Shock Corridor is a 1963 American drama film directed and written by Samuel Fuller. The film tells the story of a journalist who gets himself intentionally committed to a mental hospital in order to solve a murder committed within the institution. Fuller originally wrote the film under the title Straitjacket for Fritz Lang in the late 1940s, but Lang wanted to change the lead character to a woman so Joan Bennett could play the role.
Plot
Journalist Johnny Barrett thinks that the quickest way to a Pulitzer Prize is to uncover the facts behind an unsolved murder at a mental hospital and convinces an expert psychiatrist to coach him to appear insane when it involves relating imaginary accounts of incest with his "sister", who is impersonated by his exotic-dancer girlfriend ; though against her wishes, she is talked into assisting him by filing a police complaint, and his performance during the investigation convinces the authorities to lock him 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.
After a hospital riot, Barrett is straitjacketed and subjected to shock treatment, and he now believes his girlfriend really is his sister, rejecting her when she comes to visit. He experiences many other symptoms of mental breakdown while he learns the identity of the killer, violently extracting a confession from him in front of witnesses, and writes his story. But his mind is critically damaged, however, and he has to stay in the hospital for an undefined period of time, and Cathy breaks down crying as a doctor tells her that Barrett is now a "catatonic schizophrenic."
Cast
Peter Breck as Johnny Barrett
Constance Towers as Cathy
Gene Evans as Boden
James Best as Stuart
Hari Rhodes as Trent
Larry Tucker as Pagliacci
Paul Dubov as Dr. Menkin
Chuck Roberson as Wilkes
Bill Zuckert as Swanson
Philip Ahn as Dr. Fong
Reception and legacy
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 94% based on, with a weighted average rating of 7.86/10. Author and film criticLeonard Maltin awarded the film three out of a possible four stars, calling it a "owerful melodrama with raw, emotional impact." Andrew Sarris praised the film as “…an allegory of America today, not so much surreal as subreal in its hallucinatory view of history which can only be perceived beneath a littered surface of plot intrigue… a distinguished addition to that art form in which Hollywood has always excelled: the Baroque B-picture.” 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". Martin Scorsese's2010 filmShutter Island is said to be influenced by this film.
Novelization
Concurrent with the release of the film in 1963, Belmont Books released a novelization of the screenplay, written by one of the era's most ubiquitous and distinctive paperback pulpsmiths, Michael Avallone. This tie-in title itself Fuller wanted to stop Avallone's book for plagiarism.
