Product Details

• Actors: Peter Breck, Constance Towers, Gene Evans, James Best, Hari Rhodes
• Directors: Samuel Fuller
• Format: Black & White, Color, NTSC, Special Edition, Widescreen
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.77:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: Unrated
• Studio: Criterion Collection
• DVD Release Date: January 18, 2011
• Run Time: 101 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (45 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0047P5FU4
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #111,692 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Maverick film director Samuel Fuller was doing some of his best work in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and in the years since its release in 1963, Shock Corridor has become a B-movie classic and a prime example of Fuller's gritty tabloid style. Never hesitant to explore the darkened corners of contemporary life, Fuller depicts the chambers of an insane asylum as a microcosm of American society, telling the story of a cynical, ambitious journalist (Peter Breck) whose obsessive quest for a Pulitzer Prize leads him into the depths of madness. To investigate a murder, the reporter goes undercover in a mental hospital, having convinced a psychiatrist that he needs treatment. Once inside the asylum, he pieces together clues to the murder, but his own mind begins to deteriorate until he's trapped in a downward spiral towards insanity. Fuller heightens the melodrama with his aggressive style of filmmaking (his next film, The Naked Kiss, proved even more effective), and his imaginative use of black-and-white cinematography (by noted cameraman Stanley Cortez) fills the movie with raw, emotional power. It's the kind of film one would expect from a rebellious director on the Hollywood fringe, and that's why Shock Corridor remains an enduring low-budget examination of the "rat race" and the consequences of pursuing success at any cost. The Criterion Collection DVD presents the film in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio, and a rarely seen color dream sequence has been fully restored. --Jeff Shannon

Product Description

In Shock Corridor, the great American writer-director-producer Samuel Fuller (The Naked Kiss, The Big Red One) masterfully charts the uneasy terrain between sanity and dementia. Seeking a Pulitzer Prize, reporter Johnny Barrett (Peter Breck) has himself committed to a mental hospital to investigate a murder. As he closes in on the killer, madness closes in on him. Constance Towers (The Naked Kiss) costars as Johnny’s coolheaded stripper girlfriend. With its startling commentary on race in sixties America and daring photography by Stanley Cortez (The Night of the Hunter), Shock Corridor is now recognized for its far-reaching influence.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 39 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great American Original July 8, 1999

By A Customer

Format:VHS Tape

Perhaps Fuller's most audacious film--the first time I saw it, my jaw was on the ground. Some take it only as a cult item, but when you realize this was made in 1963 as an indictment of Cold War paranoia and homegrown racism, you begin to appreciate exactly how ahead of the curve Sam was. While Sam Fuller's films may not be for everyone (such as the previous reviewer), there's nothing cheesy about this at all. True, Shock Corridor is very low budget. But it also has Stanley Cortez (The Magnificent Ambersons) behind the camera. If it's so inept, why did John Ford often visit the set, saying he might learn something? Why did Jean-Luc Godard pay hommage to Fuller in many of his early films, even using him in Pierrot le Fou to deliver his definition of cinema ("A film is like a battleground--love, hate, action, violence, death...in one word--emotion!")? Why has Martin Scorsese (along with Quentin Tarentino and others) called Shock Corridor is "a masterpiece"? No, when such an array of talented people find so much of worth here, then you know this is far from Ed Wood territory. Experience Sam Fuller's "Kino-Fist" style right between your eyes--he may be one of our most neglected directors.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Fuller's strange world December 31, 2001

By LGwriter

Format:DVD

Alternately brilliant and infuriating, Samuel Fuller's Shock Corridor is without question a one-of-a-kind film. Shot in black and white in 1963, it tells the story of a newspaper reporter who's convinced he can win the Pulitzer Prize if only he can penetrate the inner sanctum of a mental hospital to solve a murder that's been committed there--something the police have apparently not been able to accomplish.

The bizarre juxtaposition of intensity and immaturity, anger and pulp, outrageousness and illogic tells you that this is the work of a film maker who's not afraid to take chances. Fuller seems to be deliberately trying to rattle or irritate the viewer: a stripper sings a slow torch song and only partially disrobes, a nuclear physicist prattles like a six year old, a 300 pound man sings the same opera aria repeatedly to awaken another man. It's not hard to tell that the dialogue is defiantly pulpy, with emphasis on "defiant". Fuller was obviously enraged with the more destructive qualities of American culture and let his audience know it in no uncertain terms.

But with the pulp--and how much more pulpy can you get than the reporter's girlfriend being a stripper?--there's also startling power. A war veteran relates his dreams of living with South American primitives, brought shockingly to life with a rare color sequence. A black man spouts virulent anti-black racial epithets and dons a makeshift KKK hood, chasing another black man down a hallway. The reporter himself wonders why, at crucial moments, he's unable to speak.

A scathing attack on the relentless American drive for success, power, and acceptance, this movie, for all its frequently dated, semi-trashy dialogue, ranks as one of the best films of its time or any period in American history.... The ruthless, downbeat ending--the murderer is discovered, but at a terrible price--is a fitting, bitter conclusion. Read more ›

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A DISTURBING MOVIE... October 20, 2002

By Mark Norvell

Format:DVD

A reporter seeking a Pulitzer Prize cons his way into being committed to an asylum to get the story on an unsolved murder case. Peter Breck (from TV's "The Big Valley") is good as the reporter. He blends in with the other male inmates trying to ferret out the facts but discovers insanity is nothing to toy with. Constance Towers (also in Fullers' "The Naked Kiss") is a stripper and his loyal girlfriend who notices Breck's mental deterioration on her visits. She tries but can't get him out. He has more or less sealed his own fate. The portrayals of the other inmates are powerful and there are some real doozies locked in with Breck. But I found the movie to be so vivid that it was almost unpleasant to watch. The scenes in the asylum are disturbing. The scenes outside the asylum are depressing and even Towers' strip routine at the nite club where she works is downbeat. Breck's plight is overwhelmingly doomed. This is without a doubt a challenging film but I can only recommend it with a warning. If you are emotionally affected by films be careful with this one. It will linger with you after you've seen it. Still it's a powerful and unusual film worthy of a cult following and a collector's item.

15 of 19 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Not nearly as good as I was led to believe. July 18, 2008

By Robert P. Beveridge HALL OF FAMEVINE™ VOICE

Format:DVD

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. ** Read more ›