An online double bill of horror last night - both films can be found in very watchable versions, but I won't give the links as they are available to buy, with extras.
Corruption is a 1967 British film starring Peter Cushing who was apparently ashamed of being in it, but nevertheless gives a great performance. The plot is based on the French film Eyes Without a Face, which I saw a couple of years ago and has similar gory surgery scenes. One of the chief attractions for me is the period in which the film was made - there's a wonderful swinging 60s party at the beginning in which Cushing's character, an eminent surgeon, shows how old-fashioned and square he is, although his beautiful girlfriend (played by Sue Lloyd, memorable from The Ipcress File) is a fashion model about 25 years younger than him. Her photographer - played by Anthony (later father-in-law to Tony Blair) Booth in an obvious homage to David Hemmings in Blow Up - gets into a fight with Cushing and in the melee a spotlight gets knocked onto Lloyd damaging her face. The surgeon then discovers a way of recovering her beauty, but it involves taking the pineal gland from living female flesh and the use of a laser; his (and soon her) obsession with retaining her looks leading to him becoming a Jack the Ripper style serial killer.
The murders are pretty graphic for the time - apparently there are more violent and nude versions that were shot for the overseas market - and are filmed with distorting lenses making Cushing look even more twisted and malevolent. One takes place on a train going from Seaford (where Cushing has a charming clifftop cottage) to Lewes, a journey I've made many times. This scene reminded me of the old railway carriages that had separate compartments where you never knew who you might be sharing with. About half an hour from the end there's a really abrupt change in the plot when a gang of thieves invade the cottage and threaten Cushing and his girlfriend - an unusual performance from David (Pink Panther) Lodge as a psychopathic mute. The ending is truly bizarre, as the laser, which just happens to have been brought down to the cottage (they must have had a lot of trouble fitting all that equipment into the back of his sports car), goes haywire and destroys everything. Then in the final seconds it appears to have all just been a bad dream. Despite the nastiness and misogyny (see the poster above) it's worth watching, especially for fans of Swinging Sixties cinema. The hip jazz score (Bill McGuffie) would sound good on its own, but is too intrusive and inappropriate in the way it's used here.
More information can be found here and here.
I'd read quite a lot about Peter Walker's films but never seen one, so I decided to finally dip a toe in the water and Frightmare (1974) was better than I was expecting. The story of London-based sisters who have a cannibal mother living in a country cottage, it was well shot and acted and had some unpleasant murder scenes involving an electric drill - this is a few years before the notorious Driller Killer.
Opening in an atmospherically filmed empty Battersea Fun Fair (mentioned earlier in this blog with reference to the film Mutations) we see the murder of Andrew Sachs, which is the beginning of the mother's cannibal spree. After spending a period in an asylum she is deemed 'cured' and released back into society - the film, written by David McGillivray seems to be an indictment of liberal justice and the middle classes - I can imagine a large Media Studies phd industry being based on Walker's films. The film stars an impressive Sheila Keith as the mad mother and Rupert Davies as the father, with an appearance by Paul (Rosie) Greenwood - the 'good' sister, played convincingly by Deborah Fairfax, reminded me of Katherine Parkinson - the ending is a bummer. The film was not greeted well by critics - 'A moral obscenity' The Telegraph, 'A despicable film' The Observer.
More information here and here.
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