Shock Corridor Reviews

A gloryhound newspaperman goes undercover at a mental hospital ... and the rest is movie history in Samuel Fuller's 1963 epic of over-the-top, must see, apocalyptic, societal condemning, ravings of a madman. See a stripper portrayed as the most moral person in society, that alone reason to watch, even as Fuller exploits her every chance he gets ...

Unique, existential psychological thriller that combines all things that polarize society into one scenary, time taboos to provoke and confront, seduce and repel. Fuller's aesthetics are vivid, surreal, a perfect hook to get into a bizarre game of identities.

I've been a stranger to the work of Samuel Fuller, but I'm planning to change all of that as soon as I can get my hands on some of his other films. Shock Corridor tells the story of a reporter trying to get the big scoop by going undercover as a patient at a mental hospital where the truth about a murder rests within the residents, all in an effort to get the coveted Pulitzer Prize award. I was absolutely floored by how good this film is. It gets right in your face with issues that would have been nothing more than subtleties in other films by other filmmakers at the time, yet there's a cleverness to it and the film has more to say than just addressing the issues themselves. Peter Breck gives a great performance, as does Constance Towers. We spend the entire film getting to know all of the patients and the staff at the hospital, and it never gets boring - not ever for a minute. You're constantly engaged in what's going on as Peter Breck's character slowly descends into madness, but you're barely aware of it as the film goes on. I'd love to see Samuel Fuller top this film, and judging by his reputation and the film's merit alone, I believe he can do just that.

Welcome to the bizarre world of Samuel Fuller - where a black man is the Imperial Wizard of the KKK and being locked in a room full of hot nymphomaniacs is a 'bad' thing.

A journalist has himself committed to a mental institution to try to solve a murder. This mix of lurid melodrama, heavy-handed symbolism (America in 1963 is an insane asylum!), and nympho assaults shouldn't work at all, but Sam Fuller's passionate direction turns it into something maddeningly entertaining.

I have one word for you "Nymphos"

A fantastic movie that gets nearly none of the recognition it deserves. The musical number, the color flashbacks worked into black and white monologues and the dreams were all fantastically done. The acting almost rivals the direction even with some really heavy-handed dialogue. An amazing premise with plenty of random and uneasy moments that never allows you to lower your guard (despite his easy-going nature, I waited for Pagliacci to go batshit on Johnny) and the scene with the nymphos scared the living shit out of me. Every moment you wait to see Shock Corridor is a complete and total waste of time.

Saw this a long time ago, but can't remember if I liked it. Better see it again before I rate it.

UPDATE: Finally got a chance to seee this again, and I was NOT disapponted. It's my first Samuel Fuller film, and if the others are of this quality I can't wait for the rest.
Peter Breck plays a journalist on the big story that will win him a Pulitzer. He has himself committed to a mental hospital to get a story about a patient murder, and finds that he is slowly coming just as unhinged as the people he is observing.

While some of the film is dated, in particular the scene with the "nymphos", and some is just offensive -- Dr. Cristo's implication that Cathy is bringing on John's "Illness" by encouraging John's incestuous behavior, for example (reminds me of all those years of women being blamed for bringing on rapes by being too seductive) -- for the most part, the film is extremely well-done. The scenes of Stuart and Trent's revelations about the origins of their respective mental illnesses were moving at times, and special props have to go to Larry Tucker as wife-killer "Pagliacci." I've never seen this guy before, and he was great. He had this weird half-happy fat guy/half-nutso serial killer laugh that really got me. I would have liked him to have more screen time. In bragging on the supporting players, I don't want to take away from Breck himself. He did a good job in general, and a great job in a couple of scenes where he has started cracking.

I get the impression that Sam Fuller had a real problem -- as everyone should -- with the Southern racial attitudes of the 1950s and 60s. Both Stuart and Trent's illnesses stemmed from experiences they had in the South -- Stuart being raised by bigoted Southern parents, Trent being the only black student in an all-white Southern university. Someone more versed in Fuller can probably fill me in on this.

A couple of things -- besides the stuff I already mentioned -- that I wasn't fond of were 1) the ending, which seemed a little Twilight-Zoney and tacked-on, and 2) I've never been a fan of Constance Towers (she reminds me of a second-rate Joan Crawford for some reason). I've always found her performances kinda flat, and she fits that bill here with one of the lamest-ass stripteases I've ever seen.

One thing that gave me pause -- Even though the film was made in B&W, the mental patients dreams were in color. I dream in color. Coincidence?

Very powerful stuff. The storytelling, the acting, the mood, the visuals. Again, very powerful controversial stuff. Samuel Fuller is a filmmaker (like Martin Scorsese, Quientin Tarantino) isn't afraid to take risks and in this case it's all in "Shock Corridor" the story of a man who goes to mental hospital who pretends to go mentally insane to get information from the patients he conversates with in order to get a Pulitzer Prize.

What I admire is Fuller's bold messages, an inmate who uses racial slurs to show America's insane obsession with racism, a prostitute who has a heart of gold, and finally the corrupt system of the beast (corruption in society, greed, media, politics) it's all there and it's all evident, inside of an insane asylum. Great stuff by the master director Samuel Fuller.

What can you write on Samuel Fuller's work without looking like a moron? I don't want to resort to academic criticisms which sound empty to people who haven't studied film, but can FEEL when a film is good or bad.

Samuel Fuller's films ARE "bad". But his art is THE RE-DEFINITION of bad. His films work their way into your mind like a worm. If I had to compare him to someone, I would compare him to Trier and Bergman. His work reminds me of both, in terms of emotional impact, of the way he paces his films, of the cruel insight he has on reality's worst aspects.

Fuller's films are a life-time experience. I don't think anyone should let critics and academia lead them on this and tell them how and what they should think of a film, what's more this one. Just get there yourself and (unlike his characters) remember the way to get back...

From "The Manchurian Candidate" to "Night of the Living Dead", so many films from the turbulent 60s reflect the conflicts, confusion, instability and turmoil of the era in which they were made. Few, however, managed to do it as literally "Shock Corridor".

When a reporter decides to infiltrate a mental hospital in order to solve a murder and win a Pulitzer, he finds himself in a condensed microcosm of the United States: a madhouse where bigotry, a failed civil rights movement, war and the threat of nuclear annihilation have come to define its patients/citizens. As our lead gets closer to the murderer, he begins to lose his mind.

The film makes no apologies for its crude, B-movieness (on the contrary, it is proud of its roots) or lack of subtlety. There is no doubt this was a labor of love for Sam Fuller, its writer-director, who had something unequivocal to say and made no bones about it. The film is well acted, well written and works quite well both as a fun genre picture and as something more.

I really wanted to enjoy this but felt that it was pretty weak. It happens. It seemed too predictable and campy in a way that turned me off.

Wildly overrated, the acting wanders from good to overdone to the point of being annoying. We are then subjected to a series of rants on race relations for some reason, I guess this is "bold" for the 1960s, or the middle of the whole civil rights movement. Oh, and there's a murder mystery that is solved almost the minute Barratt walks into the ward, or at least the minute Trent mentions the white pants. This leads to some long, boring searching by Barratt as he predictably loses his mind. The plotholes are gaping, unless they're dealing with the least competent, laziest mental hospital in the country, but I guess one that doesn't notice an attendant murdering a patient COULD qualify for that honor.

Shock Corridor is a psychodrama from the vigorously independent mind of American film auteur Samuel Fuller. i found it to be
compelling and disturbing.

If you've seen One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest then watching this movie, set in a mental ward, seems a little goofy. There are a few nice performances, but it seems mostly to be written by someone who has no idea what mentally insane people are really like.

It has its merits, yeah, but central plot and portrayal of mental conditions are painfully silly and ignorance-revealing.

Fuller was a master at subverting audience expectation and no where is that more evident than in 'Shock Corridor'. What begins as a seemingly by-the-numbers detective thriller slowly evolves into something strange and surreal. An unhinged masterpiece.

SHOCK CORRIDOR is certainly an odd movie. I didn't really know too much about it, or its writer/director Sam Fuller prior to purchasing the Criterion BluRay. I wouldn't say I've become a fan, exactly, but the movie does exert a certain weird power.

Filmed on a shoestring budget over just 10 days, SHOCK CORRIDOR tells the story of a print journalist and his strong desire to be committed to an insane asylum so that he can investigate a long-cold murder case. Three patients are known to have witnessed the crime, but none is coherent enough to give any info on the events. Our interpid hero Johnny (Peter Breck, looking like a young James Remarr) coerces his girlfriend Cathy (Constance Towers) into pretending to be his sister so she can claim to the authorities that her brother has tried to molest her. Johnny is committed to his desired asylum, and begins his investigation.

He enters the asylum as a person who is clearly obsessed with his desire to "get the story" and win a Pulitzer. He feels a little like a nut-job to us right from the start, and it's little surprise that all the insanity around him begins to chip away at his own state of mind.

In one way, Fuller is telling a kind of psychological horror story about one man's struggle against madness and the insanity of those around him. In 1963, this movie must have seemed quite "cutting edge" in its depiction of depravity of all sorts. I found it odd, for example, that Cathy works as a stripper because she's trying to save up money so she and Johnny can have a normal life. Johnny is clearly conflicted about her career, yet perhaps also titilated as well. This domestic situation, coupled with the rather strange story the two decide to concoct really makes us scratch our heads...but it also gave Fuller a chance to stage a number with Cathy performing. I don't know how her routine went over in '63, but today her outfit seems QUITE tame and her bump-and-grind is embarrasingly clumsy. Towers is supposed to exude sex appeal...but fails nearly completely. And the depictions of the behavior of all the mental patients are wildly over the top. In the accompanying booklet for the disc, Fuller talks about how he didn't want subtlety...he wanted to bludgeon his audience. If loud histrionics is what he wanted, he succeeded. At times the film is almost humorous when its clearly intending to be quite serious. But as the film continues, the almost constant lunacy and ridiculous behavior, along with frequent close-ups of starkly lit faces with lots of sweat on them begins to work a sort of spell on the audience. It never feels realistic, exactly, but the very nutso energy of the effort is oddly gripping.

I think the low budget and faced paced filming helped in some way. The film has the aesthetic of a TWILIGHT ZONE episode ("Eye of the Beholder" comes to mind), and feels like a TV show in the quality of its acting. However, this lets us feel that Fuller was COMPELLED to make this film, no matter the artistic sacrifice...and his efforts to take his meager resources and use them to the fullest actually work for him. The walls of the asylum and all the rooms are starkly furnished. The costumes are all the same shade of gray. The lighting (always from just one angle) is theatrical. I admired the look.

The flip side of this story, and the one that Fuller really wanted to convey, was an exploration of American society at the time. The three witnesses to the crime represent 3 aspects of America Fuller wanted to expose and condemn: war, racism & nuclear weaponry/McCarthyism. The power of these metaphorical characters has sadly diminished over time, until the device has become mostly too obvious to work. That being said, the best performance in the film comes from Hari Rhodes, a black college student driven to insanity thanks to the torment he suffered in college as the only student of color. He now believes his is a member of the KKK, and his hate filled speeches contain language of racism that is shocking and powerfully delivered.

On the other hand, the inmates of the "Women's Ward" are all nymphomaniacs, and when poor Johnny stumbles into their room, they circle and attack him like lusty zombies (you'll have to see it) in easily the most poorly executed and laughable scene in the film. The film is no doubt commenting somehow on the sexual revolution that was only beginning to think about emerging, or perhaps man's fear of woman's burgeoning power...but now it's just a head scratcher.

The film is only modestly well acted...Peter Breck tries mightily and sometimes his work is quiety effective and sometimes he reminds me of "evil Kirk" in one of William Shatner's most excruciating performances on STAR TREK. Towers is terribly miscast. Others in the cast are acceptable.

No, where the film suceeds is in its fervor, its passion and its single-minded desire to shock a reaction from the viewer. This is not a film-viewing experience for a casual viewer. It's truly a chance for film afficionadoes to view a tiny slice of film history that is seldom talked about but deserves a place in the discussion of movies of the '60s that began to pave the way for the truly revolutionary work that would come in the '70s. Fuller was a bit ahead of his time. SHOCK CORRIDOR is a fascinating experience.

The extras on this blu ray are only okay, in my opinion. THere is a lengthy but not terribly interesting moder interview with Towers. There is also a feature documentary on Fuller that is worthwhile. Otherwise, virtually nothing. No commentary track, which would actually have been quite welcome. The booklet, however, is excellent with both a nice critical discussion and some good excerpts from Fuller's autobiography. Another solid Criterion effort.

It starts out like a typical 60's B-movie, but as the scenes unfold, you realize Fuller is up to something bigger than a murder mystery; while somewhat dated, a fascinating piece of cinema.

whoa.... i mean WHOA!