VeteranLight
I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.
Limerculer
A waste of 90 minutes of my life
Arianna Moses
Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.
clanciai
Great thriller in the small size, but the acting lifts it out of the B level, especially Anabel Shaw as the poor innocent wife who instead of receiving her expected husband back from the war ends up a victim herself in a hospital. Vincent Price makes another of his very dubious vacillating monster characters who hesitates to take the step fully out into an irrevocable blatantly criminal evil. The end comes as a most welcome surprise - of all things, you would never have expected THAT for a conclusion, but there are some very tense nail-biting moments of unbearable suspense before the explosion of the balloon. The husband Frank Latimore also plays a decent part sharing the victim's trauma and ultimately saving her of course, and is persistent in reminding you of Frank Sinatra - without singing. The music, though, is perfect and adds to both the atmosphere and the suspense. It's a perfect thriller if you don't want it to go on for too long.
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.
DigitalRevenantX7
Janet Stewart checks into a hotel in order to wait for her husband – a Naval Lieutenant who had been held in captivity as a POW during World War II – who is being released. While waiting in her room, she causally looks out of her balcony & inadvertently witnesses an argument between a man & his wife turn fatal when the man strikes his wife with a candlestick, killing her. Janet then collapses into catatonic shock. Once he returns, Janet's husband Paul calls in a shrink to examine his wife – but the shrink who lives in the building is none other than the wife-killer, Dr. Richard Cross. Through blind luck, Cross & his lover (one of his nurses) conspire to manipulate Janet's mind in order for her to dismiss what she saw as a delusion. At the same time, Cross disposes of his wife's body & makes it look like an accident. But when an investigator finds traces of wax on the victim's body & Janet proves to be more resilient than Cross can handle, he hatches upon a scheme to 'accidentally' kill her with an overdose of insulin.Shock was a minor thriller from the mid 1940s, notable for the fact that it was one of horror legend Vincent Price's early films. The film was made to be a cheap B-thriller much like the DTV films we have today.Despite its cheap intentions, Shock proves to be quite a decent film, even if only passably. Price was not yet the horror star that he would become seven years later, but he was well advanced in making his trademark acting profile & style that would see him through his career. The other thing that works in the film's favour is the modest atmosphere that the director Alfred Werker generates, not to mention some clever plot twists & the film noir-style theatrics that permeate the story. There is also some minor suspense that works passably well. If you come across this film, it would be a nice viewing.
sddavis63
Made before Vincent Price would become famous as a horror movie actor in the 1950's, "Shock" is a suspense movie, not a thriller and certainly not a horror movie. Price played Dr. Richard Cross, a psychiatrist who has just murdered his wife. Unbeknownst to him, Janet Stewart (Anabel Shaw) witnessed the murder from a neighbouring room but falls into a state of shock because of it - and is sent to Cross's sanitarium for treatment!The question that hovers over the movie is how far Cross is willing to go to cover up his crime. At first, it seems as if simply convincing everyone (including Janet herself) that she's hallucinating and is having delusions will work. Cross managed to dump his wife's body in such a way that everyone thought her death was accidental, and so there seems no threat. As the evidence as to how she died mounts, though, Janet becomes a greater danger to Cross and his lover, Miss Jordan (Lynn Bari.) Finally, it seems as if the only way to save himself will be for Cross to kill Janet. The question is whether he'll go through with it - and whether he'll be stopped.Once that final plot twist arrives, and Janet's life is put very much at stake, this does become fairly suspenseful. Up until that point, though, the suspense was somewhat lacking. It's a well-written movie and Price, Shaw and Bari were quite good in their roles. Price especially did a pretty good job portraying the doctor, tormented between his desire to get away with his crime, but also by the thought of having to kill a patient to do it. If the suspense had been more consistent throughout the movie rather than largely restricted to the last few scenes, this would probably be ranked higher, because overall the story is pretty good. (5/10)
