I've been down a lot of corridors, none like this

Sam Fullers Shock Corridor (1963) seems to be an exercise in plot too theme ratio. It surrounds John Barrett a newspaper journalist out to grab the story of a lifetime, and while at it snag the Pulitzer prize. To garner the story and the accolades he decides to research and rehearse becoming an imbalanced sexual deviant who has inappropriate feelings towards his sister (who is really his girlfriend) and with that gets himself committed to a mental facility in which a murder had been committed, yet remains unsolved. Barrett idea is to solve the murder, write the story and what seems like a foregone conclusion to him, win the pulitzer prize. The logic of the plot may seem a bit out there, but to be perfectly honest, if I read in todays paper that a report went undercover at a mental hospital to write a story, I wouldn't think twice about it. 

Incest, racism, communism, nuclear war, sanity, insanity are all the themes Fuller is looking to explore in this picture. I applaud his effort, despite it falling short.  I shouldn't say it fell short in what Fuller was trying to accomplish, but where it fell short is cinematically, as a self contained movie without being conscious of the thematic elements. It seems like Fuller built the movie around his social and political agendas rather than the story itself. For example, fuller wants to deal with incest and sexuality, have Barrett girlfriend be a stripper (check it off the list), he wants to deal with racism, (have one of the witness's be a black white supremacist (check it off the list) have another witness be a communist (check it off the list) have another witness be a brilliant scientist who worked on the Atomic bomb (check it off the list). The biggest theme is sanity vs insanity, have the sane man deal with losing his own sanity (check it off the list). I feel like Fuller would have served himself and his agendas better if he had concentrated on the murder mystery aspect of the film and had Barrett actually try to discover how that went down by doing more than just asking each convenient witness who killed him, in there brief moments of sanity. If he had gone that route he could have more naturally interwoven his themes into the plot, without the film feeling a bit preachy. 

Despite that one major issue I had with the film, I respect Fuller for attempting to delve deeper into a film than most, and still keeping it entertaining throughout. Fuller also knows how to cast with great performances by Peter Breck as Barrett, Constance Towers as Cathy, James Best as Stuart, and the very enjoyable Larry Tucker as Pagliacci. 

Shock Corridor may be the first Fuller movie I have seen, but it certainly won't be my last because if he is able to hit the right balance between story and themes in his other works, that is when a film reaches the level of greatness. 

**1/2