corridors

Shock Corridor (Ws) [VHS]
$14.95
I checked this movie out of my local public library simply because it was so highly recommended by various professional film reviewers.

Ho boy! -- was I disappointed!

Movies like this, for me, fall into the same category as

-- This Sporting Life

-- Saturday Night, Sunday Morning

-- The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner,

etc.

No doubt Sam Fuller and company had high-minded intentions in making this film, but I just don't get it. The acting was primitive, poorly staged and ... annoying.

It's rare that I stop watching a movie that otherwise comes so highly recommended.

The scenes where the inmates of the ko-ko bin go berserk is about on the par of some of the more notable food fights I recall from high school. "GO BANANAS!" I suppose, is what Sam Fuller told his actors ... and so they did. But is that acting?

There is also a really annoying recurring "special effect" whereby Peter Breck's wife appears to him in a dream as an image superimposed on the screen. This is about as effective as Tinkerbell prancing around Peter Pan's head & shoulders, sprinking fairy dust.

I have a theory why people like movies like this. ...

"Regular" movies, specially in the past 20 years, are made by actors and filmmakers who live in an insulated world where what they know, what they experience, what they believe in, and what they values has just about NOTHING in common with the felt-lives of millions of so-called average people. Because of this, the average moviegoer *hungers* for realism in a movie. This is no doubt why documentaries are so popular. They're about "real life."

So here come these movies that are like documentaries but are not really about reality -- they're still movies.

And it seems that the more "primitive" they are, the more "on the fly" the shooting technique, the more raw and rough-edged the acting -- the more they appeal to people who instinctively know that the average movie is *over-manipulating* reality for them.

What they want is a more immediate representation of reality. So that what's important is not dressing a set a certain way (mise en scene) but rather simply going to where the scene is supposed to be, or else primitively constructing such a set, and then shooting "au natural."

Another example of this kind of movie would be Henry Hathaway's "House on 92nd Street."

But that kind of filmmaking is akin to moviemakers who love to encourage their actors to ad lib. As one writer-director recently said: "If I can't write better than an actor can ad lib, then I might as well give up writing."

I watched Sam Fuller's "Big Red One" all the way through. I thought it was ok, interesting. It was a movie, not an attempt to portray soldiers in World War II in a pseudo-documentary style. Which is how I would classify "Shock Corridor." ... Either make a documentary or else make a movie. And if you make a movie, what should pass as communication between the film and the audience shouldn't be spontaneity for spontaneity's sake, or realism for realism's sake, or primitivism for primitivism's sake. Yet another example being Werner Herzog's "Aquirre: The Wrath of God."

If we all know that "it's ultimately just a movie," then the quais-documentary flavor of the movie ... well, it's just lost on me. I'll opt for a Barbara Kopple movie or some other tightly-thought-out documentary.

Fire on Corridor X
$13.98
Psychedelic yet direct, raging but tuneful, All The Saints' debut bulldozes preconceptions at volume. Named after a section of the I-22 highway connecting the trio's native Alabama to Mississippi, the cryptic title track is a hypnotic mind-meld of their primary influences, welding a Loop-sized space-groove to The Gun Club's lyrical bite.

Corridors of Blood
$2.99
MONSTERS AND MADMEN is a brilliant quadruple feature for lovers of these two genres. First, there's the Boris Karloff (Frankenstein, Bride Of Frankenstein, Black Sabbath) classic, THE HAUNTED STRANGLER about a novelist (Boris) who becomes obsessed w/ the innocence of a man hanged for a series of murders, only to become a malignant force himself! Karloff is superb, w/ his sympathetic portrayal, complete w/ facial contortions. Next, in CORRIDORS OF BLOOD, Karloff returns as a surgeon trying to find a less traumatic / painful way to perform amputations. Unfortunately, his good intentions are counteracted by his own addiction, as well as the unscrupulous people he must deal with. This leads to murder and despair. Watch for an early, captivating role for Christopher Lee (To The Devil A Daughter, The Wicker Man) as the malevolant "Resurrection Joe". FIRST MAN INTO SPACE has an astronaut who returns to earth as a killer beast, looking much like a burnt tuna casserole in humanoid form! Marshall Thompson (It The Terror From Beyond Space) does his best to track down and save his friend to little avail. Finally, in THE ATOMIC SUBMARINE, Arthur Franz (Invaders From Mars) and the crew of the Tiger Shark must find the reason behind a number of maritime disasters. Along the way, they encounter a UFO w/ a nasty critter (an octopoid cyclops!) aboard that simply must be terminated. There you have it. If you love the 1950s, horror, sci-fi, or Karloff, then this collection is calling your name! These four films are perfect additions to any H /S-F shelf...

GO PAK Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends Corridor Chaos Board Game
$11.99
Based on Cartoon Network's enormously popular animated series, the Corridor Chaos board game lets kids explore the winding corridors of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. Different Imaginary Friends are scattered throughout the house. Players twist and turn hallway tiles on the game board to create paths to their Imaginary Friends the first player to reach 5 Imaginary Friends wins! Game comes in a portable vinyl pouch for easy storability. Includes a board, 2 movers, 16 Path Tiles, 4 Command Tiles, 15 Imaginary Friend Cards and a die. For two players. Vinyl pouch in a CDU.