Rent Shock Corridor (1963)

Political Allegory (includes spoiler). - Shock Corridor review by Steve

This political allegory from Sam Fuller is characteristically original and incisive and dynamic. A hot shot journalist (Peter Breck) goes in pursuit of the Pulitzer Prize by faking insanity, which allows him access to a mental hospital and potentially discover who committed the murder of one of its patients.  

Only once admitted, the writer's real mental frailties start to unravel. The film adopts the notion that insanity is a reasonable response to an abnormal circumstance. This is what caused the mental illness of the three witnesses. And the news man soon conforms to the delirium of his environment.

Fuller uses the corridor where the patients congregate as a metaphor for America. He asserts that the country has become unbalanced by ignorance and prejudice and inevitably when people conform to its rules, they become irrational themselves. Which still resonates.

Though sensationalist, this is a clever and convincing film, shot to good effect in a single studio interior. The budget must have been tiny, but Fuller gives it plenty of visual clout; particularly the surreal rainstorms which sweep the corridor and terrorise the journalist in his psychotic state.