Shock Corridor

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.

This is one experience I'm not likely ever to forget, it is truly unsettling. One of the most ferocious, savage and disturbing films I have ever seen, and brilliant cinematic art on top of it.

Ambitious reporter has himself admitted to a mental hospital in order to solve a murder there. He poses as an incestuous brother to his 'sister' and real-life stripper girlfriend, and once inside gets to talk to all three witnesses to the murder. Gradually, though, his own mind starts to disintegrate ...

Was there ever an asylum like Samuel Fuller's? Hope not. One of the inmates is singing the Factotum Aria from 'Barber of Seville' around the clock, another savours the words "I am impotent and I like it", but they are the sanest ones. Of the three witnesses one imagines himself to be a general at Gettysburg but suddenly shifts and claims to be a Communist in reaction to "my folks (that) fed my bigotry for breakfast and ignorance for dinner" in a long pathetic virtuoso solo by actor James Best. One, a young black man, dresses as a Ku Klux Klan member, advocating white supremacy, expressing his loathing for blacks ("Oh, they're alright as entertainers, but ..."), and the third, a Nobel prize winner, has retreated into infantilism.

'Shock Corridor', which obviously turned out to be a cult favourite, directed by maverick independent filmmaker and former journalist Samuel Fuller, makes no excuses for itself, and its style is swaggeringly confident, blending pulp and downright tawdriness with high melodrama and noir, in unforgettable, dramatically lit images. Sometimes it's plain silly in its excessive irony, at other times searing in its empathy, and probably the most funny moments are those when the reporter (a wonderful Peter Breck) once more asks his increasingly absurd and irrelevant question, "Who killed Sloane in the kitchen?", and when he finally learns who, he forgets about it immediately! I cannot recommend this film enough, it is one of the great works of art of American cinema. No less.

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.

How we should read this movie?

Is it really important to know why a famous psychiatrist could have helped the journalist to get into the asylum? Is it really important to have a realistic, tied up scenario in this movie?

I don't think so, and what really comes out of it is a wild political message that ultimately depicts the madness of the outside, normal society, and how it deals with everything that is different. To me, the director's intent is to tell us how sick our society is (at least, "was", at his time) and, for that, he chose the metaphor of madness, and very specific characters to tell us the message. The main characters are the mad guys, and the journalist and the crime are only excuses to lead us into this outside world of rejected people. The scenario structure seems to be rather simple and rounded as any political speech, so after we enter the asylum, we are presented to the mad characters (the war veteran, the black guy, the physicist), one by one. The only exception to this straightforward scenario line is the journalist girlfriend, but her appearance shouldn't have a different direction (in the critical, political sense), and she gives us a really funny, sexy, and ridiculous scene where the hollywoodean love is ridiculized (she is performing her daily striptease, at the same time we know she's suffering from love, note how the scene is shown in a cold, distant and downward camera).

Definitely, it is a political-pulp-fiction. As such, a good movie.

Just don't try to see it as a standard Hollywood movie.

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!