The BBC screened a programme tonight showing some celebs sleeping rough so they could expose the fact that, er, sleeping rough wasn't very nice.
It was a programme so weak in ideas that you wanted to gauge your own eyes out in frustration. It's not as if there is a lack of stories around. The money spent on the 'talent', which included Annabel Croft and the Marquis of Blandford (WTF!), could surely have gone to some journalists who might not have a name but do have a story to tell.
By coincidence Lovefilm sent me Shock Corridor to watch so I stuck that on afterwards.
Sam Fuller's 1963 film is about a reporter who goes undercover in a mental hospital to expose a murderer. The asylum acts as a metaphor for America at the time. The three witnesses the reporter meets are a GI brainwashed by the Communists in the Korean War, a black man convinced he's the founder of the Ku Klux Klan and a physicist who worked on the atom bomb programme and couldn't take the pressure.
It's Sam Fuller so don't expect things to end well.
What I found interesting was that the reporter, Johnny, is an egomaniac whose motive is not really to solve the murder but to win a Pulitzer Prize. This isn't about the hack as noble investigator but as obsessive, desperate to receive acclaim.
The film was originally banned in this country because the BBFC didn't like what it said about those suffering mental health problems. I'm not sure they got that Fuller felt it was society which was sick.
If you can get over actor Peter Breck's scenery-chewing performance in the lead, Shock Corridor is worth viewing. Check out the trailer below for a taste.
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