destructive side of on the road lifestyle. The
film preceded the Mansion murders by a year. Interestingly, Corman’s “A
Bucket of Blood” had also anticipated the phenomenon in a different way.
A film so concerned with the eruption of beastly instincts in diverse
contexts couldn’t have been softly staged. Its aggressive style is an
asset, as are the seedy and commonplace settings.
Hartford-Davis gets as
close as possible to Expressionistic principles within these limits in
the grotesque wide-angle shots distorting the countenance and the
surroundings of the protagonist; the opening credits with masked doctors
and equipment blended into a single mechanism; or the last – and
lasting – close-up of Cushing’s stern eyes accompanied by the soundtrack
of women’s screams. This final sequence serves more to reiterate Sir
John’s potential instability than to surprise us with some unexpected
plot point. Equal care has been taken in considering the symbolic
connotations of places and objects – the laser, the seaside, the noisy
flying gulls, and so on.
Last but not least – “Corruption” is very entertaining – its
intellectual ventures remain almost always in the subtext and never
interfere with its effectiveness as a genre piece – and VERY
professional. Its deliberate drabness should never be confused with
amateurism. It is purposefully achieved through the efforts of an
excellent crew including cinematographer Peter Newbrook (later to
photograph “The Asphyx”, 1970), composer Bill McGuffie (his jazzy score,
ranging from soothing to frenzied, is the film’s voice, no less), and
practically the whole cast. Peter at his creepiest, Lloyd, Lodge, the
iconic and beautiful Kate O’Mara as the heroine, and perhaps especially
worthy of mention , because never acknowledged, Valerie Van Ost as the
victim on the train. The lady would make an even more notable appearance
in another Cushing film - “The Satanic Rites of Dracula” (1973) –
where she displayed enormous versatily and ease as the squeamish
secretary turned wickedly anticipating victim and savagely sensuous
vampiress.
