Shock Corridor (1963)

Rating: 81/100

How dangerous can journalism be? Well, this movie reveals the risks that journalists truly take as Johnny Barrett played by Peter Breck ventures into an insane asylum as a patient to solve a murder. To be a journalist is to go out there and find your story, to take risks and venture to dangerous places to tell the truth. Journalists die every year trying to report the truth and take big risks. Johnny is no different as he is determined to win a Pulitzer Prize by solving a mysterious murder in this asylum.

Johnny begins his journey to the asylum with the help of his newspaper editor and a psychiatrist who help prepare him for how to act and what questions may be asked. They come up with a story that his wife Cathy played by Constance Towers, is his sister who Johnny has harassed and assaulted for years. Cathy hates this idea and doesn't want to go along with it but is convinced because of her love for Johnny and wanting him to achieve his goal of a Pulitzer Prize. Cathy goes to the police and reports her brother Johnny, who is taken in for testing. At the test Johnny confesses his love for his sister and talks about his sister as one talks about their wife. When Johnny sees his chance, he attacks the man interviewing him and is taken in.

Once in the asylum Johnny begins his plan of figuring out who murdered Sloane by asking around nonchalantly. He tries to act crazy like everyone else and once he is on their good side, he asks them about the murder. At night Johnny dreams of Cathy dancing how she does at work, in these dreams she talks and teases him, making him irritable. Johnny tries to keep it together but as he learns more about each patient and hears their stories, he begins to go crazy himself.

Cathy visits Johnny during his visiting hours and he begins to act unrecognizable to her. When she tries to kiss him, he freaks out thinking that she's his sister, when she complains to his editor, he tells her that Johnny is close to cracking the case. With each of the three men Johnny interviews he gets closer to figuring out who killed Sloane. The Cowboy tells him he saw it while hiding under a table with two other men, one of which is Trent played by Hari Rhodes. A Black Man who thinks he's White and in the KKK, he tells him that the murderer was wearing white staff pants. This leads Johnny to the ex-scientist who helped work on the H-Bomb, who now has the mentality of a six-year-old. Johnny tries to find the murder before he loses all his marbles and completely forgets who he is.

This film was written, directed, and produced by Samuel Fuller, where he explores the psychiatric system and the effects it has on patients. I believe the best part of the film is the narration and inner monologue that Johnny has with himself throughout. Slowly you start to see his thoughts slip and he begins to lose track of his mission, I think the acting by Peter Breck was great. This film resembles what Nellie Bly a journalist accomplished in 1887 when she faked mental illness to be admitted to a lunatic asylum. There she reported on the terrible conditions and what the patients went through. She was able to publish her investigation in Ten Days in a Mad-House, which launched a grand jury investigation into the Department of Public Charities and Corrections.