Don't Believe the Hype

A lot of fun.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

"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. Mind you, you may experience a little Catatonic schizophrenia after watching this gripping mystery thriller. Reportedly, Fuller lensed "Shock Corridor" in ten days, and he plunges us into a psycho ward and all the ways that modern medicine had of helping the unhinged. The gallery of unusual characters that our protagonist encounters in this 101 minute masterpiece is stunning in its diversity. The cast is good, especially James Best of "Dukes of Hazzard" fame. Foremost, the African-American inmate (Hari Rhodes) who believes that he belongs to the Klu Kux Klan is truly memorable. The first time that we see him, he is carrying around a protest sign with the N-word on it. Undoubtedly, this was a controversial role to take at the time. You can see a laundry list of social ills as well as issues addressed in this opus. Ultimately, the beauty of this film lies in its utter simplicity. The surprise ending is the stuff that genuine horror chillers are made, but savvy viewers may be a step ahead of Fuller as he weaves his intricate tale with lots of symbolism and commentary to its inevitable conclusion. Aside from an office at a newspaper and back stage at a burlesque theater, "Shock Corridor" takes place entirely in a mental ward, primarily on the so-called 'street' or shock corridor where the patients hang out during the day when they are not confined to their rooms. Presumably, Fuller pared down the production budget to absolute essentials and the film has a bare-bones, efficient look. Nothing about "Shock Corridor" is remotely glamorous. This isn't an easy film to watch because it is so brutal. 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. Johnny's beautiful stripper girlfriend, Cathy (Constance Towers of "The Horse Soldiers"), is against the scheme. She doesn't like it because she thinks that Johnny will lose his mind while he is in the facility. Sure enough, nobody listens to her. Meanwhile, against her better judgment, she cooperates with Johnny and the newspaper. She informs the authorities that she is really Johnny's sister and that he has been harassing him about sex. Once the medical experts get their hands on Johnny, he has to survive only the electro-shock therapy that they dole out to him but also the loonies in the ward. Johnny struggles daily to extract the information from his fellow inmates. At one point, no doubt to give the picture dimension, Fuller stages an assault in the nympho ward where our hero tries to escape and finds himself mobbed by a group of desperate dames. Primarily, Johnny associates as possible with the patients who were present in the room when the other patient was killed."Shock Corridor" is unrelenting stuff! The irony is evident throughout.

I knew absolutely nothing about this film until I spotted it listed in the book as one of the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, so that was a good enough reason for me to try it, from director Samuel Fuller (Pickup on South Street). 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. The police have been unable to solve the mystery as the only three witnesses are insane interns, so to get close to the truth, with support of his boss 'Swanee' Swanson (Bill Zuckert) and psychiatrist Dr. Fong (Philip Ahn) he enters the hospital as a patient. With the help of his stripper girlfriend Cathy (Constance Towers), originally against the idea, she pretends to be his sister, and ensues that he is her brother having incestuous feelings towards her. Now a patient declared insane and in the asylum, and sharing a room with opera obsessed Pagliacci (Golden Globe nominated Larry Tucker), he works his way around, while at the same having mental treatment, and one by one he approaches the three inmate witnesses aware that they all have their moments of sanity. First is former soldier Stuart (James Best) who believes he is in the old confederate army, and the only clue Johnny gets from in his five minutes or so is that the killer wears white trousers. Second is former black university student Trent (Hari Rhodes) who is confused into thinking he is white and wanting to get rid of other black people, i.e. becoming racist and forming his own KKK (Ku Klux Klan), and his clue in the moment of sanity is that the killer is not a patient but an attendant. 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. Finally the third witness, former physicist Dr. Boden (Gene Evans) who has developed the mind of a child, in his moment of sanity gives the journalist the answer he wants, Slone's killer's name, it's Wilkes (Chuck Roberson). But with Johnny's mentality collapsing he momentarily forgets this information when he tries to tell the head of the hospital, but Wilkes finds out that he knows his secret. In the end, after a big fight and a confession from the killer, Johnny is allowed to write his expose and he does win the Pulitzer Prize, but is immediately returned to the institution having completely gone insane and become a catatonic schizophrenic. Also starring Paul Dubov as Dr. J.L. Menkin, Neyle Morrow as Psycho, John Matthews as Dr. L.G. Cristo, John Craig as Lloyd and Frank Gerstle as Lt. Kane and Rachel Romen. If you took One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, and mixed it with elements of The Departed and Shutter Island, then this is exactly what comes to mind. Breck gives an extraordinary performance as the undercover writer with his mental state deteriorating, Towers has her small moments, and all the actors playing the insane characters, notably Tucker, are amazing. The script and direction by Fuller is superb with all the right styles to create both disturbing and gripping moments, it holds you like a really tight straight jacket would, it is such a brilliant psychological drama that I would definitely recommend. Very, very good!

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". This is a movie which makes a big impact, primarily because of its outrageous plot but also because of its lurid content and its powerful social commentary. Fuller's tabloid sensibilities are clearly intact as he adopts a bold and uncompromising style to deliver the story and his observations about some of the issues which were preoccupying society in the early 1960s.The publicity for the movie was overtly sensationalist and promised its audience a story containing sex, violence, psychos, schizos and men in white coats (one of whom was having sexual relationships with the female patients). Additionally, the central character is seen being straight-jacketed, being given electric shock therapy and being attacked by a group of nymphomaniacs.Fuller clearly has little time for subtlety and this fits perfectly with the needs of a maker of low budget movies and provides his output with a tremendous amount of vibrancy and energy. "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. In order to do this, he's helped by a psychiatrist called Dr Fong (Philip Ahn) who teaches him how to appear sufficiently unstable to be committed to the institution and also his editor "Swanee" Swanson (Bill Zuckert). These two men are enthusiastic conspirators but Johnny's girlfriend Cathy (Constance Towers) who's a stripper and a singer is far more reluctant to be involved.Cathy, however, is soon persuaded to co-operate and posing as Johnny's sister makes the charge that he'd tried to sexually assault her. This leads to Johnny being committed as planned and also to him being able to begin his investigation. There were three inmates who'd witnessed the murder and Johnny's challenge is to get to the truth of what happened by eliciting the pertinent information from these witnesses before his own mental state suffers irreparable damage.Peter Breck effectively portrays the aggression and single mindedness of Johnny Barrett who was desperate for recognition and the prestige of being a Pulitzer Prize winner. His determination to achieve this goal was commendable but the means by which he planned to do so was fraught with a level of danger which Johnny ignored because he was supremely confident that his own sanity wouldn't be threatened by being institutionalised. This error of judgement predictably meant that any success that he achieved came at a very high price.The three witnesses that Johnny conversed with all displayed bizarre behaviour and were all victims of traumas that were strongly linked to social issues of the period (i.e. the arms race, racism and anti-communism). Fuller's use of the quotation "Whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes mad" (Euripides) is interesting as it clearly refers to the predicaments of the patients in the asylum but also infers that as their problems were triggered by manifestations of society's madness, it's not only the patients who stand to be destroyed.

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.