19+ Event!
Due to explicit sexual content, nudity, graphic violence, and disturbing themes, this screening of Corruption is restricted to guests 19 years of age and older. Valid government-issued ID will be required for entry.
PRESENTED ON 35mm!
Introduced by journalist ERIC VEILLETTE!
Presented in partnership with the American Cinematheque, ‘Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair’ is an annual film festival showcasing some of the greatest works of cinema from across the globe that venture into the darkest sides of humanity and the bleakest points in human history.
The fifth annual edition in June 2026 expands to nearly 100 theaters across the U.S., Canada, U.K. and South and Central America, with each venue presenting its own original curated lineup of uncompromising films defined by unpleasant truths and raw empathy.
Having apprenticed under directors like Freddie Francis, Otto Preminger and Nicholas Ray, filmmaker Roger Watkins likely imagined a very different career path than the one that led him into adult filmmaking.
Released in 1983, Corruption arrived at the twilight of the Golden Age of Adult Film, just as the industry was abandoning 35mm production for video. It quickly becomes clear just how far Corruption sits from the clichés people often associate with the adult industry. This film has no daylight.
Working under the pseudonym Richard Mahler, Watkins—the same uncompromising filmmaker behind the notorious horror film Last House on Dead End Street—had already built a reputation as one of the most singular, bleak and caustic filmmakers in New York’s adult scene. In Her Name Was Lisa, Midnight Heat, and American Babylon, he populated his worlds with damaged characters stumbling through voyeuristic, labyrinthian, moral wastelands, often pausing mid-scene to ask the viewer the same bewildered question: “What the fuck is going on here? Why are you even watching this?” A sense of existential dread runs through all of Watkins’ work.
Corruption may be his most fully realized descent into that abyss, where a lush colour palette gives way to cold basements and grey, beer-soaked bars, and synth pulses collide with classical music. Legendary adult actor Jamie Gillis plays a debt-ridden businessman descending into a voyeuristic Dante’s Inferno, surrounded by a remarkable cast of New York regulars including Tiffany Clark, Vanessa Del Rio, the magnetic Bobby Astyr, and George Payne, who as Gillis’s assistant, literally becomes The Joker.
What emerges isn’t a typical adult film at all, but something closer to a Bunuel-esque, art-house nightmare about power and alienation. It was not, as Screw Magazine exclaimed, “the adult film equivalent to Flashdance.” It’s abrasive, unsettling, and undeniably compelling — showing a master filmmaker pushing the medium to strange new places just as the death knell was ringing for the theatrical era of adult film. (ERIC VEILLETTE )