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.
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.