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25 out of 28 people found the following review useful:
And Now For Something REALLY Different, 24 April 2005

Author: gftbiloxi (gftbiloxi@yahoo.com) from Biloxi, Mississippi

To describe SHOCK CORRIDOR as lurid would be an understatement: it plays like something torn from a supermarket tabloid. 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 classic of its kind. Recommended... but don't say I didn't warn you.

Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer

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18 out of 22 people found the following review useful:
"Whom God wishes to destroy, He firsts makes mad.", 28 July 2002

Author: Backlash007 from Kentucky

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. Fuller pulls some absolutely great performances out of his cast. Everyone delivers the goods. Each character is so wild and outlandish while the actors playing them still maintain believability. Peter Breck is outstanding in the lead. All of the patients are either hysterically funny or scary funny, from Stuart (Rosco P. Coltrane in a memorable role) on down to Pagliacci. But the real standout in the movie is Hari Rhodes in the role of Trent, the white supremecist. His flawless performance disturbs me (you'll know if you've seen the movie). He could be the best actor ever. What else can I say about this movie, it's an insanely perfect pulp piece. Shock Corridor is an unreal experience, film noir at its best, and truly a cult movie.

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16 out of 19 people found the following review useful:
One Strange Movie, 4 November 2001
Author: FANatic-10 from Las Vegas, NV

Shock Corridor is one of Samuel Fuller's wildest works, a deeply personal examination of insanity by the premier exponant of 50's and 60's Pulp Cinema. I prefer "The Naked Kiss", but "Shock Corridor" certainly stands as a unique and memorable work. It is silly, no downright ludicrous at times, as seen today, but this must have been strong stuff when it came out in 1963. It boldly takes on such topics as incest, racism and cold war paranoia. Not sensitively, mind you, yet quite boldly!

Every scene in this movie seems to be played at fever pitch, and I have to say I believe its been over-rated critically, due to the auteur theory run amok, but I do admire Fuller's gutsiness and directorial skill. If only his skills as a scenarist and dialogue writer were commensurate! He did, however, certainly know how to pull an intense performance out of an actor. Breck and Towers are rather ridiculously intense at times, as a matter of fact, though forgivably so, as they are instruments of their director and express his style perfectly. Hari Rhodes, who people of my generation may remember from the tv series, "Daktari", gives a terrific supporting performance, as does the memorable Larry Tucker, who later became a Hollywood screenwriter and producer.

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13 out of 16 people found the following review useful:
Bigotry for breakfast, ignorance for dinner, 2 May 2005

Author: Michael Bo (michael.bo@pol.dk) from Copenhagen, Denmark

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.

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14 out of 19 people found the following review useful:
Schlock Corridor, 20 February 2006

Author: mutty_mcflea from Bristol, UK

Reporter Pete Breck fakes insanity in order to solve a murder committed in a mental hospital and unsurprisingly goes round the twist for real in this heavy-handed lump from Samuel Fuller. The annoying and malnourished plot has Breck slowly solving the crime by waiting until the three mad witnesses have a moment of clarity and then shouting "WHO KILLED SLOANE?!" at them. Brilliant bit of detective work. The rest of the dialogue is pretentious psychobabble which renders the movie nigh on soporific, but there are a few powerful moments – the operatic inmate, the scary riot kicked off by a black patient who believes he's in the KKK – between the chin-stroking opening quotes and the foregone conclusion.

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7 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Shocking, Yes, But Not One of Fuller's Best Efforts, 21 May 2006

Author: brocksilvey from United States

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Samuel Fuller is not at the top of his game with "Shock Corridor," but it still certainly is something to see. 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. I didn't buy that Breck would be driven insane himself. And the character of Breck's girlfriend, played by Constance Towers, gets nothing but melodramatic suffering scenes to play as she tries to convince those involved in the little scheme on the outside to call things off. The tempo of the film, too, gets monotonous after a while. The constant freak-out scenes and the jangling soundtrack all become too much.

But, Fuller is so damn audacious as a filmmaker, and his visual style gives you so much to look at, that you'll probably be fascinated despite the film's weaknesses. 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. The three inmates who witnessed the murder each gets a soliloquy in which we ostensibly learn about their backgrounds and what drove them to mental illness in the first place. But they're really more like editorials each designed to highlight a distinct madness infecting the human race: war, racism and the quest for nuclear dominance. 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

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12 out of 17 people found the following review useful:
This truly is shocking!, 2 July 2002

Author: zetes from Saint Paul, MN

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.

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7 out of 10 people found the following review useful:
Cuckoo's Nest: Class of 63'- by Samuel Fuller, 17 January 2004

Author: MisterWhiplash from United States

Shock Corridor is like and not like other movies about the patients of a 'cuckoo's nest'. There's nothing the audience is going to necessarily learn about mental illness or about why the murder journalist Johnny Barrett (Peter Breck) is investigating is so crucial for him to commit himself into an asylum (or "mental home" as one orderly puts it). That's not exactly what Samuel Fuller- well-known B-film writer/director is out for. What he does come away with is an exploitation film that finds itself as being, well, remarkable. Somehow, the material finds itself as inspired for practically all the way.

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. If one was to just watch the theatrical trailer without seeing the film one might come away with a different impression about how it turns out. Fuller's script is loaded with moments, grand and minute, of satire and the bizarre, and it fits. His direction as well creates an atmosphere that changes as much as some of the patient's mind-sets: scenes go from being rather funny (drop-dead a couple of times) to chilling and ridiculous to observant, not to mention surreal (i.e. the scenes in color, plus some of Barnett's inner monologue) and musical.

Though the film does have minor liabilities, to be expected, such as a less than great ending (expectable for the genre), and some flaws in the editing. But that shouldn't deter viewers who may want to get into the career of Samuel Fuller and aren't too sure where to start. Overall, Shock Corridor is a high quality, value exploitation flick that leaves a heavy impact on repeat viewings. A+

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9 out of 14 people found the following review useful:
Faking Madness Can Make One Mad, 19 April 2004

Author: sol from Brooklyn NY USA

****SPOILERS**** "Shock Corridor" begins and ends with the fifth century b.c Greek historian and philosopher Euripides famous quote "Those whom the Gods wish to destroy they first makes mad". 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. As John starts to get closer to solving the murder he starts to lose his sanity due to the treatment he's having at the hospital as well as being exposed to the inmates that are really insane. It's then that John's mind slowly starts to snap and by the end of the movie John's as psychotic as anyone else in the mental asylum.

Interesting but flawed movie about mental illness that comes across somewhat comical even though the subject is a very serious matter and nothing to be laughed at. There's a real off-the-wall scene in the movie when John is attacked by a group of man-hungry nymphomaniacs which came across more like a Saturday Night Live comedy shtick then the really vicious attempted gang rape of John by the nymph's that it was.

Another thing about the movie that's somewhat unrealistic is that the killing and killer of Slone is never really explained to the movie's audience. The "killers" confession would have been thrown out of any court due to John beating it out of him. The killer would have, as well as anyone else, confessed to anything just to stop from getting beaten almost to death and no grand jury in the country would have ever indited him to go on trial in the first place.

Another big flaw in the movie was how could a renowned and prominent psychiatrist like Dr. Fong, Philip Ahn, not know as well as allow his patience John to be committed so that he can go undercover in a mental hospital with out being effected by being there. In that John would end up not only with a destroyed mind but body as well which Dr. Fong should well have known due to his expertise on the subject.

And finally how come the police as well as the mental hospital staff didn't and couldn't find out that Johns girlfriend Cathy, Constance Towers, was not really his sister whom John was supposed to be sexually aroused by. And which was the reason for him to get committed and then go undercover in the mental hospital?

John must have been in the hospital for weeks and how would he be committed at all without the conformation that Cathy was really his sister? It would have been as easy for the police to find out the truth with Cathy's drivers license or social security number but they and the hospital staff seemed to just take her word for it and not look any farther then that. 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.

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5 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Fuller comes from a prosaic, lifeless, particularly..., 13 March 2009
Author: Scenic_Deer_Meadow_Washington from Wallis and Futuna

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Fuller comes from a prosaic, lifeless, particularly WASP-y time period in American film that sets him apart in both good and bad ways.

Fuller's films really are "fuller" - they are more diverse, integrating Asians and Blacks into the story without necessarily drawing attention to their race, unusual in '63 -- trying to show behind what's casting the shadow. He tries and in some ways succeeds and capturing something closer to real life than, say, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. In a (albeit pointless) striptease sequence* he cuts away to the backstage mundanities - the stage crew moving props and carrying equipment and costumes, reflecting Fuller's interest in the realism behind the glamour.

Perhaps because he is so exploitively depicting pulpy material, Fuller also wants desperately to prove how smart he is. He awkwardly forces references to Shakespeare, Dickens, and "Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." He tries to tie his story in with themes of Freudian psychoanalysis that really make no sense. Ironically all this stunts him -- to tell the truth he'd be better off dumb.

Fuller could have proved his intelligence a little more convincingly by writing good dialogue, or avoiding clichés like the woman being the sole voice of reason among men, or using a "noir" voice-over that is even more pointless and redundant than the one in Blade Runner.

I'm not sure exactly what Fuller is setting out to do in this film, except exploit insane asylums for melodramatic, pulpy drama. He then tries to justify this by making "bold" political statements perhaps better off left to Stanley Kramer. Sometimes I wish Fuller would just simply give in to the sleazy aspect of this film, like when for reasons utterly irrelevant to the film's actual plot, the protagonist somehow gets trapped in a room of nymphomaniacs. Instead, the film balances uncomfortably between a crude imitation of class and a prude imitation of pulp.

All in all, the film -- interesting at points, with nice touches like the extremely dramatic lighting, music from "La Boheme," and a Black inmate who thinks he is a member of the KKK -- is still mostly tedious.

At the end, Fuller pushes the Irony button. Not content with simply showing our protagonist going insane and having done with it, the film puts us in a fun run through his mind -- then gives us a hokey fight scene -- followed by a ridiculous happy ending followed by a ridiculous unhappy ending tacked on to that.

Redolent of Apocalypto, the film is bookended by a quote from Euriprides which has nothing to do with the movie.

The Naked Kiss is a good film. This is a disappointment.

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