Shock Corridor

MOVIE #1,257 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 11.29.23 This movie is clearly great and I feel like I need to watch it again because I saw it in like 4-5 chunks around Thanksgiving on various screens (not ideal!). It might be one of the best films about the intrinsic shittiness of ambition. And it’s also a low-budget visual delight — inserting color stock footage against the wonderful monochrome — full of fascinating discursions that pepper the narrative. It's interesting how little of this is actually about what the tagline says (uncovering a murder) as it's clearly more about the mental health of the “sane” protagonists, either because they've thrust themselves into this wild gambit or in spite of it. Writer-director-producer Samuel Fuller is definitely a name I will be adding to the list.

I like how this hallway seemingly has no end…

The film is about journalist Johnny Barrett (Peter Breck) who hopes to uncover the facts behind the unsolved murder of an inmate at a psychiatric hospital by going undercover. He convinces doctors to commit him to the ward based on imaginary accounts of incest with his "sister", who is impersonated by his exotic-dancer girlfriend, Cathy (Constance Towers). But there's almost zero setup about the details of this murder he's trying to solve and what info they give as the plot progresses is murky at best. So it seems to be asking, what does it mean to be insane? It’s the kind of high-minded conceit you don’t have to find in films of this era: a psychological study cloaked as a noir. It’s also simply a template for some wonderfully creative visual ideas…


I wasn’t familiar with any of the actors but they’re all excellent, especially Peter Breck in the lead. It’s a BIG performance but he owns it…


It does appear that he's slowly uncovering something, but man these scenes go on and on in a way that makes it very unclear if exposition or aesthetics is the ultimate goal…



Like I said, I need to see this again for it to really soak in, but I can wholeheartedly recommend it. I loved its bleak message and tone, and its layered, weighty themes. Even this throwaway line from a non-character seems to be saying something about what the film is trying to convey…

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Shock Corridor is a 1963 American psychological thriller film starring Peter Breck, Constance Towers, and Gene Evans. Written and directed by Samuel Fuller, the film tells the story of a journalist who gets himself intentionally committed to a mental hospital 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. It was released on September 11, 1963.