EDITOR’S NOTE: Shock Corridor was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, April 4, 1970 at 11:30 p.m.
Johnny Barrett (Peter Breck) wants a Pulitzer so badly that he’s willing to go into a mental hospital to learn who killed someone. He’s talked Dr. Fong (Philip Ahn) into working with him to pretend to be insane, and his cover is that he’s incestuously obsessed with his sister, who will be played by his exotic dancer girlfriend, Cathy (Constance Towers). She doesn’t want to be part of this, realizing how dangerous it is. He doesn’t care — he wants fame.
Once inside, Johnny is overwhelmed by the patients he meets. Literally, an entire wing of female nymphomaniacs assaults him. He gets closer to the truth through three patients: Stuart (James Best!), a man who was taken by the Koreans and indoctrinated into Communism before being reformed, then outed as a traitor by his own government. He now believes that he is Southern General J.E.B. Stewart. The second is Trent (Hari Rhodes), a black man who was so abused in college that he believes that he is a member of the Ku Klux Klan. The last is Boden (Gene Evans), a nuclear scientist who helped invent the atomic bomb and has reverted to the mentality of a child so that he no longer has to create weapons.
While Johnny learns who the killer is, it takes his sanity, which is destroyed after shock therapy. He thinks that Cathy is his sister and, sure, he writes the story, but he’s now trapped in the same place he worked so hard to get into.
Directed and written by Samuel Fuller, this was shot in ten days with no exteriors. Fuller was upset that the movie was sold as an exploitation movie. It played double features with The Naked Kiss. As I always say, the only difference between the arthouse and the grindhouse is where the movie is playing.
You can watch this on YouTube.
