TheLittleSongbird Am a fan of film noir and murder mysteries, have done from a very early age. Also love Vincent Price, a great actor with a deserved status as the master of horror and even in lesser films he was a redeeming quality. So 'Shock' seemed right up my alley.'Shock' had an intriguing, and not too schlocky, title and an even more intriguing premise. Also having Price as the star/lead and that it's a murder mystery and film noir promised a lot. While there are good things, 'Shock' wasn't particularly compelling, let alone shocking, and generally failed to live up to its promise and its name. Not terrible, also just not great by any stretch. Instead 'Shock' is more in the watchable mixed feelings category, if mainly for Price fans trying to see all his work. Price is the best thing about it, he commands the screen with such ease and even in an early role there is the urbane suavity and sinister charm that made him as great an actor he was and why he is so highly regarded. Lynn Bari also makes much of what she has, it's not the most interesting of roles but she is imposing in it and she and Price are great together. Reed Hadley has fun.The sets have an eeriness as does the music score. There are a few nifty sequences, the best being the scary stormy night/thunderstorm one that sees Bari at her best.However, the rest of the cast are undistinguished at most in stock roles and Annabel Shaw is painfully wooden. The eeriness of the sets is wasted sadly by the shoddiness of the way the film is photographed and edited, betraying low budget and very rushed production. The script is silly and thin and direction is pedestrian, routine at best.It's the story and pace where 'Shock' falls down the most. The pace drags as a consequence of the film struggling to having enough content to fill the short duration. The story is thin and creepiness and suspense, let alone shocks, come only in spurts, due to the dull pace, the static way it's all staged, that a lot of it is too ridiculous to take seriously and that it's too obvious too early who's up to no good (a not particularly good job is done to hide it). The ending is unsatisfyingly anti-climactic and took far-fetched to extremes. Concluding, watchable for Price but as a murder mystery it falls well short. 5/10 Bethany Cox

Michael Ledo Jenny (Anabel Shaw) is in a hotel waiting to see her husband Paul (Frank Latimore) who she hasn't seen in two years, not knowing if he was alive or dead, apparently a WWII thing. While waiting she sees Vincent Price strike and kill his wife in another room...and Jenny goes into some kind of catatonic shock...which lost me right here. As things turn out, Vincent Price is a doctor and ends up treating her.Interesting film of an era when doctors smoked and there was a one to one nurse-patient ratio as we hear said, "How is your patient doing?" Nothing much to see here. Young Vincent Price who was less commanding in his presence.Available on 50 DVD Mill Creek packs with poorly restored sound.

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.

dougdoepke The movie had all the makings of an expert thriller, but somehow peters out near the end. Psychiatrist Cross (Price) kills his wife in a fit of violence. The trouble is Janet Stewart (Shaw) sees him and goes into shock. And guess who they send her to for treatment. Will she survive, especially since the Doc has a nurse (Bari) more calculating than he. Great suspenseful premise, putting the mouse under protection of the cat. Director Werker adds a number of effective noirish touches, including a can't-quite-get-there dream sequence. It's also Price at his most restrained, years before his stock and trade as a leading Hollywood ham. The relatively unknown Shaw is also excellent during her non-comatose moments. Doc Cross is an interesting character. He's quite rational except for moments of violence that appear more impulsive than calculated. He's really rather weak, unable at times to control his emotions, an oddity for a head doctor. The real force is nurse Jordan, cold, calculating, with an obvious sexual hold over Cross. In short, she's a spider woman, seeking to replace Cross's murdered wife. I think the movie would have more impact if she were given more screen time. As things stand, she remains something of an unrealized background figure. The ending seems pretty bland and abrupt, without the imagination of earlier parts. It's almost like the script, cast, and film stock, were suddenly in short supply. Nonetheless, if the movie doesn't quite fulfill its premise, it does manage a number of imaginative moments, at a time when Hollywood seemed fascinated with mental illness and the emerging science of psychiatry.