AniInterview
Sorry, this movie sucks
Pluskylang
Great Film overall
Beanbioca
As Good As It Gets
TheBigSnack
Shock is a superlative 1946 film noir that could not be named more appropriately for a highly appraised production.Janet Stewart checks in alone at a large city central hotel called the Belmont Arms. She experiences a terrible nightmare and is soon-after a witness to an absolutely mind shattering murder surrounding a divorce argument in an adjoining hotel room window.Thereafter she acquires a profound state of nervous mental collapse and medical help is immediately summoned to her bedside by her returning husband Lt. Paul Stewart.Dr. Cross is a nationally recognized psychiatrist coincidentally staying at the hotel and makes an emergency discovery of Janet.After learning more, Dr. Cross takes careful charge of Janet indicating she will be given a best chance of recovery from nervous shock using repeated insulin shock therapies.Janet is then managed by Dr. Cross's co-conspirator and lover nurse Elaine Jordan who helps to remove Janet to the outlying country private sanitarium of Dr. Cross for extended therapy.Janet receives injections on arrival and Dr. Cross then attempts hypnotherapy to induce Janet to regain and confess to any memories. Dr. Cross then confides in Elaine that Janet has seen everything.Elaine meets with Dr. Cross in private and he reveals that he murdered his wife at the hotel before arranging for his wife's corpse to be shipped to his country lodge labelled as personal property, but he stresses that no one saw her enter the hotel and the murder was not premeditated.Dr. Cross repeats hypnotherapy to induce Janet to forget all her bad memories. He tells Elaine the delivery of his wife's corpse will be dropped off at his lodge.Janet is reported as hallucinating about having witnessed a murder. The body of Mrs. Cross is now recovered dashed against some mountain rocks in an apparent accident.At this time Janet regains awareness when Paul visits, and she emotionally confesses the observed murderer is Dr. Cross. Dr. Cross shows Janet the news of his wife's death, implying the dates between Janet's incident and recovery of Mrs. Cross's corpse do not coincide, and encourages Janet to accept she is mentally incompetent.District Attorney O'Neill now wants to exhume Mrs. Cross for expert examination pending a murder is ruled out as a cause of death.D.A. O'Neill brings a coroner's inquest appeal for the murder of Mrs. Cross, and is looking for a waxed silver candlestick to match as the murder weapon. He is trying to fix the exact time of death.Dr. Cross premeditates four injections for Janet with a last being a planned overdose. He then reassures Paul the treatment is her last chance at a recovery. Janet gets 60, 80, and 100 units and then a fourth treatment.Paul brings suspicious news to the attention of Dr. Harvey and they agree to pay Dr. Cross a visit in person. Janet is experiencing trauma and Dr. Cross is reluctant to do anything more.Dr. Cross re-actively murders desperate nurse Elaine during an off chance argument over refusing to administer a major overdose. Paul and Dr. Harvey get to Janet in time for a rescue.O'Neill arrives in the office of Dr. Cross when he instinctively considers his case for a small moment and very casually volunteers himself into protective custody.
classicsoncall
And of course, he WAS punished but it was all so anti-climactic. Vincent Price strolled amiably off screen with District Attorney O'Neill (Reed Hadley) when it was all over, and the lack of a final explosive confrontation took a lot of the steam out of the finale. Up till then, Dr. Richard Cross's (Price) crime served as a back drop in a tense psychological game in which he and conniving mistress (Lynn Bari) sought to convince Mrs. Janet Stewart (Anabel Shaw) that she was slowly losing her mind. The theme was well established in the early Forties with a couple of treatments of "Gaslight", and the soft spoken, genteel manner of an actor like Price was quite suitable for his role here. Ultimately though, the picture misses the mark somewhat as Price's character goes bonkers a second time and chokes out his paramour. At that point, both the viewer and the good doctor realize that it's close to curtain call. With a little better writing, he might have gotten patient Edwards to take the fall and gotten away scot-free.
utgard14
Anxious Janet Stewart (Annabel Shaw), waiting on the return of her POW husband, sees Vincent Price kill his wife. This shock, on top of her already nervous state, proves too much for the poor woman. When her husband arrives, he finds her in a catatonic state. A psychiatrist is called to examine her and, lo and behold, it's Vincent Price! It doesn't take Price long to figure out what happened and suggest she be admitted to his sanitarium for treatment. There, he and his mistress Nurse Elaine Jordan (the always sexy Lynn Bari) conspire to keep the woman from talking.Enjoyable 'B' suspenser with a decent cast. It's only slightly over an hour long so no excuses not to check it out. It does drag some but not as much as other reviews seem to indicate. My favorite scene in the film has little to do with the main plot. There's a lightning storm and it's upsetting one of the mental patients, so he breaks out of his room. Elaine finds him hovering over Janet's bed and he attacks Elaine! This entire sequence was well-directed, with great use of shadow and the lightning to create tension. Perhaps if they had more than 20 days to shoot the film, they could've had more scenes like this and the movie would be better remembered today.
zetes
A young woman (Anabel Shaw) goes into shock after she witnesses a murder. Unfortunately for her, the doctor at the sanatorium (Vincent Price) assigned to her was the murderer. He killed his wife during an argument, and now he's in the position to keep the only witness drugged up. When she finally does get to spill the beans, he convinces everyone, including her husband, that she's insane. Lynn Bari plays Price's Lady MacBeth-like mistress who keeps driving Price to do horrible things. There's more than a bit of silliness to the picture, but it's a pretty tense little flick (running only 70 minutes). I think this is one of Price's absolute best performances. He's actually not a bad guy at all, but the weight of the situation, as well as his evil girlfriend (Bari is pure evil), drive him to do things he normally wouldn't be able to do. And Price plays it all marvelously.
