Excellent, a Must See

Boring, over-political, tech fuzed mess

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

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

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.

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.

Anabel Shaw (Janet) gets thrown into some kind of zombie-like state after witnessing a murder. She is transferred to Vincent Price's (Dr Cross) psychiatric institution to 'recover' only recovery for her is the last thing on Price's mind. Both he and nurse Lynn Bari (Elaine) have been conducting an affair and the murder that Shaw witnessed was Price murdering his wife. And Price knows that she saw. Bari isn't too keen on having this witness around either. The film follows their attempts to prevent Shaw from telling the truth. They need to keep her sedated.......or worse....The film starts interestingly enough as we follow a spooky dream sequence and witness the murder through the eyes of Anabel Shaw while she waits for her husband in a hotel room. Unfortunately, we then get a dumb contrast as we are asked to believe that Shaw becomes rendered permanently speechless and wide-eyed as a result. It's laughable. All credibility and sympathy that we may have had for her character is thrown out of the window as she demonstrates an incredibly soppy, weak personality. It's also a bit of an insult to viewers considering the time of war and the atrocities that people would have had to see on a daily basis. Yet this pathetic figure can't handle someone being knocked on the head. Honestly! Just for that, I watched the film urging both Price and Bari to finish her off and hopefully get away with it. Go on Price and Bari, do what you gotta do...!!...It's an OK film that never quite gathers momentum but Vincent Price and Lynn Bari are strong enough to carry the proceedings through to a rather messy and rushed finale.