El susto

Some gifted people went to work on this one, including director Alfred Werker and star Vincent Price, but it doesn't work due to a slow pace and the absence of much movement within the film. There are too many scenes of people plotting evil deeds while a patient lies in a comatose state in bed. This does not make for an exciting movie experience. Nor is the story original, as it is hand-me-down Cornell Woolrich stuff about a young woman who witnesses a murder who is whisked off to a sanitarium by the killer, who just happens to be the psychiatrist who runs the place. The dialogue is mediocre and the actors, aside from Price, none too thrilling. I did like Reed Hadley as a police detective, whose late entry perks up the last part of the movie. He had a quiet, understated presence, and plays off nicely against Price, than whom he is almost as tall.

Shock (1946)

You know right away this is a little creaky, but Vincent Price is in great form, and the idea of being committed to an insane asylum when you aren't insane is enough to carry almost any hour long movie. The filming in particular gives the film a polish the actors generally do not, and the plot has some conveniences that you can only smile at. They are not inconsistencies, and people act with a high level of logic.

You might call this a film noir, because of its gloom, because of its classic (and cruel) femme fatale, and because there is murder at hand. But most important is the appearance here and there of the solider, still in uniform, just returned from the war after two years missing in action. His positively sweet good nature in the face of an utter breakdown of the world he expected to find is meant to resonate with so many in the audience on both sides of just such homecomings. It's 1946, after all, and there isn't any larger theme for the average Jane and Joe.

Totally fun. And great, undiluted suspense.

I've always enjoyed Vincent Price's sad expressions and gentle voice. It's full of threat and pity. He is one of a kind. His savoir faire and manners are right at the top. In this one he commits a murder he really didn't wish to and then must use some pretty extreme measures to cover his tracks and get together with his ruthless lover. The victim is an unstable young woman who has a nervous breakdown when she witnesses the murder. The doctor, one of the top in his field, is constantly pulled between evil actions and the good that is in him. He comes to realize he is wrong and that he has been led astray, but it is too late now. Viewing this in the year 2007, it is filled with some pretty questionable tactics and oversights. What they do to this girl would require a lot of documentation. The sad part isn't the aged quality of the social setting. It's that at some point it all seems to become rather dull. Once they are on to Price's character, the story just falls into a voluble anticlimax. Enjoy watching Vincent Price. Otherwise it is pretty pedestrian.

In San Francisco, Mrs. Janet Stewart (Anabel Shaw) checks in a hotel late night to meet her husband Lieutenant Paul Stewart (Frank Latimore). However Paul does not arrive and Janet goes to the balcony in the middle of the night after a nightmare. She witnesses the renowned psychiatrist Dr. Richard Cross (Vincent Price) asking for the divorce to his wife and having an argument with her. Out of the blue, Dr. Cross kills her with a candlestick and Janet has a nervous collapse and stays catatonic in shock in her room.

When Paul arrives and sees his wife, he summons Dr. Stevens (Michael Dunne). After the examination, Dr. Stevens tells that Janet has had a psychological breakdown and recommends Dr. Cross to treat her. When Dr. Cross comes to the room, he realizes that Janet might have seen him and he tells that she needs to be interned in his clinic. He calls Nurse Elaine Jordan (Lynn Bari), who is his lover, and they take Janet to their clinic. He decides to make Janet forget the incident but then they decide to discredit her proclaiming Janet insane. But when the District Attorney O'Neill (Reed Hadley) asks for the authorization to Dr. Cross to carry out an autopsy in his wife since he believes that she might have been murdered, Elaine tells that Dr. Cross must kill Janet.

"Shock" is a reasonable thriller with a dated story of a woman that witnesses a murder and has a strange reaction, ending coincidently in the sanatorium of the killer. The performances are very decent but the greatest problem is the shameful low quality American DVD released by the DVD movie distributor. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

While Janet Stewart (Anabel Shaw) is waiting for her husband, Paul (Frank Latimore), whom she hasn't seen in over two years (he's been at war and at one point was thought to be dead), to meet her at a hotel, she witnesses an argument and then a murder in another room. She goes into shock, and is taken to a mental hospital for treatment. Unfortunately, Richard Cross (Vincent Price), the doctor treating her, is the same man she witnessed committing murder.

Although somewhat of a potboiler and a bit short on running time per today's standards, Shock is a tightly scripted, directed and acted thriller. As usual, Price is at the top of his game here, and any Price fans who haven't seen this film yet will want to check it out. The rest of the cast is also fantastic, and Shaw particularly stands out when she's on screen (which is not as often as we might like, but given the story, a necessity). Suspense is maintained throughout the film--even in the minor scenes. There was even a fair amount of tension in the opening when Janet Stewart is first checking into the hotel.

My score is 9 out of 10. I only subtracted one point for the ending, which came too soon and a bit too abruptly for my tastes. However, given typical studio restrictions during this era, when it was mandatory that the "bad guys" get their just deserts, the ending is also admirable for its relative ambiguity. It is almost similar in style to Stanley Kubrick's lauded ending of The Killing (1956), which also tried its best to circumvent the just deserts conclusions, though Shock predates the Kubrick film by 10 years.