Shock Corridor

Shock Corridor is a 1963 film, directed and written by Samuel Fuller. The film tells the story of a journalist who gets himself committed to a mental hospital in order to track an unsolved murder. Fuller originally wrote the film under the title Straitjacket for Fritz Lang in the late 1940s, but Lang wanted to change the lead character to a woman so Joan Bennett could play the role.

Plot

Journalist Johnny Barrett (Peter Breck) thinks that the quickest way to a Pulitzer Prize is to uncover the facts behind a murder at a mental hospital. He convinces an expert psychiatrist to coach him to appear insane; this involves relating imaginary accounts of incest with his "sister", who is impersonated by his exotic-dancer girlfriend (Constance Towers). Barrett convinces the authorities and is locked up in the institution where the murder took place. While pursuing his investigation, he is disturbed by the behavior of his fellow inmates.

The three witnesses to the murder were driven insane by the stresses of war, bigotry or fear of nuclear annihilation.