The Odyssey is about a man who’s just trying to get back home to his wife. Along the way there are giant cannibals, one-eyed monsters, and sexy ladies who sing to literally drive him crazy.
Corruption of the Damned is George Kuchar’s version of the epic poem. But instead of smiting gods and mythical sirens, there’s a clingy mother, a surprise pregnancy, labor union strikes, a stocking fetish, and, of course, a romantic frolic through a cemetery. And instead of a war hero trying to get back to his loving wife, it’s a dude who wants to exact revenge on his cheating ex-girlfriend. You’ve never wanted more for a guy to reach his destination so he can hack someone up.
This is a film that can only come from auteur George Kuchar.
John goes to visit his sweetheart Cora, only to find a literal Dear John letter: “Dear John, I hate your guts and never loved you.” Harsh. She has run away with Paul. Fucking Paul. Fuck that guy.
John throws a fit of rage. Murder on his mind, he picks up a meat cleaver and sets out for the countryside to find Cora. However, getting there isn’t so easy. He needs a car. But first he needs “his teabags” to be read, so he turns to an old flame who just happens to be holding a seance with some weirdo burnout occultists with a tiny piano—basically all your best friends. Then he heads over to see his sex-crazed aunt who’s in the middle of nailing her boss, who happens to be on the wrong side of a union dispute. Clearly she’s got a lot to deal with at the moment, but she has a car. Sometimes when you’re desperate you have to ask favors from the people in your life you ought to avoid. We’ve all been there—I just had to crash at my aunt’s house and her dog bit me. As John continues his twisted odyssey, Corruption of the Damned unravels with obstacle after obstacle—it’s a series of distractions and side missions that keep our hero-turned-would-be-killer from reaching his goal. You wonder if John will ever shove a cleaver into Cora’s skull.
The Kuchar brothers are legends. Their genre-bending, subversive, proudly queer films are filled with melodrama, intrigue, sex, absurdity, and endless joy. You can see how their work inspired other fringe filmmakers, including Sarah Jacobson (I Was a Teenage Serial Killer) and national treasure John Waters. Corruption of the Damned is an absolute delight—from the campy vamps hungry for love to the scene where two lovers cut each other’s clothes off with a pair of kitchen shears. In addition to The Odyssey, the film is also a subversive take on the melodramatic romance films of the 40s. Corruption of the Damned is silent and shot on beautiful black-and-white 16mm, with hand-written intertitles that move the plot forward (and backward). There’s also an ever-changing moody orchestral score ripped straight out of a library. You’re just waiting for a distressed damsel to be tied up to some railroad tracks by a mustached villain. But instead you get two ladies wearing nothing but cardboard boxes fight each other on a dolly. You read that sentence correctly.
There’s a lot to learn from George and Mike Kuchar. From the seminal Hold Me While I’m Naked to the sparkling Sins of the Fleshapoids, they were, and are, the experimental titans of DIY outsider filmmaking. Their films are wildly intelligent as they are campy, and always with a sense of biting humor and an unabashedly queer presence. It’s renegade filmmaking at the fringes created by artists who lived at the fringes.
“Help me . . . I’m looking for happiness.”
Aren’t we all?
