Condenado por Vingança

This film had some intense moments. Stuart Whitman is sent into a mental institution to pretend he is insane in order to spy on inmate Roddy Macdowell and find out where he might have hidden $1 million. Lauren Bacall plays the doctor/research scientist who is very much interested in the money as well.

With her own animal torture lab(in California and Africa!), and grumbling that she cant perform dangerous experiments the way she'd like to...we get a picture early on that she isnt Florence Nightingale! There are a couple of scenes that were as disturbing as comparable moments from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and the Marathon Man.

Although i found the film decent enough--with fine performances from the leads, and a good ending, it did seem a bit rushed in places, and some supporting characters either had unwarranted emphasis(Carol Lynley) or too little(Ossie Davis, Bert Freed). The rest of the patients seemed to be borrowed from "the Snake Pit."

As a 1960's suspense flick it wasnt bad, but this would be a great contender for a remake.

This film is pure camp. It was part of a slew of early 60s nuthouse exploitation films. It tries to be racy which makes it even more hilarious.

Stuart Whitman is seen in a classical acting role and recruited to play a very rough part: He is to be paid for feigning insanity and being committed to psychiatric hospital. The goal is to learn more about a character played by Roddy McDowell, who is confined there.

Whitman is excellent, as is McDowell. The latter develops a bit of an unstated crush on the former. So does Carol Lynley, who has a very small role for the major billing she gets.

The plot revolves around psychiatrist and researcher Lauren Bacall. This character could give Dr. Caligari a run for his money.

It's not hough art but i's exciting and suspenseful. And the acting is excellent all around.

Stuart Whitman is a money-hungry actor who is hired to fake insanity in order to find $1 million in "Shock Treatment." The film also stars Lauren Bacall, Roddy McDowell, Carol Lynley, and Ossie Davis. When asked about this film, Lauren Bacall commented, "You have no idea what Roddy and I went through making that movie." I don't, and frankly, it's a little hard to tell what the problems were from the filming. It seemed pretty straightforward. She plays a doctor who would have found a good home on Josef Mengele's staff. McDowell is a patient in the asylum who killed his wealthy boss and then supposedly burned her money. No one believes that, and Whitman is hired to find out where he hid it.

It turns out, he's not the only one interested, and things become pretty dangerous for him. The movie seems to meander along, and then becomes rather exciting toward the end. It was directed and filmed in an uninteresting way, so it's not as good as it could have been.

This is a very unusual role for Stuart Whitman, who was more at home as cowboys, western heroes and partners with John Wayne, but here he has for once a very interesting role, as an actor who is paid to act a lunatic at an asylum to investigate murky business there, like hiding a million dollars, which the doctor, Lauren Bacall in one of her best parts ever, suspects one of the patients to have hidden away. That patient is Roddy McDowall, and the best scenes are with him and Stuart Whitman together, one really mad and the other acting mad just to get the right information, which finally the doctor (Bacall) finally succeeds in extorting by her medicines and psychiatric tricks, all three are at their very best in acting, but Lauren Bacall actually takes the prize. I have seldom laughed so heartily as at her grand finale, while this actually is a very serious and moral tale, about the vainglory and futility of money. All three are magnificent, and although there are some really revolting scenes hard to digest, the actor does get the better of the actor (Whitman), while that million dollars finally actually is found, exactly in the very condition which Roddy McDowall all the time has insisted, and yet not in quite the expected form.