I already had this near the top of my queue when someone invited me to a (virtual) Meetup session to discuss it. The disc arrived in the nick of time, so the following review incorporates a few insights from other viewers.
A murder at a mental hospital has gone unsolved for a while, with only uncooperative patients as witnesses. Reporter Johnny Barrett (Peter Breck) hopes to get through to one of them and tell the world...by getting himself "involuntarily" committed, the staff having no idea that he faked his way in. Johnny has had a lot of training for this, but he underestimates how hard it will be to hold onto his sanity in those conditions.
Yes, it was a pretty dumb idea from the start, with fairly predictable results. At best, Johnny would get in trouble for fraud and probably drag his approving boss, "Swanee" (Bill Zuckert), down with him. He doesn't even have a noble reason; he just wants a Pulitzer. It's a little disturbing that he found a psychologist (Philip Ahn) willing to train him for his purpose, but of course, that's nowhere near the most disturbing element.
Like in most mental hospital-centric pictures, there's lopsided gender representation among the cast. The most prominent woman is Cathy (Constance Towers), Johnny's girlfriend, who ever so reluctantly poses as his sister to accuse him of attempting incestuous assault so he'll get committed. As his main outside contact, she notices more than anyone else the signs that he's genuinely losing his mind. She does figure into several of his dreams, daydreams, or hallucinations, whichever they are.
Cathy is a showgirl, and we see one of her musical acts. This seems out of place at first, maybe just a bonus to draw more attention, but I see some value in a vaguely haunting quality that lends itself to the aforementioned sequences. More than that, her career and the explicit talk pertaining to it help establish early on that the Hays Code was pretty lax with this feature. The word "shock" wasn't just window dressing, and it would come into play in a bigger way.
Take the three witnesses, for example. In their lucid moments (sometimes accompanied by jarring color footage leftover from other Sam Fuller projects), they clarify how they ended up where they are. One (James Best), who thinks he's Jeb Stuart, was indeed a Korean War POW branded a traitor because he got coerced into communism. Another (Hari Rhodes), a Black man who thinks he's a founding Klansman, faced oppression in response to early racial integration in school. (How convenient that Johnny could pose as Nathan Bedford Forrest for both of them.) The third (Gene Evans), who busies himself with childlike drawings, felt guilty for making atomic weaponry. See a pattern?
You could read a broader anti-authority message into the film. The hospital, under the leadership of perhaps symbolically named Drs. Menkin (Paul Dubov) and Cristo (John Matthews), doesn't show many signs of helping patients get better, and one staffer was the murderer. It's largely the "treatment" that drives Johnny mad, including, yes, shock therapy. The fourth estate, tho disdained by an unlikable staffer (Chuck Roberson), doesn't look so good either: Johnny couldn't care less about the witnesses' personal yet timely stories and shows them no sensitivity at their most vulnerable, and Swanee disregards Cathy's valid causes for concern until it's too late. When Johnny participates in a race riot, it's not entirely clear whether he's feigning "Klan" camaraderie, caught up in the momentum, or actually that racist.
With all these pet issues of the era at fault, I get the feeling SC came a little too soon. It would have enjoyed more popularity during the unrest of the late '60s, or even just a couple months later with the JFK assassination. Of course, it was still a B-movie, made in a short time on a low budget by a little-known company with no famous actors. And I still don't have a good sense of a Fuller signature.
I do like the direction overall. Whether you see it as a political melodrama or a psychological thriller, it works, with cinematography that reminded me a little of Hitchcock's Spellbound. That said, I'm a little leery of the theatrical depiction of mental disorders. The makers certainly took the project seriously, taking a physical toll on Breck and Evans, but how accurate is it, especially according to modern doctors? Never mind the outdated jargon; do patients typically swing that quickly between lucidity and identity confusion? Would Johnny have to be rather unstable already to fall as soon as he does? I only tentatively believe it.
My group was unsure what to make of Pagliacci (Larry Tucker), the patient with the most screen time after Johnny. He's interesting enough but has no bearing on the plot, nor does he signify anything of great cultural relevance. My best guess is that Johnny needed a frequent companion other than the witnesses and staff. Pagliacci is pretty annoying and yet the closest thing to a friend, so maybe he slowly affects Johnny's mind.
I would almost recommend SC to my dad, except he hates shock therapy scenes. If you can take a descent into the underbelly of a '60s asylum that influenced Shutter Island, give it a go. Madness can be scarier than death on screen.
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