Shock

I suppose there’s nothing terribly distinguished about the plot for Shock, but once it gets into the nitty-gritty it’s a trim 70 minutes of fun. Annabel Shaw is the unfortunate victim who witnesses a murder in her hotel room and promptly goes into, um, shock. Unfortunately for the poor woman, her doctor turns out to be Vincent Price: the man who committed the crime. This means that he and femme fatale girlfriend Lynn Bari have to do their utmost to keep Shaw from ever being sane, up to and including overdoses of insulin shock treatment. The early scenes with Shaw are rather glaringly fake, a fact underlined by Shaw’s ludicrous, hysterical performance, but once we’re whisked off to the sanatorium it’s Price’s movie all the way. He single-handedly sells the pseudo-psychiatric mumbo jumbo and lends his straying headshrinker a pathos he might otherwise not have had. Though the film strains credulity every time it has to represent the insanity (one wandering psycho nearly upsets the whole applecart), it’s mostly tête-à-têtes between the scheming Bari and the increasingly distraught Price, who knows the police are closing in and fears his alibi is about to be destroyed. In fact, you sort of half-hope that he succeeds in silencing Shaw’s pathetic hysteria and her returning soldier fiancé Frank Latimore — a little of them goes a long way. Once again, the villain seems more attractive than the good guys, especially when portrayed by a certain soon-to-be horror icon. The only extra is a commentary by "writer and historian” John Stanley, who proves joke-y and excitable enough to make you lob a brick at your monitor. (Fox)