When watching Corky it is impossible not to be impressed by leading actor Robert Blake, his performance highlighting the flaws of a man yearning to become more than he is and ultimately failing at his attempt. Director Leonard J. Horn masterfully delivers an epic yet gut-wrenching movie about a race car mechanic named Corky Curtiss, who dreams of becoming a driver, but every move he makes takes him further and further away from his goal, family and friends, while at the same time steering him towards being burnt alive by the flames of his desire. Corky is loud, aggressive towards his closest friends and shirtless half of the time.
A young Charlotte Rampling plays his wife, who tries to finish her education while working two jobs and caring for two children, stretched so thin due to her husband's behavior that we root for her to make it, balancing out this sad tale. The movie never got much of a push distribution-wise, except for a short drive-in theater life, so a rare few actually got to see it originally, with the studio behind it finding it too depressing for general audiences. It truly is a shame Corky never got a wider release, because then we would have probably got more movies from Leonard J. Horn, who instead ended up directing only two feature films and doing a whole lot of television work.
In 1972 a neophyte Spanish media company created a rare platform for artists to explore classic genre imagery with a sophisticated cinematic sensibility.
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