Shock Corridor - Criterion Collection (1963)

Hit and miss

Director Sam Fuller's Shock Corridor is one of those wildly aberrant works of art than can be called great, on some levels, and utter schlock, on other levels. And both are correct assessments of this film that can only be termed a didactic melodrama. What results, though, is that one is left with a so-so film- not the piece of pulp garbage that many reviewers first assailed the black and white film (with dream sequence snippets in color) as, upon its release in 1963, nor the masterpiece that revisionists have proffered in later auteur-based assessments. It had been almost a quarter century since I last watched the film, but recently popped in The Criterion Collection DVD of the film, and rediscovered its `charms.'
On the positive side, the cinematography by Stanley Cortez (who did The Magnificent Ambersons and Night Of The Hunter) is first rate, often with experimental shots and angles, and good edits that are reflexive, yet bold. The use of close-ups veers between the pedestrian in back and forth dialogue exchanges, to the horrid, in close-ups of even minor characters.... one just has to love Fuller. Who else but he would append to the start and end of the film, this epigraph?: `Whom God wishes to destroy, he first turns mad.'- Euripides (425 BC). Was Fuller a great screenwriter or film director? No. But, if you understood what drove him, you could appreciate how he wrung the most out what little he had to work with; something megabucks schlockmeisters like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas could learn much from. The Criterion DVD is one of the company's earlier ventures (the 19th release of the company, with over 400 now in circulation) and it shows. There are no extras on the disk, save for a nice little trailer. The actual print is mediocre, with many scratches and blemishes, although, at the time, Criterion boasted that it restored the color to the trio of dream sequences each of the murder witnesses engages in, and this adds to the film quite a bit, versus if the scenes were shown in black and white. The film's score, by Paul Dunlap, is typically over the top and jazzy in many parts- although standard film noir fare of the day. It also is shown in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio and runs an hour and forty minutes, although it seems much quicker, for few of the scenes run on too long.
Overall, Shock Corridor is one of those works of art that is not nearly as good as its laughable and naïve supporters claim, nor nearly as bad as its fomenting detractors want it to be. It is crude, lurid, vulgar, yet also passionate, and searing in its criticism of the Camelot Era of America. America was (is) sick, and Sam Fuller wanted the world to know. And, in an odd way, this film contains a bit of poetic lyricism, in its meld of the strange, the experimental, and the vulgar. In short, as flawed as it is, it is a deep slice of Americana, and worthy of the preservation bestowed on it by the National Film registry. See it, and regardless of your opinion- good or ill, it will get you talking. When was the last time a current Hollywood release did even that?
September 18, 2008

Not nearly as good as I was led to believe.

Shock Corridor (Samuel Fuller, 1963)

With all the hefty heaps of praise that have been lavished on Shock Corridor during the past decade, as Sam Fuller's films have been rediscovered by critics, I admit I went into it thinking it was going to be on a par with the second coming of Christ. Ah, the perils of reading too many reviews before actually seeing the film, which in this case is a B-grade melodrama, a cautionary tale that reminds me in many ways of Reefer Madness or the like, but about the perils of ambition. Perhaps another part of my problem is that I've watched two other classic hubris tales this year, both of them superior, Alexander MacKendrick's Sweet Smell of Success and Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole; compared to those, Shock Corridor comes up desperately short.

Like MacKendrick's Sidney Falco or Wilder's Chuck Tatum, Fuller's Johnny Barrett (Peter Breck) is a newspaperman looking to make a name for himself; over the vehement objections of his girlfriend Cathy (Constance Towers), he hatches a plan with his editor to have himself committed to a mental institution to solve the murder of an inmate the previous year. The only witnesses to the crime were three other inmates, and the police can't get anything out of them; Barrett figures that if he pretends to be one of them, he can get more information out of them. He's right, but as Cathy suspected, being in the nuthatch seems to be rubbing off on Johnny Barrett in the worst way.

And, you know, it's the idiocy of that central premise, that insanity is contagious, that really bugged me about this movie. It probably wouldn't have bugged me so much were it not the central premise of the movie (and it wouldn't have made itself known as the central premise of the movie had it not been hammered home so hard in the opening scene). There is a lot to enjoy about this flick, as long as you take it in that same campy way in which you'd watch something like Night of the Lepus; it's got a streak of black comedy a mile wide, some really amusing characters, and all the weepy fifties melodrama you can shake a stick at, even though it was made in the early sixties. But oh, the neanderthal-level stupid that sits at the core just gets to me, and keeps me from being able to look at it in the lighthearted manner I'd need to to really just sit back and enjoy it. **

July 18, 2008

SAMUEL FULLER, OPUS 16

**** 1963. Written and directed by Samuel Fuller. Larry Tucker earned a Golden Globe nomination for his performance as Pagliacci, the overweight witness of the Stuart murder. Helped by his girl-friend and by his boss, Peter Breck, a journalist, manages to be declared insane and to be sent to a mental institution where he hopes to solve an uncleared murder. But is it worth the price he'll have to pay ? Samuel Fuller, a former journalist, often described in his movies a situation that was literally his everyday job before he started to shoot movies; to get information in a hostile environment. But Dr. Menkin's institution will be as dangerous as the Burman jungle of the Merrill's Marauders or as Robert Ryan's gang in House of Bamboo (Fox Film Noir).

SHOCK CORRIDOR was the 19th entry of the now prestigious Criterion Collection. The copy is far from being perfect at times, no English subtitles and there is only a theatrical trailer as bonus feature. Anyway, it's a must for any Samuel Fuller or cult movies fan. Highly recommended. April 19, 2008

Jaw-Dropping Hysterics...in the film AND in your living room

Ambitious journalist Peter Breck lusts after a Pulitzer Prize or, at the very least, "a book, a play, even a movie sale." So what's a starving, scheming, modestly talented scribe to do? Why, according to Shock Corridor, he ought to get himself committed to a loony bin to grill the crazies who witnessed an unsolved murder, crack the case, then cinch his immortality by exposing to the world the venality and corruption of - yep, you guessed it--The System. "I'm scared this whole Jeckyll/Hyde idea is going to make a psycho out of me," warns Breck's stripper girlfriend, Constance Towers. A shrewd guess, since such watch-the-cast-go-psycho classics as this, The Snake Pit, The Cobweb and the Caretakers, exist only so actors can shred, chew and swallow the scenery. Early on, we're treated to Breck rehearsing his "part," the better to get him committed. He and Towers are so hilariously hammy in their abusive-brother-and-victimized-sister act, it's surprising that the loony bin doesn't book 'em both.

The fun really kicks into high gear when writer/director Samuel Fuller locks Breck inside what has to be the Movies' All-time Greatest Ward of Bad B-Actors. You'll drop your jaw when Larry Tucker, as a 300-lb. wife-killer, bellows operatic arias in our hero's face while the poor guy's trapped in bed; later, Tucker tops this bit with a scene where he actually force-feeds Breck chewing gum. You'll shake your head in disbelief, too, when shell-shocked James Best sets an early standard for Jack Nicholson-style over-the-top theatrics by Method-acting himself into delirium while reliving Civil War battles. And you'll cheer when the ward's bird-like schizo stares into the camera and socks over this immortal line: "I am impotent and I like it!" No self-respecting mad-house melodrama would be worth its weight in Thorazine without electroshock scenes--and this movie's are pips.

All the savage competition from the other hams finally unhinges Breck (and the movie, we might add). How can we tell that Breck's gone bonkers, you ask? For starters, there's his conjuring up, literally out of nowhere, Towers to chirp, "I need somebody to love"--her face covered in feathers, mind you--while gamely trying to bump 'n' grind. Then there's the inevitable ward filled with sex-starved babes: Breck wanders in with one of the best Bad Movie lines ever, "Nymphos!" Soon, as one of the femme-fatale inmates sings "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean," the other women fondle Breck to a frenzy. There's more: watch for two of the nuttiest hallucination sequences in movie history, one consisting of what look to be home movies of Fuller's trip to the Far East, and the other a corker of a scene in which Breck sees a teensy Towers sashaying across his chest in stiletto heels, purring, "All the men want me, Johnny... and you, you want the Pulitzer Prize!"

Sad to say, by the time Breck cops the Pulitzer, he's too nuts to realize it. But you'll know, and by then you'll agree with us that this madcap madhouse movie belongs way, way up there in the Bad Movie pantheon. The single craziest thing about Shock Corridor is that it was judged by some critics to be among the best movies of 1963. What we don't know is how many of them were committed as a result of viewing the film.
August 16, 2007

one of the greatest looney bin movies

Years before 'one flew over the cukoo' nest' sam fuller made perhaps the strongest film against the horrors of the mental hospital and shock treatment in particular.. Equally as haunting as cuckoo's nest, shock corridor is a film which has not gotten enough recognition - like most of the director's work it is considered cult...

If you see this movie you will not soon forget its images.. One of the most powerful and relevant of which was a black patient who would put on a ku klux klan hat and create race riots along the corridor.. but there are so many interesting characters in this movie.. June 29, 2007

More reviews at Amazon.com ...