Shock (1946 film)
Encyclopedia

Plot

The film tells the story of a psychiatrist, Dr. Cross (Vincent Price
Vincent Price
Vincent Leonard Price, Jr. was an American actor, well known for his distinctive voice and serio-comic attitude in a series of horror films made in the latter part of his career.-Early life and career:Price was born in St...

), who is treating a young woman, Janet Stewart (Anabel Shaw), who is in a coma-state, brought on when she heard loud arguing, went to her window and saw a man strike his wife with a candlestick and kill her. It also stars Lynn Bari
Lynn Bari
Lynn Bari , born Margaret Schuyler Fisher, was a movie actress who specialized in playing sultry, statuesque man-killers in over one hundred 20th Century Fox films from the early 1930s through the 1940s.-Career:Bari was born in Roanoke, Virginia...

 as Dr. Cross's nurse/lover, Elaine Jordan.

As Stewart comes out of her shock, she recognizes Dr. Cross as the killer. He then takes her to his sanitarium and at Elaine's urging, gives Janet an overdose of insulin under the pretense of administering insulin shock therapy
Insulin shock therapy
Insulin shock therapy or insulin coma therapy was a form of psychiatric treatment in which patients were repeatedly injected with large doses of insulin in order to produce daily comas over several weeks...

. He can't bring himself to murder her in cold blood, though, and asks Elaine to get the medicine to save her. Elaine refuses, they argue, and he strangles her. Dr. Cross saves Janet's life, but now faces two murder charges.

Critical reaction

Above and beyond the typical characteristics of the horror film
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...

 genre, reviewer Bosley Crowther
Bosley Crowther
Bosley Crowther was a journalist and author who was film critic for The New York Times for 27 years. His reviews and articles helped shape the careers of actors, directors and screenwriters, though his reviews, at times, were unnecessarily mean...

 of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

took particular offense to the film's treatment of Price as a psychiatrist who attempts to do away with his patient, a woman who has lost her mind after witnessing the murder her own doctor had committed. Coming in the wake of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, in which so may people had suffered shock and could benefit from treatment of their anxieties, Crowther asked the "critical observer to protest in no uncertain tones" the movie's "social disservice" in its fostering "apprehension against the treatment of nervous disorders", deploring the lack of consideration for those in need of treatment evidenced by producer Aubrey Schenck
Aubrey Schenck
Aubrey Schenck was a film producer from the 1940s through the 1970s. In the 1930s, Schenck, a nephew of Joseph and Nicholas Schenck, was a practicing attorney in New York City. He wrote a story and submitted it to 20th Century Fox, with whom he had business and legal connections, and they agreed...

 and distributor Twentieth-Century Fox.

Philip K. Scheuer of the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

took no such offense, calling the film a "nominal 'B' feature
B movie
A B movie is a low-budget commercial motion picture that is not definitively an arthouse or pornographic film. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified a film intended for distribution as the less-publicized, bottom half of a double feature....

", which screenplay author "Eugene Ling and Director Alfred Werker have imbued... with a grade-A suspense".

Cast

  • Vincent Price
    Vincent Price
    Vincent Leonard Price, Jr. was an American actor, well known for his distinctive voice and serio-comic attitude in a series of horror films made in the latter part of his career.-Early life and career:Price was born in St...

     as Dr. Richard Cross
  • Lynn Bari
    Lynn Bari
    Lynn Bari , born Margaret Schuyler Fisher, was a movie actress who specialized in playing sultry, statuesque man-killers in over one hundred 20th Century Fox films from the early 1930s through the 1940s.-Career:Bari was born in Roanoke, Virginia...

     as Elaine Jordan
  • Frank Latimore
    Frank Latimore
    Franklin Latimore was an American actor best known for his character ‘Dr. Ed Coleridge’ on the television soap opera Ryan's Hope....

     as Lt. Paul Stewart
  • Anabel Shaw as Janet Stewart
  • Stephen Dunne as Dr. Stevens
  • Reed Hadley
    Reed Hadley
    Reed Hadley was an American movie, television and radio actor.Reed Hadley was born Reed Herring in Petrolia in Clay County near Wichita Falls, Texas, to Bert Herring, an oil well driller, and his wife Minnie. Hadley had one sister, Bess Brenner. He was reared in Buffalo, New York...

     as O'Neill
  • Renee Carson as Mrs. Hatfield
  • Charles Trowbridge
    Charles Trowbridge
    Charles Trowbridge was an American film actor. He appeared in 233 films between 1915 and 1958.He was born in Veracruz, Mexico and died in Los Angeles, California.-Selected filmography:*Tycoon...

    as Dr. Franklin Harvey
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