Shock Corridor is a 1963 American psychological thriller film starring Peter Breck, Constance Towers, and Gene Evans. Written and directed by Samuel Fuller, the film tells the story of a journalist who gets himself intentionally committed to a mental hospital to solve a murder committed within the institution. 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.In 1996, Shock Corridor was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".