Shock Corridor

I have watched hundreds and hundreds of movies in my life ranging from mainstream Hollywood to highbrow arthouse favourites to schlocky cult classics but I can honestly say I have never experienced anything quite like 'Shock Corridor' before! In fact the only other movie off the top of my head that mixes b-grade melodrama, subversive social comment, hysterical camp dialogue, and genuinely inspired shots and scenes is 'The Naked Kiss', Sam Fuller's next movie. Fuller was an oddball original, and if you want to see why he is worshipped by Godard, Wenders, Scorsese, Tarantino and Jarmusch look no further than this astonishing movie which has to be seen to believed! Peter Breck (best known for his role on TV's 'Maverick') plays an ambitious reporter who fakes a mental illness so that he can solve a murder, gain fame, respect and (hopefully) a Pulitzer prize. His girlfriend (Constance Towers, star of 'The Naked Kiss', also essential viewing) warns him against it, but is convinced to aid his plan by posing as his sister and getting him committed. Once inside he becomes involved with all kinds of crazies including the larger than life Opera loving nutcase Pagliacci (writer Larry Tucker in an absolutely unforgettable performance), wardens both kind and sadistic, and in one sensational scene a bunch of raving nymphos! ( "oh no! nymphos!"). However describing the basic plot of this movie gives you only half the picture. You really have to watch it for yourself to fully appreciate just how strange it is. For my money it ranks with 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest' and 'The Ninth Configuration' as the most memorable movie dealing with madness, and on top of that it is one of the greatest b-grade movies of any genre ever made. Arguably Fuller's single greatest achievement and a movie not to be missed by any film buff. Highly recommended!

Well, I have to say that I'm really surprised at this film. After reading up about it and seeing all the high ratings, I was really hoping that it would be something special. Unfortunately, however, Shock Corridor is only a faintly interesting little film with some good ideas that mostly aren't capitalised upon. In 1946, Mark Robson made a film about a sane man in a mental asylum called "Bedlam", and Shock Corridor is not a patch on that superior film! The plot takes in similar themes to your classic 'selling your soul to the devil' kind of story, as at the centre there is man prepared to put himself on the line for hope of winning some glory. Johnny Barrett is a reporter working for a top newspaper. There's been a murder in the local nuthouse and all attempts to get information out of the prisoners have been unsuccessful, so Johnny decides that he will fool the psychologists into thinking that he's insane so he can gain access to the asylum, talk to the residents and hopefully manage to solve the mystery…all hopefully leading him to the Pulitzer prize. The film gets off to a good start as we see the details of the plan unfolding and the way that the lead character's girlfriend slots into the plan and her problems with it...but once the plan has played out, the film really take a turn for the worse when he's finally committed to the insane asylum. It would seem that director Samuel Fuller (who had a varied career, which was topped by the fantastic White Dog) didn't really know what he wanted to do with the film. There's not a great deal of investigation going on and the film focuses more on the insanity of the inmates, which doesn't work well if you ask me. It would seem that the director wanted it to be 'trippy', but I found it boring - there's plenty of fights and things, but I was really hoping for some sort of murder investigation and that's not what I got – once he enters the asylum, the only real point of interest is a scene that's in colour! The acting is not very good either, Peter Breck never impresses in the lead role and constantly looks awkward, and his support is not of the high class variety either. Overall, Shock Corridor is a film that could have been good but unfortunately it isn't!

Breck is a reporter who goes undercover as a patient at a mental institution so he can solve a murder case and win a Pulitzer prize. Although there is a drawn-out exposition explaining the undercover operation, the murder that is being investigated is not clearly explained. The script by Fuller is muddled, amateurish, and rather dull for the most part. The inmates are somewhat amusing but the episodic nature of Breck's investigation, as he talks to the witnesses to the murder, makes the story very uninvolving. There are some cheesy scenes involving Towers, who's a *. Fuller's follow-up, "The Naked Kiss," is far more interesting than this dud.

The striking thing about this film is just how unnervingly barmy the characters are, and even more amazing is just how they seem so apt with Sam Fuller's sledgehammer direction. Written, directed and produced by Fuller it weaves a cautionary tale of how faking madness just might bring about the downfall of ones own sanity, and here it begs the question of if the price of fame has no boundaries to those who clamour for glory ?. The film cleverly manages to make the viewer think about the thin line between sanity and insanity and this is shot with such style it lingers long in the memory after the credits role. Some great sequences allied with clever switches to {almost surreal} color make this more than a curiosity piece because of the directors "American Primitive" reputation. Interestingly dark 8/10.

The ambitious journalist of the Daily Globe Johnny Barrett (Peter Breck) aims to win the Pulitzer Prize solving the murder of the inmate Slone, stabbed in the kitchen of a mental hospital with a butcher knife and witnessed by three insane interns. With the support of his boss and manager of the newspaper Swanson (Bill Zuckert) and the orientation of the psychiatrist Dr. Fong (Philip Ahn), Johnny simulates an incestuous situation with his * girlfriend Cathy (Constance Towers), who is totally against the idea, and is sent to the institution. While being submitted to a mental treatment along the weeks, he approaches to the three witnesses, waiting for a moment of sanity to interview them. The former soldier Stuart (James Best) tells him that the killer wore white pants; the former university black student Trent (Hari Rhodes) tells him that it was an attendant; and the former physicist Dr. Boden (Gene Evans) tells him the name of the killer. However, Johnny finds the price he pays for his award. "Shock Corridor" is a naive story with many flaws. I could list some of them: How could a prominent psychiatrist accept to participate in such a fraud without anticipating the consequences of a long mental treatment to Johnny? How could the policeman accept the complaint of Cathy without the basic investigation that they were not siblings? The confession of the killer under aggression would never be accepted in a court. However, the story is not bad and Stanley Kubrick used elements of this film in his masterpiece "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest". The mental hospital metaphorically shows samples of the American society in the end of the 50's and beginning of the 60's, with the consequences of the cold war and racism. My vote is seven. Title (Brazil): "Paixões Que Alucinam" ("Passions That Hallucinate")

Shock Corridor is like and not like other movies about the patients of a 'cuckoo's nest'. There's nothing the audience is going to necessarily learn about mental illness or about why the murder journalist Johnny Barrett (Peter Breck) is investigating is so crucial for him to commit himself into an asylum (or "mental home" as one orderly puts it). That's not exactly what Samuel Fuller- well-known B-film writer/director is out for. What he does come away with is an exploitation film that finds itself as being, well, remarkable. Somehow, the material finds itself as inspired for practically all the way. As Barrett learns who the patients are, such as Larry Tucker playing Pagliacci (the big guy with a song sometimes in his head and mouth), James Best as Stuart (an ex-soldier who thinks he fought in the confederacy), and Hari Rhodes playing Trent (a black guy who takes himself seriously enough to, oddly, get heard out by the rest of the inmates at times). This, plus the cold orderlies and doctors, the nymphs, and just about all the others in the place, begin to wear Barrett's mental capacity down as he gets closer and closer. For the players involved here, it's a character actors' feast- for a B-film every performance comes off as being believable, so much so that each performance has a level that's startling, immediate, and immensely theatrical. If one was to just watch the theatrical trailer without seeing the film one might come away with a different impression about how it turns out. Fuller's script is loaded with moments, grand and minute, of satire and the bizarre, and it fits. His direction as well creates an atmosphere that changes as much as some of the patient's mind-sets: scenes go from being rather funny (drop-dead a couple of times) to chilling and ridiculous to observant, not to mention surreal (i.e. the scenes in color, plus some of Barnett's inner monologue) and musical. Though the film does have minor liabilities, to be expected, such as a less than great ending (expectable for the genre), and some flaws in the editing. But that shouldn't deter viewers who may want to get into the career of Samuel Fuller and aren't too sure where to start. Overall, Shock Corridor is a high quality, value exploitation flick that leaves a heavy impact on repeat viewings. A+

****SPOILERS**** "Shock Corridor" begins and ends with the fifth century b.c Greek historian and philosopher Euripides famous quote "Those whom the Gods wish to destroy they first makes mad". In the movie we see a normal but aggressive young reporter John Barrett, Peter Beck, get destroyed by his own greed and self-importance in trying to and winning a Pulitzer Prize in news journalism but ending up going mad winning it. John goes undercover in a mental institution to uncover a murder of one of the patients-Slone-as John keeps saying, all throughout the movie, over and over in his mind as well as out loud "Who killed Slone in the kitchen". There's thee witnesses to the crime at the mental asylum who saw what happened and who killed Slone but their all insane and what they saw is buried deep inside their unconscious minds. Getting committed John begins to work on the three witnesses Stuart Trent & Boden, James Best Hari Rhodes & Gene Evens, but finds them too unstable and hallucinogenic to get any of the information on the crime that he's searching for. As John starts to get closer to solving the murder he starts to lose his sanity due to the treatment he's having at the hospital as well as being exposed to the inmates that are really insane. It's then that John's mind slowly starts to snap and by the end of the movie John's as psychotic as anyone else in the mental asylum. Interesting but flawed movie about mental illness that comes across somewhat comical even though the subject is a very serious matter and nothing to be laughed at. There's a real off-the-wall scene in the movie when John is attacked by a group of man-hungry nymphomaniacs which came across more like a Saturday Night Live comedy shtick then the really vicious attempted gang rape of John by the nymph's that it was. Another thing about the movie that's somewhat unrealistic is that the killing and killer of Slone is never really explained to the movie's audience. The "killers" confession would have been thrown out of any court due to John beating it out of him. The killer would have, as well as anyone else, confessed to anything just to stop from getting beaten almost to death and no grand jury in the country would have ever indited him to go on trial in the first place. Another big flaw in the movie was how could a renowned and prominent psychiatrist like Dr. Fong, Philip Ahn, not know as well as allow his patience John to be committed so that he can go undercover in a mental hospital with out being effected by being there. In that John would end up not only with a destroyed mind but body as well which Dr. Fong should well have known due to his expertise on the subject. And finally how come the police as well as the mental hospital staff didn't and couldn't find out that Johns girlfriend Cathy, Constance Towers, was not really his sister whom John was supposed to be sexually aroused by. And which was the reason for him to get committed and then go undercover in the mental hospital? John must have been in the hospital for weeks and how would he be committed at all without the conformation that Cathy was really his sister? It would have been as easy for the police to find out the truth with Cathy's drivers license or social security number but they and the hospital staff seemed to just take her word for it and not look any farther then that. Still the movie "Shock Corridor" is well worth seeing just for how it handles the subject of mental illness that at that time, 1963, was even more taboo then nudity and sex was in films made in Hollywood.

Samuel Fuller's direction helps keep SHOCK CORRIDOR watchable but the script is never valid enough to make the film anything more than an interesting experiment that is only half successful. PETER BRECK does a good job as a newspaper reporter with only one thought on his mind. ("Who killed Slade in the kitchen?"). He goes undercover at a mental institute in order to uncover the truth. His girl friend CONSTANCE TOWERS agrees to help get him get incarcerated on the pretense that he's her brother and tried to rape her. That premise alone is hard to make believable the quick succession of events that lead to Breck's being shoved into a psycho ward. Director Fuller lets the camera discover several other rather interesting patients but none of them are fully developed as characters we can care about. Without revealing the disturbing ending, let me just say you're liable to get hooked into watching the film if you happen to catch it from the start. It's worth a watch, if only to see where all the story strands are going. But when it's all over, you have to wonder whether anyone can really take the story seriously. Good try though--and Breck really gives his all to his volatile bursts of temper.

A journalist, determined to expose a murder, gets himself thrown into the mental hospital in which it occurred. While there, he has to fight to retain his sanity. This exposé and the murder, they're McGuffins. The film's biggest flaw is that these McGuffins are left so untouched (does Barrett actually believe that anything he might prove by interviewing mental patients will stand up in court?), which makes the allegorical part of the film stand out a bit too much. Fortunately the allegory is powerful and is well done. Amazingly, these major criticisms of American society, delivered in monologues by three very good performers, exist in this film, made in 1963. The tightness of the post-WWII generation was weakening a bit at the time, but the kind of things that are expressed here, exposing the paranoia and bigotry and the belligerence of the American hoi polloi, it's daring. I suppose it was allowed because this was obviously meant to be an exploitative B-movie and play to a small audience. Shock Corridor is probably most famous for its style, and that fame is very much deserved. The harsh lighting is gorgeous, as is all of the cinematography, in general. The choppy editing, probably influenced by the French New Wave that was taking place at the time, is also rather good. The acting is adequate. It's certainly not an actors' film, and the leads are easily forgettable. However, some of the inmates give good performances. Hari Rhodes as Trent is probably the most memorable. He plays the first black student at a Southern university (not the historical one, but a fictional composite). He was driven insane by the bigotry around him, and now he thinks he's a Grand Dragon of the KKK (and he thinks he invented it). The film does fall into that mental hospital movie of giving all the inmates wacky problems. I don't know of any earlier mental hospital movies offhand, so maybe this set that trend. In this film, it's not nearly as annoying as it is in movies like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which was, despite Shock Corridor, the parent of movies like Girl Interrupted and The Princess and the Warrior. 9/10.

Shock Corridor may have been "shocking" back in 1963, but it ain't so now. This grim, bleak, ugly story that focuses in on an arrogant journalist's misguided ambitions and his self-imposed stay, as a patient, at a mental hospital for the sake of a "scoop", had no real entertainment value to speak of. It was impossible for this viewer to relate to any of the characters in this morbid film (regardless of what side of the sanity fence they were on) for fear of catching the same screwy, scenery-chewing fever that they all seemed to have. I thought that Peter Breck (as character John Barrett) seriously needed to take some acting lessons. And, once again, Samuel Fuller as this film's director, let me down, big-time.