Cheap Shock Corridor - Criterion Collection (DVD) (Peter Breck, Constance Towers) (Samuel Fuller) Price

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Customer Reviews of Shock Corridor - Criterion Collection

"Whom God wishes to destroy, He firsts makes mad."
Shock Corridor (1963), was written and directed by Samuel Fuller, who was also responsible for The Naked Kiss (1964), stars Peter Breck as Johnny Barrett, a reporter with his eye on winning the Pulitzer prize, has himself committed to an insane asylum in order to talk to three inmates who witnessed the murder of another inmate within the asylum. He hopes to learn the identity of murderer, solving a case the police couldn't, and writing the story of a lifetime.

With the assistance of a mental health expert and his newspaper editor, Johnny trains for a year on how to be crazy in order to pull off the scheme, and then has his girlfriend Cathy (Constance Towers), an exotic dancer, act as his sister to claim Johnny is in love with her in more than just a 'brotherly' way, which would allow for his committal to the institution to the mental hospital. She is extremely reluctant to do so as she fears for his mental state and what may happen while Johnny is locked away with so much insanity.

Once inside, Johnny must keep his act believable, while trying to gather information from the three lunatics who witnessed the murder of a fellow inmate. As the story of the murder begins to unfold, Johnny is subject to treatments and such reserved for the mentally unhinged, and living among these individuals causes problems within Johnny's own mental state. Will he learn the identity of the killer before madness overtakes him?

Supporting characters include James Best as Stuart, an inmate who believes he's an officer in the confederate army. Many will probably recognize him as bumbling sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane from the 70's television show The Dukes of Hazzard. He is really a great actor, much better than he let on in that show. Gene Evans play Boden, a once brilliant nuclear scientist now reduced to a childlike state due to pressures from his position. Evans appeared in a ton of movies throughout the 50's and 60's, and then transitioned to mostly television work in the 70's. I mainly remember him in Nevada Smith (1966) with Steve McQueen.

This drama was comparable in many ways to me to the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975). In both movies, you have a person entering an asylum under false pretenses, acting the part in order to stay within the system, and suffering from the close association with the mentally diseased. The big difference is while One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest had bits of humor nestled throughout the movie, this was a fairly straight up drama with little or no humor (unless you count Johnny's mistakenly entering the room full of nymphomaniacs and barely escaping with his life). Also, I didn't find myself connecting with the characters here so much as I did with 'Cuckoo's Nest', but the performances were pretty believable. The film ended pretty much as I thought it would, but that didn't make it any less enjoyable for me. The film did incorporate a number of socially relevant topics including racism, bigotry, communism, and incest, among other things. I thought the character of Trent (Hari Rhodes), an inmate who was once the first black college student at an all white school but cracked under the pressure, and now spouts racial slogans reserved for members of the clan, was pretty odd. I did laugh a couple of times when Trent, believing his was white, would get the others all worked up, and then chase an older, black inmate around the halls. The poor man...he would step foot out of his room while Trent was in the middle of a diatribe, and Trent would spot him, encouraging the rest to chase him and knock the stuffing out of him. Another unintentionally funny moment was when the one doctor was talking to Johnny about his fetish with his 'sister' and the doctor speaks of puberty, but instead says 'poo-berty'. I don't know why, but it made me laugh...I guess I'm silly like that.

The print here is very crisp and clear, but there are flaws at a few points, where the film must have been damaged. The picture is in wide screen, and also includes the original color sequences, which I heard, weren't in some earlier releases. The film itself is in black and white. Special features are lacking, basically only including a trailer, which surprised me a little, as Criterion usually supplies much in this area. There is also a nice insert with plenty of information about the film.

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One of Sam Fuller¿s most powerful pictures
This precursor to ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST, Written, Produced and Directed by Sam Fuller (THE BIG RED ONE) was originally banned in NZ on its initial release and for some odd reason carries an R18 certificate today (higher than the UK's 15 cert). But even despite the twelve year gap between this and Milos Forman's multi Oscar winning masterpiece, I personally felt that SHOCK CORRIDOR came across as a more subtly unsettling movie.
In this overlooked classic Peter Breck gives a terrific performance as Johnny Barrett, a newspaper reporter who goes undercover as a patient in a mental asylum in order to expose the ill treatment of the inmates. But he soon finds himself fearing for his own sanity when he himself winds up being abused. The situation is not helped when he begins to have disturbing dreams about his stripper girlfriend (Constance Towers) whom he harbours a secret anger against for exposing herself to other men. (The stripping scenes are a special highlight too). However Johnny also gains the unwanted attention of half a dozen attractive-slash-deranged female inmates who want to sexually exploit and degrade him. Who said only women were victims? Unfortunately some of the audio synchronicity in SHOCK CORRIDOR is appalling, especially in this scene and as a result the potential power of this sequence is lessened somewhat. (I viewed the UK videotape so I'll presume this was the work of the Pommie censors and not the intention of Fuller).
As if all this isn't bad enough, among the other inmates is an African American man with a split personality- his alter ego being a white supremacist. This leads to one of the movie's more unnerving moments where he dons a KKK outfit and sets an angry mob upon another Negro patient. This would have been pretty wild stuff for 1963 and the scene still packs a wallop four decades on. It's safe to presume that this wouldn't be allowed in movies today (unless it was being spoofed by the Wayans brothers). It's also of note that several flashback scenes are shot in color- including a brief but effective montage of the movies most powerful incidents during the scene in which Barrett undergoes electroshock therapy.
The combo of b&w photography with a shady atmosphere help to give SHOCK CORRIDOR a chillingly brilliant claustrophobic feel, which is so effective that while watching it you feel that you are incarcerated along with Barrett and suffering with him. Keep your eyes peeled for James Best, later to be better known as Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane on THE DUKES OF HAZZARD.
There are also a couple of amusing parts amongst all the despair, most notably the scenes featuring the screaming mad cowboy and a bit where one of the inmates proclaims with pride: "I am impotent and I like it!" Yup, the man is certifiable in my opinion.
SHOCK CORRIDOR is a movie well worth tracking down. Fuller manages to seamlessly blend thriller, psychological drama, social commentary horror, black humor and exploitation into a richly textured and unique viewing experience which retains the power to disturb and challenge viewers today.