Shock Corridor **** (1963, Peter Breck, Constance Towers, Gene Evans) – Classic Movie Review 3491

Writer-director Samuel Fuller’s Shock Corridor is the heated, pulsating 1963 tale of an ambitious journalist newsman, Johnny Barrett (Peter Breck), who sets off to investigate on the trail of a knife killing of a patient in a mental home.

However, his girlfriend Cathy (Constance Towers) thinks he’s crazy when he concocts a plan to have himself committed to the mental institution to solve a strange and unclear murder as part of his plan to win a Pulitzer Prize. He starts to probe the men’s ward attendants (John Craig, Chuck Roberson) and the other suspect patients (Gene Evans, James Best, Harry Rhodes), but, in the process, soon starts to lose his own sanity.

Shock Corridor is stylish, frenzied work from brave writer-director Fuller, with startling black and white photography (one scene in colour, Technicolor) from ace cinematographer Stanley Cortez. It is, deservedly, a much admired, renowned cult film, a key work from a much admired, renowned cult director.

Also in the cast are Philip Ahn, Larry Tucker, William Zuckert, Neyle Morrow, John Mathews, Frank Gerstle and Paul Dubov. Fuller convinced his longtime friend and associate Gene Evans into playing the role of Boden by saying ‘I don’t know anyone else who can do this part’.

Fuller was shot the film in 10 days on one set with no exteriors. For the rain sequence, shot after production wrapped, he laid the entire set in tarp and flooded it with high-powered water hoses. The hallucination sequences include footage shot on location in Japan for House of Bamboo (1955). Fuller hired little people to walk around in the distant section of the corridor to give a greater sense of depth to combat the cramped size of the sound stage.

A photograph of Fuller with his trademark cigar can be seen on the wall during the strip club scenes.

Allied Artists reissued it in early 1965 with Fuller’s next movie The Naked Kiss (1964) as a double feature. They can still be seen together as a pair on DVD. Both films were rejected for UK cinema certificates and remained unavailable until 1990, though they are now 18 certificate.

Steven Schneider includes it in his 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3491

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