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"At once B-grade sensational, trashy and shocking, [Sam Fuller's] movies don't hold back from the type of elements one finds in a tabloid newspaper....
“Two of the most thrillingly pure and profoundly eccentric films of [Fuller’s] career.” —New York Times
[Shock Corridor] can be seen in the contect of Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), with its muder mystery, and Ken Kesey's novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," with its redefinition of insanity, both of which had a big impact in the early '60s. Fuller exploits many of the hysterical aspects of Cold War America in his movie. The asylum becomes a veritable microcosm of America, with inmates representing some of the most fearful figures of American society....
Part of the success of the movie is due to the cinematography and editing. Cinematographer Stanley Cortez [The Magnificent Ambersons, The Night of the Hunter] shot the film entirely indoors in ominously lit corridors and rooms. The editing, too, heightens the fever pitch through 'shock cuts' depicting madness, violent outbursts and dream sequences (including a color sequence taken from an unfinished film Fuller shot in Brazil)."
—Matt Langdon, UCLA Festival of Preservation (1998)
"Brilliantly uneven, [The Naked Kiss] courts narrative banality only to enliven it with tart dialogue, stylistic bravado and startling pulp violence....the film shows Fuller breaking decisively with the ideological and generic norms of mainstream Hollywood filmmaking, fashioning in their place that idiosyncratic blend of sensationalism and sentimentality which corresponds to his personal vision."
—Jesse Zigelstein, UCLA Festival of Preservation (2000)
