Movie Type: Psychological Thriller, Psychological Drama
Themes: Going Undercover, Wrongly Committed, Doctors and Patients
Main Cast: Peter Breck, Constance Towers, Gene Evans, James Best, Hari (Harry) Rhodes
Release Year: 1963
Country: US
Run Time: 101 minutes
Plot
Shock Corridor represents filmmaker Samuel Fuller at his most excessive, but few would have it otherwise. Peter Breck plays a ruthless journalist who believes that the quickest way to a Pulitzer Prize is to uncover the facts behind a murder at a mental hospital. To glean first-hand information, Breck pretends to go insane and is locked up in the institution. While pursuing his investigation, Breck is sidetracked by the loopy behavior of his fellow inmates. During a hospital riot, Breck is straightjacketed and subjected to shock treatment. By now almost as crazy as he's previously pretended to be, Breck begins imagining that his exotic-dancer girlfriend Constance Towers (a Samuel Fuller "regular") is actually his sister! Typical of the Fuller ouevre, the characters in Shock Corridor are either saved or destroyed by their individual obsessions. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Though he often worked within and outside the studio system, director Samuel Fuller was essentially banished from Hollywood after 1963's lurid Shock Corridor and 1964's Naked Kiss. Now widely recognized as one of his best films, Corridor is an uncompromising, idiosyncratic depiction of the seams that threaten to tear American apart. Fuller had worked as both a crime reporter and a pulp novelist, and he often translated the sensationalism of those fields to his movies. Corridor in particular featured extremely stylized direction, dialogue, and acting; at the time of the film's release, its anything-for-an-effect aesthetic struck some viewers as preposterous and inflammatory. French critics and filmmakers, however, embraced Fuller's unique style, and many notable filmmakers have since claimed Fuller as an influence, including Martin Scorsese, Jim Jarmusch, Wim Wenders, and Quentin Tarantino. ~ Brendon Hanley, All Movie Guide
Larry Tucker - Pagliacci; William Zuckert - Swanee; Philip Ahn - Dr. Fong; Neyle Morrow - Psycho; Frank Gerstle - Police Lieutenant; Paul Dubov - Dr. Menkin; Rachel Romen - Singing Nymphomaniac; Wally Campo; Karen Conrad; John Craig - Lloyd; Lucille Curtis; Marie Devereaux; Chuck Hicks; John Mathews - Dr. Cristo; Barbara Perry; Chuck Roberson - Wilkes; Allyson Daniell; Harry Fleer
Credit
Eugène Lourié - Art Director, John Gregory - Choreography, Einar H. Bourman - Costume Designer, Samuel Fuller - Director, Jerome Thoms - Editor, Paul Dunlap - Composer (Music Score), Dan Greenway - Makeup, Stanley Cortez - Cinematographer, Samuel Fuller - Cinematographer, Samuel Fuller - Producer, Charles Thompson - Set Designer, Lynn Dunn - Special Effects, Charles Duncan - Special Effects, Philip Mitchell - Sound/Sound Designer, Samuel Fuller - Screenwriter
Shea's solo debut appears on John Zorn's Avant label, with the title cut an extended meditation on the mid-'50s Sam Fuller film of the same name. Interspersing slices of the film in rough estimation of the narrative, and run backwards and forwards through any variety of samplers and effects units, Shea achieves a psychological effect not dissimilar to that Fuller evokes in his oddly twisted psychological drama, though in an entirely different medium and in a fashion not wholly reducible to either the authorship of Shea or Fuller. Two remaining tracks exhibit a virtuosic approach to sampler-based composition, with results similar to Zorn's stop-start aesthetic with Naked City. ~ Sean Cooper, All Music Guide
Shock Corridor is a 1963 film, directed and written by Samuel Fuller. The film tells the story of a journalist who gets himself committed to a mental hospital in order to track an unsolved murder.
Peter Breck plays journalist Johnny Barrett, who thinks the quickest way to a Pulitzer Prize is to uncover the facts behind a murder at a mental hospital. So, he pretends to go insane and is locked up in the institution. While pursuing his investigation, he is sidetracked by the behavior of his fellow inmates. During a hospital riot, Breck is straightjacketed and subjected to shock treatment. Breck begins imagining that his exotic-dancer girlfriend (Constance Towers) is his sister. By film's end, one is not sure whether he is still pretending to be crazy.
Historical importance
In 1996, Shock Corridor was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
References in film
In The Dreamers (2003), the main character is watching Shock Corridor at the beginning.
In The Naked Kiss (1964), another film directed by Fuller, and starring Towers, the theater outside the bus station is playing Shock Corridor.
