"Shock" Movie Review

 

by Daniel White

Dr. Cross with the candlestick in the hotel. No, this is not the game of Clue, this is Shock, a 1946 thriller starring Vincent Price as a psychiatrist who impulsively murders his wife during a heated argument. Unfortunately for Cross, the emotionally-sensitive Janet Stewart (Annabel Shaw) has witnessed the crime. Unfortunately for Janet, the event has resulted in her lapsing into a catatonic state. And even MORE unfortunate for the hapless lieutenant's wife, she has been placed under the care of Dr. Cross!

Directed by Albert L. Werker for Twentieth Century Fox, Shock is an okay fright film which mostly unfolds in Cross's sanatorium. Replete with slashing rain, flashes of lightning, and dramatic claps of thunder, there is also a resident loony. Named Edwards, he wanders around the hospital and is genuinely unsettling (alas, the spooky actor is uncredited).

Lynn Bari injects (hee-hee) some fun into the proceedings as Elaine Jordan, a diabolical nurse who is having an affair with Cross. The two decide to drive poor Janet insane and have her permanently committed. Every time dear Dr. Cross has pangs of remorse, it's Nasty Nurse Jordan who eggs him on (don't worry film fans, the Lady Macbeth of the nursing profession gets her cinematic comeuppance!).

What makes Shock a movie of note is where it stands in the Vincent Price horror film canon. Price did not concentrate principally on fright flicks until the early sixties. However, he dabbled in them right from the beginning of his career. Tower of London, released in 1939, was his third feature. Although ostensibly a historical film, it does have elements of horror. He followed that up with The Invisible Man Returns and The House of the Seven Gables both in 1940. Six years later he made Shock, his fourth foray into fright. But it wasn't until the hugely successful House of Wax in 1953 that his name would become synonymous with movies of the macabre (and yes, I haven't forgotten his voice-only cameo in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein in 1948).

Frank Latimore is Janet's flyboy husband and femme fatale Bari is outfitted chicly by Kay Nelson. And the music and cinematography are both adequately atmospheric. But the real humdinger here is to witness an early scare performance by fright film legend Vincent Price, on his way to becoming one of filmdom's foremost figures of horror.

Produced by Aubrey Schenck, Shock is available on YouTube.

Next up on Follow That Film: Dragonwyck