Review of Corruption

SPOILERS INCLUDED ‘Corruption is a super shock film' boasts the press book set to pictures of screaming women- and indeed for audiences and critics in 1967 it was just that. The enfant terribe of sixties horror films Corruption manages to touch upon every topic censors feared in movies at the time- the hedonism of swinging london, prostitution, violent youth gangs and mad surgeons. It was also an independent production- released through a major company (Columbia) which further took critics off guard. Almost ten years after it was made a critic of the old guard was still using it as a benchmark for british cinema at its sickest- it had that a lasting impact. Corruption posits a typically regal Cushing as Sir John Rowan- surgeon extraordinaire Rowan is to be married to younger model Lynn Nolan (Sue Lloyd). A woman who ‘lives for cameras' Lynn drags Rowan to a swinging party, she's only really happy when she's the centre of attention- revelling in the leers of swinging photographer Tony Booth ‘give me the pretty girl bit.. freak out baby'. Jealousy rears its head and there is a fight between Rowan and this hipster that ends with a photographers floodlamp crashing down on Lynn's beloved face. Lynn and Rowan retreat into their own narcissistic little worlds she lamenting her mutilated looks while he becomes obsessive in attempts to restore his ‘masterpiece'. Rowan takes to doing DIY surgery with his laser machine, eventually becoming a reluctant Soho slasher to remove the pituitary glands that briefly restore his beloveds face. Taking a trip down the West end that ends with him calling on prostitute Jan Waters, Rowan appears edgy and guilt ridden as if he really has come for a quickie- instead he butchers the girl bringing her severed head home in a bag. A ‘continental' take on this scene available on french video- replays it as a primal expression of the sex and death ethos- here Rowan wrestles with topless Marianne Collins who he stabs and decapitates, copping a feel of her blood splattered chest inbetween- everyone behind the camera denied shooting this footage. (For Derek Ford this was the first of many times he would disown the more egregious aspects of his career- he later distanced himself from Diversions the hardcore version of Sex Express as well as the whole of the Dick Randall produced dialogue free oddity Erotic Fantasies). With headlines like ‘new clue in headless girl murder' the couple flee the capital and head for their seaside house in Seaford. Rowan sees this as his own Shangri-la but ‘mad' Lynn's need for another pituitary gland fix is as strong as ever and soon Rowan is back to his butchering ways. In keeping with the spirit of the times the murder scenes are shot like bad acid trips with memorable closeups on a dishevelled Sir John reduced to a dirty old mac doing unspeakable things to young girls. Boarding a train he decapitates blond passenger Valerie Van Ost, regaining his gentleman posture as he puts the girl's head in his bag and hides the decapitated torso under the seats like a used broadsheet. Eventually Rowan's home is invaded by freaky juvenile thugs including Groper (David Lodge) a primate in beatniks clothing. Chunky Alexandra Dane who later specialised in playing busty barmaids goes to raid Rowan's fridge only to find Valerie Van Ost's severed head wrapped in polythene- with that all hell breaks loose, people are thrown over cliffs, theres brawls and dramatic fistfights. Lynn turns on the laser machine which like everyone else by this point goes berserk- everyone gets zapped and dies, but its still not over. Inspired by an article in The New Scientist but more commonly compared to Franju's Les Yeux sans Visage, Corruption is so tied to Robert Hartford-Davis' overblown take on the swinging sixties scene that it develops an identity thats all its own. Aware that the whole worlds eyes were on London at the time Corruption feeds off audience expectations of the ‘swinging' capital with amongst other things Rowan's cinema verite trip around the West End with hand-held shots of the Windmill theatre and the Jacey cinema where Onibaba is playing along side Nudist Paradise. Earlier Davis had made Saturday Night Out (1963) based around the London experience with a bunch of sailors encountering strip-bars, sexual blackmail and boho chicks. Today both Corruption and Saturday Night Out seem visionary- Saturday Night Out setting the tone for many sexploitation features that followed and Corruption laying railroad tracks for tawdry horror films of the topless prostitutes and severed heads in the fridge variety. For all the films detractors, Davis brings to Corruption a spirted anarchic bent thats rarely been matched in British horror films before or since. According to Cushing, Corruption made Davis enough money to retire, but he went onto direct such worthwhile pictures as the greek psychedelic oddity Incense for the Damned (1969/76) and the bitter The Fiend (1971). Unfortunately as a gun for hire filmmaker Davis' most commercially available films lend him the posthumous tag of a hack- like the blaxploitation movie Black Gunn (1972) and the misfire Gonks Go Beat (1965). He ended his days directing television movies in Hollywood- the long unavailability of his best work denies him the recognition that films like Corruption surely warrant.