"When it rains… it pours BLOOD" in the Spanish thriller THE CORRUPTION OF CHRIS MILLER on Blu-ray/DVD combo from Vinegar Syndrome.

Artist Ruth Miller (Jean Seberg, THE MOUSE THAT ROARED) has been spending time away from London at a country house in Spain with her stepdaughter Chris (former child star Marisol, BLOOD WEDDING) who has been recently released from a clinic. Their relationship is anything but warm, with Chris resenting Ruth for driving away her father and suspecting that she is withholding communication from him. Into this tense atmosphere comes hunky drifter Barney (Barry Stokes, HAWK THE SLAYER), ostensibly an anthropology student getting around Europe by performing odd jobs and bedding lonely ladies. Ruth at first reluctantly invites him to stay but gradually reveals her real intents by assigning Barney a particularly odd job in bedding her stepdaughter whose childhood trauma has caused her not only to be deathly afraid of storms and darkness but also to sleep with a knife at her bedside. Although Chris is uneasy with men – her only male friend is childlike aristocrat Luis (Rudy Gaebel) who cares less about his moldering estate than his stable of horses – Ruth's apparent jealously emboldens her with Barney. Both women may have bitten off more than they can chew however, as the police – lead by THE HANGING WOMAN's Gerard Tichy – are searching for a maniac who murders women for their money, the latest victim having been former singing star Perla (Perla Cristal, FURY OF THE WOLFMAN).

A rare Spanish commercial thriller helmed by Juan Antonio Bardem (DEATH OF A CYCLIST) – who would finish THE BELL FROM HELL when original director Claudio Guerín Hill (THE LOVE AFFAIR) fell from a bell tower to his death on the final day of filming – THE CORRUPTION OF CHRIS MILLER is more akin to Narciso Ibáñez Serrador's THE HOUSE THAT SCREAMED than the works of Paul Naschy, León Klimovsky, or José Ramón Larraz, or even the Italian co-produced Carroll Baker-in-peril jet set-gialli (A QUIET PLACE TO KILL composer Gregorio García Segura penned Cristal's songs here). It is a glossy Panavision production shot by Juan Gelpí (CRYPT OF THE LIVING DEAD) with a lush score by Waldo de los Ríos (MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE) that favors the shifting dynamics of the central trio – the hatred between the women is as believable as their mutual dependence upon each other – over incident, shattering the moody proceedings thrice with an opening sequence featuring a shot that Lamberto Bava would pay homage to in A BLADE IN THE DARK, a truly terrifying sequence of the killer's merciless attack on a family farm, and the blood-drenched finale. The ending is a neat idea that nonetheless stretches credibility. Bardem – uncle of actor Javier Bardem (VICKY CHRISTINA BARCELONA) – makes a supporting performance as a farmer along with his daughter Maria (DAY OF THE BEAST) and then nine-year-old son Miguel. Stokes would again find himself naked and caught between two unstable women in Norman Warren's PREY which also features a protracted slow motion struggle.

THE CORRUPTION OF CHRIS MILLER was released theatrically in the United States in 1976 as BEHIND THE SHUTTERS, disappearing soon after and unreleased on home video. During the VHS era, the curious could seek out Video Unlimited's UK pre-cert VHS or a Greek-subtitled from NK Video that featured the same incompletely letterboxed transfer. Sourced from a new 4K restoration of the original camera negative, Vinegar Syndrome's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.35:1 Blu-ray of this Panavision film is dazzling, restoring not only the full width of the image but a touch of the glamour treatment to its actors with more subtle facial lighting which also benefits the nonverbal parts of Marisol's performance (the actress having once seemed bland rather than remote to this writer). Only the opening and closing credits look inferior, with the latter looking of coarser quality (Vinegar Syndrome might have been better off using the Spanish credits which were in better condition). English and Spanish DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0 mono tracks are included, boasting clear post-synched dialogue and bold rendering of the score. Optional English SDH subtitles for the English dub and English subtitles for the Spanish dub reveal subtle dialogue differences.

Extras are sparse but welcome. First up is what is labeled as an "archival career retrospective interview" with Bardem (58:23) which is actually an episode of the Spanish television series "Otras Miradas (Different Perspectives)" featuring Bardem in conversation with critic and former director of the San Sebastián film festival Diego Galán who died on April 15th at age seventy-two. First off, do not expect much discussion of THE CORRUPTION OF CHRIS MILLER as both regard it as "minor Bardem" but the conversation is interesting, covering his social interests as a filmmaker and communist party member, the genres in which he worked, and the many fallow periods of his career in which he sometimes went years without working despite the successes of his films. Most interesting is the discussion of the production company UNINCI founded by himself, Carlos Saura (CRIA CUERVOS), and Louis Garcia Berlanga (THE EXECUTIONER) and the production and reception of Luis Buñuel's VIRIDIANA (1961) which was unreleased in Spain until 1977 and not recognized by the government as a Spanish production until 1983. "Jean Seberg: Movie Star" (12:05) is a short tribute to the star's tragic life from her childhood ambitions to be a movie star, meeting Otto Preminger who cast her as ST. JOAN, meeting her first husband François Moreuil which lead to Jean-Luc Godard casting her in BREATHLESS, her subsequent credits and marriages, and how her involvement with the Black Panthers via their Free Breakfast for Children program lead Nixon and Hoover to declare her a threat to the United States, getting a journalist to plant a slanderous article about her in the Los Angeles Times which caused her to go into premature labor and lose her child, and her subsequent downward spiral and death at age forty. The feature presentation is the export edition which extends the more ambiguous finale of the Spanish cut with a neat conceit executed with some dodgy opticals and then added shots and sound effects intercut with the original final scene along with different musical accompaniment.