I'm not familiar with the work of writer/ director/ producer Samuel Fuller, but he has one of those names you always hear. And, I haven't had opportunity yet to visit the Paramount yet this summer for the summer series, nor had I ever been in the State Theater on Congress, side by side with the Paramount. Wednesday night provided a great opportunity to knock some items off my list, and so I caught both Shock Corridor (1963) and The Naked Kiss (1964), two movies that earned their bonafides.
Of the two films, Shock Corridor may have dated more poorly, even if it still holds up very well from a narrative standpoint. It follows a newspaper journalist who knows he can earn a Pulitzer by going undercover into an mental hospital to solve a murder the police have been unable to crack as the only three witnesses were hopelessly mentally ill. He recruits his stripper girlfriend, played by the lovely Constance Towers, into posing as his sister who files charges of attempted sexual assault. With training from a psychologist, Johnny Barrett sneaks in undetected.
And then learns that a mental hospital run under the common practices of mid-20th Century medicine was no picnic.
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| When they make my bio-pic, tell them this is exactly what I want the poster to look like, but with Jamie dancing in the corner. |
