Shock

According to the Films Of Vincent Price from the Citadel Film Series, sometime in late 1945 Darryl Zanuck was on one of his budget cutting kicks and was looking to produce cheaper films. Vincent Price was offered the story of Shock and liked it and said he could get it done under 20 days with no interference. Zanuck gave him his head on this one and Price and director Alfred Werker brought it in 19 days shooting time.

Shock was also the film that Vincent Price got top billing for the first time in his career. He plays a psychiatrist who kills his wife because she won't give him a divorce to marry the sultry Lynn Bari. The problem is that young war wife Anabel Shaw who is anxiously waiting the return of a husband who was thought missing in action in the Pacific sees him through the window of her room at the hotel they're both staying at.

Shaw's got a lot of issues and she collapses and goes into Shock. It's recommended that she go to a sanitarium and husband Frank Latimore now returned takes her to a highly regarded one that is run by both Price and Bari. I don't think I have to go any further.

Shock may have been done on a dime and in a hurry, but it's well constructed and was the film that opened new vistas for Vincent Price's career. Price elicits a lot of audience sympathy being caught by mantrap Lynn Bari. As for Bari I don't think she was ever sexier or more dangerous. Stronger men than Price might have killed for her.

Definitely a must for the still strong legion of fans that Vincent Price has.

This movie, Shock, is noted by one thing: It's Vincent Price's first starring role after years in compelling supporting parts for 20th Century Fox. Here, he plays a psychiatrist whose murder of his wife is witnessed by a young woman (Anabel Shaw) across another hotel window as she waits for her returning soldier husband to come soon. The woman fainted from shock when the killing happened so when Price becomes her doctor, he and his mistress nurse (Lynn Bari), try to fix it so everyone would be convinced she's crazy. I'll stop there and just say this is such a subtle suspense thriller that anyone expecting the kind of shocks today's horror/suspense fans get would be very disappointed in this one. Since this was made early in Price's career, his character has something of a conscience here. In fact, Ms. Bari steals her scenes from him as something of a Lady McBeth character. Ms. Shaw is also good in her constant frightfulness as she struggles to be heard and believed. By comparison, Frank Latimore as Shaw's husband is simply adequate as someone constantly trying to see his wife. Price himself handles his part capably. Also worth mentioning are John Davidson (not to be confused with the singer who once co-hosted "That's Incredible") as crazy mental patient, Mr. Edwards, (Loved the lightning sequence that involves him) and Reed Hadley as D.A. O'Neill who's questioning of Price's Dr. Richard Cross threatens to drive Cross over the edge. I'd also like to note that the voice of Mrs. Cross, Ruth Clifford, was also that of Minnie Mouse at this time. While she's not noted on the DVD audio track by John Stanley, many of the leading and supporting players are of their lives, interests, and other roles. Not great but pretty good for anyone who's a fan of Vincent Price.

Tom Cruise might hold this film up as evidence on the evils of Psychiatry.

Vincent Price murders his wife, and this is witnessed by a woman (Anabel Shaw) waiting on her husband (Frank Latimore) to return from a POW Camp. She lapses into catatonia and Price is called to help. He realizes what she may have seen and whisks her off to his sanitarium to see what she knows.

The film also features Lynn Bari, second only to Betty Grable in WWII pin-up popularity according to a GI's poll taken at the time, as the lover of Vincent Price and his collaborator in the abuse of Shaw.

Ending was a little far fetched, but Price was great in his pre-horror days.

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.

At first, Shock looks like it should be assigned to the `Oneiric' Wing of forties film noir, but soon comes to occupy a niche in the Evil Psychiatry Wing instead. Anabel Shaw checks into a San Francisco Hotel awaiting her serviceman husband. Bad weather has delayed him, so, instead of curling up with a cozy mystery, she witnesses a murder from the balcony of her suite. Next morning, her husband finds her in a state of complete catatonia. A psychiatrist (Vincent Price) is summoned, who turns out to be none other than the murderer.

Checking sight angles from the balcony to his apartment across the way, Price realizes that Shaw's trancelike state no doubt stems from her seeing him take a candlestick to his older, inconvenient wife. He whisks her off to that chamber of horrors, his Private Sanitarium, to find out what she remembers. He and his accomplice/mistress Lynn Bari devise a scheme to make Shaw, and everyone else, think she's delusional – that she views everyone as a murderer. Meanwhile, however, a fluke of circumstance leads the police to reopen the case of Price's wife, whose death had been contrived to look accidental. Next, Price and Bari escalate their therapy to dangerous insulin-shock treatments....

Price glides through his role with the disdainful urbanity that was his trademark in the morning of his career; interestingly, though, the plot turns on his having some shreds of conscience, or at least professional ethics, after all. The same can't be said of Bari as the Lady Macbeth of the piece; what can be said is that there should be more of her. She hits her peak during a violent nocturnal thunderstorm, when a menacing patient slips out of his room and into Shaw's. It really does turn the sanitarium into a chamber of horrors.