Shock Corridor

Plot synopsis:
Journalist Johnny Barrett (Peter Breck) thinks that the quickest way to a Pulitzer Prize is to uncover the facts behind a murder at a mental hospital. He convinces an expert psychiatrist to coach him to appear insane; this involves relating imaginary accounts of incest with his "sister", who is impersonated by his exotic-dancer girlfriend (Constance Towers). Barrett convinces the authorities and is locked up in the institution where the murder took place. While pursuing his investigation, he is disturbed by the behavior of his fellow inmates.
The three witnesses to the murder were driven insane by the stresses of war, bigotry or fear of nuclear annihilation.
Stuart, the son of a Southern sharecropper who was taught bigotry and hatred as a child, became cynical and angry with the country of his birth. He was captured in the Korean War and was brainwashed into becoming a Communist. Stuart was ordered to indoctrinate a fellow prisoner, but instead the prisoner's unwavering patriotism reformed him. Stuart's captors pronounced him insane and he was returned to the US in a prisoner exchange, after which he received a dishonorable discharge and was publicly reviled as a traitor. Stuart now imagines himself to be Confederate States of America General J.E.B. Stuart.
Trent was one of the first Negro students to integrate a segregated Southern university. He now imagines himself a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and stirs up the patients with white nationalist dogma.
Boden was an atomic scientist scarred by the knowledge of the devastating power of intercontinental ballistic missiles. He has regressed to the mentality of a six-year-old child.
After a hospital riot, Barrett is straitjacketed and subjected to shock treatment. Barrett begins imagining that his girlfriend really is his sister, and experiences many other symptoms of mental breakdown. He learns the identity of the killer and violently extracts a confession from him in front of witnesses and writes his story. His mind is critically damaged, however, and he has to stay in the hospital for an undefined period of time.

Tags: neo noir, murder, cult, atmospheric, insanity, psychedelic, melodrama

Review:
An ambitious reporter feigns madness and has himself committed to an insane asylum in order to investigate a recent and unsolved murder--and once inside he encounters everything from hateful attendants to a whole ward of crazed nymphos, and all the characters are presented in the most explotational tone possible.But SHOCK CORRIDOR has a lot more going for it than just lurid exploitation.
Director-writer Sam Fuller was renowned for his gutsy, no-frills, straight-to-the-point style, and in his hands SHOCK CORRIDOR becomes a vision of America as a society that places so much emphasis on conformity and success that people crack and go mad under the strain.
And Fuller's cast is remarkable: even when the story goes ridiculously over the top, they perform with such sincerity, conviction, and realism that you can buy into the story in spite of its improbabilities.SHOCK CORRIDOR will not be to every one's taste, but even those who dislike it will probably find themselves grudgingly fascinated by the film, and although the film transcends such labels fans of explotational and cult cinema will also find lots to enjoy.
A tale of irony in the vein of EC comics, Shock Corridor is Samuel Fuller's work of genius and far ahead of its time.
Shock Corridor is an unreal experience, film noir at its best, and truly a cult movie..
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
However, Shock Corridor, as loud, frenzied, and crazy as it was, just didn't hold my interest.This is a low-budget film and certainly not one of Fuller's best efforts.
He convinces his girlfriend (Constance Towers, a Fuller favorite) to help him be committed by saying that she's his sister and that he tried to rape her.It seems that people run rampant in this asylum, unmedicated, hallucinating, beating each other up, and it all serves to unnerve Johnny and, as time goes on, he has trouble separating his own sanity from their insanity.
To tell you the truth, I was practically crazy by the time this was over.Breck does a good job, and Towers gets to show off a gorgeous figure in a showgirl outfit - in fact, today, 50 years later, she's still beautiful with a gorgeous figure.I can't say I found it disturbing because I found it hard to relate to Johnny or the other characters, or get too involved in the story, which was pretty thin.
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.
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.
I cannot believe the serious-minded and socially-conscious Fuller set out to make a satire, or expose the treatment of the mentally ill, or explicitly parade their delusions and idiosyncrasies for our amusement; instead, to this viewer, the film is less a thriller and more a kind of low camp amusement.How else are we interpret the crazy scene where our hero searching for clues to the murder ends up in the "nympho" ward where they interrupt their art therapy to attack him amid his ferocious screams (and we see on the walls the results of their art therapy: pictures of naked men).
Like usually in Fuller's better films, 'Shock Corridor' is much more than it looks on the surface.
'Shock Corridor' tells a story about obsessed journalist Johnny Barret (Peter Breck) who, with the help of his girlfriend (Constance Towers) convinces authorities that he's insane and is locked into mental institution to investigate still unsolved murder that took place inside the hospital.
Whom God Wishes to Destroy He First Makes Mad. 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.
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.
A Freak Out. Before the late sixties when things opened up and the new wave of sex and violence was unleashed on movie audiences and gave unexplored territory to filmmakers, the grind houses were playgrounds for rain-coat crowds gawking at nudie cuties and exploitation documentaries.Sam Fuller's The Naked Kiss (1965) and Shock Corridor (1963) could have and probably did play these theaters.
Samuel Fuller wrote, produced and directed this "expose" on mental institutions, with newspaper reporter Peter Breck having himself committed in order to crack a murder case from behind asylum walls.
Bent on winning a Pulitzer Prize, a journalist commits himself to a mental institution to solve a strange and unclear murder.I knew nothing of this film going in, and really had little idea of who Sam Fuller was.
Shock Corridor is a film that Samuel Fuller made with limited sets and a tight budget.
Johnny Barrett (Peter Breck) is a reporter for the paper who has himself committed to a mental hospital to solve a murder.
Hoping to win a "Pulitzer Prize" for his efforts, ambitious reporter Peter Breck (as John "Johnny" Barrett) goes undercover as an inmate in an "insane asylum." His attractive blonde girlfriend Constance Towers (as Cathy) agrees to pose as Mr. Breck's sister.
He shows where American journalism is going – if it isn't already there.******** Shock Corridor (9/11/63) Samuel Fuller ~ Peter Breck, Constance Towers, James Best, Hari Rhodes.
Shock Corridor (1963) *** (out of 4) Journalist Johnny Barrett (Peter Breck) is hellbent on winning a Pulitzer Prize so he has his girlfriend (Constance Towers) pretend to be his sister and have him locked up in a mental asylum on charges that he tried to have sex with her (I'm not making this up).
I'm not one of many who feel Fuller can walk on water but I've really come to enjoy his style over the past couple years and SHOCK CORRIDOR is without question his wackiest work and perhaps one of the most insane movies ever made.
This is a violent and memorable 'good bad movie', which is really the only kind of film writer-director Samel Fuller made.
The premise is fairly contrived and never even that clearly explained: Peter Breck plays a journalist with his sights set on a Pulitzer Prize, who fakes mental illness, gets committed to a mental hospital and tries to solve a murder that took place there and was witnessed by only three inmates.
Breck begins to lose it himself, and the ultimate irony is that by the time he solves the murder, everyone thinks his revelation of the killer is simply the babbling nonsense of yet one more crazy inmate.Fuller's writing is weak here, which is unusual for him.
The whole thing looks like a lurid and pulpy film noir, and in most respects he uses sound in compelling ways, as when an Italian-opera-obsessed inmate is belting out a nearly unrecognizable version of an opera song at the top of his lungs, and then the actual song in full orchestra bursts on to the soundtrack so that we can hear it as he's hearing it in is head.The movie mainly serves as a tool to explore one of Fuller's most consistent themes, that of the insanity of the supposedly sane, civilized world.
In this respect, "Shock Corridor" is very much a product of its time, but manages also to be sadly relevant today.So an uneven film overall, but I land on the side of recommending it, because as long as Samuel Fuller is at the helm, I can guarantee you'll never be bored.Grade: B.
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.
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..
"Naked Kiss" writer & director Sam Fuller's stark melodrama about a single-minded newspaper journalist who poses as a mental patient to expose a murderer is unforgettable.
Of course, although it was produced back in 1963, the film still manages to pack a wallop.Newspaper reporter Johnny Barrett (Peter Breck of ABC-TV's "The Big Valley") wants desperately to win a Pulitzer Prize, and he convinces everybody including his newspaper editor than he can masquerade as a nut-job and uncover the killer that the police could not find.
When I say this is the world's worst movie, I mean that "Shock Corridor" makes "Plan 9 from Outer Space" look like "Citizen Kane".A reporter wants to go undercover in a mental hospital to find out about a murder so he enlists the aid of his girlfriend who is a stripper.
She does the world's worst strip tease, starting with singing thru a feather boa wrapped completely around her face so that she looks like Oscar the Grouch, and then bumps and grinds out of sync to a slow love ballad.She goes to the police station and says, "My brother tried to attack me" and the desk sergeant immediately picks up the phone to call the mental ward to have them come and get him and that's all there is to it.The reporter gets committed as promised and gets asked titillating questions by the admitting doctor while the "sister" sits in the waiting room, and later the doctors even allow this "sister" to come and visit him regularly and they hug and kiss each other, even though the man is there due to an allegation of incest.Peter Breck, as the reporter/patient, starts questioning three of the inmates who supposedly witnessed this murder, trying to find out if they know who the killer is.
Samuel Fuller's experience as a crime reporter and pulp novelist are very evident in his work as the writer, director and producer of "Shock Corridor".
"Shock Corridor" is ostensibly a murder mystery but the events that take place in trying to solve this particular crime soon take prominence over everything else.Johnny Barrett (Peter Breck) is an ambitious newspaper reporter who's determined to win the Pulitzer Prize and decides to do this by getting himself into a mental hospital as a patient so that he can carry out his own investigation into the unsolved murder of one of the inmates.
Film experiences don't get much more lurid than that, but Samuel Fuller's 'Shock Corridor (1963)' somehow manages to maintain this intensity for 101 minutes.
He obviously had a lot of fun inventing characters so incredibly outrageous that audiences would flock to see them  there's an overweight would-be opera singer, a war veteran who thinks he's a Civil War general, an African-American white supremacist and even a roomful of ravenous nymphomaniacs!Like any good B-movie should, 'Shock Corridor (1963)' builds itself upon a shaky and unlikely premise.
Fullers trio of 1960's films - Underworld USA, Shock Corridor and The Naked Kiss are all brilliant Noir, powerful indictments of American society and pretty much over the top insane.
While you could draw some parallels to movies like THE SNAKE PIT and ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOOS NEST, these films still don't have a plot like this exposée on the mental health system.Johnny Barrett is a reporter who has a hair-brained idea.
And while its ambition is commendable, "Shock Corridor" ends up as something of a muddle.The plot is straightforward - Johnny Barrett, a journalist, is prepared to have himself committed to a mental institution in order to interview the witnesses to a murder that occurred within the hospital.
And how exactly is this research going to get Johnny a Pulitzer Prize anyway?"Shock Corridor" is frustrating because its best scenes are genuinely great, and at points I felt like it could really accelerate towards a finale that would assure the film as something of a trailblazer.
Driven Pulitzer prize-seeking reporter Johnny Barrett (a fine performance by Peter Breck) fakes being unhinged so he can be committed to a mental health hospital in order to investigate a baffling unsolved murder.
In the hands of writer / producer / director Samuel Fuller, "Shock Corridor" is a good, stunning B movie with brains to match its lurid thrills.
Shock Corridor even has some interesting things to say about madness, though its envisioning of the madhouse is a little absurd (and, I believe this absurdity derives from Fuller's lack of knowledge on the subject and not from an thematic statement).I do think that Big Red One outshines this film in every way, but it's nevertheless a nice piece of film-making.
Mental wards are typically used in film and literature to comment on society, and Fuller's shocking Shock Corridor is no different.
Meanwhile, well-placed moments of color and some surprising effects twist the world-view of the movie in a way that makes even watching the film seem like an exercise in maintaining sanity: am I seeing what I'm actually seeing?
Basically Johnny Barrett (Peter Breck) is the ambitious Daily Globe journalist intent on getting a Pulitzer Prize solving the murder of a man named Slone stabbed to death with a butcher knife in the kitchen of a mental hospital.
When Johnny is visited by Cathy she knows that his being in the mental hospital is getting to him, he is slowly truly going insane himself, i.e. believing she really is her sister, and we see this in the asylum too when there are moments he loses his voice and of course his mind.
Fuller's "Shock Corridor" justifiably holds a place in film history as one of the most important B features, and a film that daringly dealt with the subject of mental illness and insanity.
But he find himself slowly succumbing to insanity in the asylum, and Fuller ultimately suggests that society, and everyone, "goes a little mad sometimes".I found the film interesting yet difficult to watch.