Shock

Plot synopsis:
The film revolves around Vasanth (Prashanth), a stock analyst, and his wife Malini (Meena). The two are in search for a flat in Chennai. Vassanth finds the perfect place on the 12th floor of a high-rise apartment building. However, the apartment has a horrifying past. The previous occupant of the flat, a young woman Manju who had killed her child and jumped from the balcony and died. Malini learns about this incident shortly after moving in and becomes oddly fixated with the story. Then, a series of inexplicable experiences drive Malini to near madness.
Vasanth becomes helpless and convinced his wife has developed some sort of psychological disorder. He consults a psychiatrist, Dr. Ranjan (Sarath Babu) after his treatment fails Vasanth begins to doubt that his wife is suffering from a psychological disease. The couple’s maid (Kalairani) believes Malini to be possessed, and calls in an exorcist (Suhasini).
Meanwhile, other seemingly unrelated events take place around the building. The watchman was gruesomely murdered with his head completely twisted, one of the residents Ajay (Abbas) is behaving erratically, and a murder occurs. The Inspector (Thiagarajan) is sent to investigate the murder at the building. The Exorcist spends time with Malini and learns that Malini is in fact possessed by the Manju. For more help, Vasanth goes to the Manju's mother (K. R. Vijaya). With the mother's help, the possessed Malini lets everyone know that Ajay lusted after Manju and forced himself on her, and to save herself she jumped from her balcony. Later, Ajay realised that her son had witnessed the murder, and got the watchman to throw the little boy from the balcony, and creating a fake story that the woman had killed her son and then committed suicide.
By killing the watchman via Malini, the Manju takes revenge for her son's death and now wants to kill Ajay. At the last minute, the mother comes and tells her dead daughter's soul that she cannot take revenge from Ajay by making Malini a murderer, so the woman leaves Malini's body and Ajay is lifted above ground and thrown about in front of everyone, including Dr. Ranjan and the inspector (who first ridiculed the story). The story ends with Ajay going to prison and the inspector telling him how people like Ajay make him sick and tells him to rot in a jail cell forever. After the inspector leaves the darkened cell, Ajay finds himself face to face with Manju. He starts begging for mercy, but his voice soon fades out as Manju draws closer; it is implied that she kills Ajay.

Tags: insanity, psychedelic, murder

Review:
While Janet Stewart (Anabel Shaw) is waiting for her husband, Paul (Frank Latimore), whom she hasn't seen in over two years (he's been at war and at one point was thought to be dead), to meet her at a hotel, she witnesses an argument and then a murder in another room.
Unfortunately, Richard Cross (Vincent Price), the doctor treating her, is the same man she witnessed committing murder.Although somewhat of a potboiler and a bit short on running time per today's standards, Shock is a tightly scripted, directed and acted thriller.
A psychiatrist (Vincent Price) is summoned, who turns out to be none other than the murderer.Checking sight angles from the balcony to his apartment across the way, Price realizes that Shaw's trancelike state no doubt stems from her seeing him take a candlestick to his older, inconvenient wife.
It's a rather tepid little B&W thriller that serves only to remind us what VINCENT PRICE was like just as his career was beginning to take shape at Fox. As usual, he's at his best as a shady character, a doctor who commits a crime of passion only to find out that it has been witnessed by a woman neighbor.
Frank Latimore does nicely as the husband whose wife has gone into shock after her traumatic witnessing of murder and Reed Hadley does a smooth job as a detective.Modestly entertaining if you don't expect too much..
She witnesses the renowned psychiatrist Dr. Richard Cross (Vincent Price) asking for the divorce to his wife and having an argument with her.
Out of the blue, Dr. Cross kills her with a candlestick and Janet has a nervous collapse and stays catatonic in shock in her room.When Paul arrives and sees his wife, he summons Dr. Stevens (Michael Dunne).
Shock was also the film that Vincent Price got top billing for the first time in his career.
The problem is that young war wife Anabel Shaw who is anxiously waiting the return of a husband who was thought missing in action in the Pacific sees him through the window of her room at the hotel they're both staying at.
Shock (1946)You know right away this is a little creaky, but Vincent Price is in great form, and the idea of being committed to an insane asylum when you aren't insane is enough to carry almost any hour long movie.
Although it is fun to see Vincent Price early in his career before his spine-chilling horror roles really took off, this psychological thriller feels long at 70 minutes.Janet Stewart (Anabel Shaw) checks into a hotel at night and waits for the return of her GI husband.
She's carted off to a psychiatric hospital but the psychiatrist (Price) is not all he seems.A formulaic story isn't helped by the wooden performances of Shaw, of Lynn Bari as nurse Elaine Jordan, and by Frank Latimore as Lt Stewart.Moody B picture visuals and the usual tinny music give this minor film a sense of space and time but overall 'Shock' is a bore which outstays its welcome.Of interest to Price fans but not really much there for anyone else..
While I'd have been interested in this film regardless, given its genre (Noir) and star (Vincent Price), I knew not to expect much from it in view of Leonard Maltin's dismissive *1/2 rating.With this in mind, I was amazed to see this programmer restored and released as part of Fox's vaunted Noir series on DVD ahead of much more renowned titles  but that may have had more to do with the fact that SHOCK has lingered in Public Domain hell for a long time, and the studio was eager to 'reclaim' its property by preparing an edition that was clearly superior to every other available version (with respect to print quality, transfer and supplements) and sell it at a very affordable price!
That said, I've purchased all of Fox's Noir titles save 3  SHOCK itself, VICKI (1953) and NIGHTMARE ALLEY (1947; though I do own this via the superior "Masters Of Cinema" R2 disc)  but, ashamedly, I must admit that I've yet to check out any of them (and there are even 5 first-time viewings in there!) Anyway, after this longish introduction, let's talk about the film proper: watchable (being a mere 70 minutes long helps), not uninteresting in itself (if decidedly unoriginal  the doctor who's been commissioned to help restore a girl's sanity is actually the perpetrator of the murder which drove her into a catatonic state to begin with!) and quite atmospheric (a surreal dream sequence is nicely done and the film's highlight is the rather irrelevant sequence where a homicidal inmate attacks the head nurse in the heroine's room one stormy night) but it's also very formulaic, thus predictable every step of the way (who could Price be but the villain, albeit a fairly sympathetic one?)and, ultimately, too low-key for its own good (the leading lady is a non-entity  which considerably dilutes the suspense  the femme fatale bland and the abrupt wrap-up concludes the film on something of a whimper)!
I watched this via the Madacy "Vincent Price Collection" DVD which, ostensibly, also includes 3 other PD titles featuring the iconic star  THE BAT (1959) and THE LAST MAN ON EARTH (1964) are there, yes, but HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (1958) is nowhere to be found, despite its name appearing on the "Main Menu" screen (admittedly, the disc I have is a DVD-R and the film may not have been replicated due to a technical glitch).
This movie, Shock, is noted by one thing: It's Vincent Price's first starring role after years in compelling supporting parts for 20th Century Fox. Here, he plays a psychiatrist whose murder of his wife is witnessed by a young woman (Anabel Shaw) across another hotel window as she waits for her returning soldier husband to come soon.
The woman fainted from shock when the killing happened so when Price becomes her doctor, he and his mistress nurse (Lynn Bari), try to fix it so everyone would be convinced she's crazy.
Strictly Grade B suspenser from 20th Century Fox, starring Vincent Price, Lynn Bari, Frank Latimore, and Anabel Shaw.
"Shock" concerns a young woman, Janet Stewart (Shaw) arriving at a hotel to meet her serviceman husband Paul (Latimore).
Tom Cruise might hold this film up as evidence on the evils of Psychiatry.Vincent Price murders his wife, and this is witnessed by a woman (Anabel Shaw) waiting on her husband (Frank Latimore) to return from a POW Camp.
He realizes what she may have seen and whisks her off to his sanitarium to see what she knows.The film also features Lynn Bari, second only to Betty Grable in WWII pin-up popularity according to a GI's poll taken at the time, as the lover of Vincent Price and his collaborator in the abuse of Shaw.Ending was a little far fetched, but Price was great in his pre-horror days..
A woman waiting at a hotel for her husband to return from a World War II prison camp witnesses a murder, and the next morning, her husband finds her in a state of shock.
Unbeknownst to him, Janet Stewart (Anabel Shaw) witnessed the murder from a neighbouring room but falls into a state of shock because of it - and is sent to Cross's sanitarium for treatment!The question that hovers over the movie is how far Cross is willing to go to cover up his crime.
After the woman is unsuccessful in convincing her husband of what she saw, the psychiatrist approaches him and says she needs psychiatric treatment, and she should be placed under his care," according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis.He never really cuts loose, in this early starring appearance, but Vincent Price (as Richard Cross) is certainly one of the film's main assets.
And, Frank Latimore (as Paul Stewart) and Anabel Shaw (as Janet Stewart) do well in their roles as the handsome soldier and his possibly touched wife.***** Shock (1946) Alfred L.
Vincent Price became famous thanks to the classics "Laura" and "Dragonwyck", but in between those classics he shot this modest and low-budgeted but nevertheless ingenious film-noir/thriller "Shock".
From her balcony window, Janet witnesses a couple arguing about their divorce but actually goes into a state of catatonic shock when she sees how the husband brutally killing the wife.
Price, in his first starring role, gives a very good performance and does a great job at carrying the film.
Great thriller in the small size, but the acting lifts it out of the B level, especially Anabel Shaw as the poor innocent wife who instead of receiving her expected husband back from the war ends up a victim herself in a hospital.
She experiences a terrible nightmare and is soon-after a witness to an absolutely mind shattering murder surrounding a divorce argument in an adjoining hotel room window.Thereafter she acquires a profound state of nervous mental collapse and medical help is immediately summoned to her bedside by her returning husband Lt. Paul Stewart.Dr. Cross is a nationally recognized psychiatrist coincidentally staying at the hotel and makes an emergency discovery of Janet.After learning more, Dr. Cross takes careful charge of Janet indicating she will be given a best chance of recovery from nervous shock using repeated insulin shock therapies.Janet is then managed by Dr. Cross's co-conspirator and lover nurse Elaine Jordan who helps to remove Janet to the outlying country private sanitarium of Dr. Cross for extended therapy.Janet receives injections on arrival and Dr. Cross then attempts hypnotherapy to induce Janet to regain and confess to any memories.
A good film-noir that benefits from an early Vincent Price starring role.
One night in a hotel, a psychiatrist murders his wife and the only witness to the crime, a woman staying in an adjacent room, goes into a state of catatonic shock as a result.
A young wife (Shaw) anxiously awaiting the return of her POW husband (Latimore) in a hotel witnesses a murder and goes into a catatonic shock.
Transferred to a specialist hospice for treatment, her concerned husband begins to suspect that neither Price nor his scheming mistress Bari (also a doctor at the facility) are acting for her welfare.Latimore seemed a bit overly melodramatic in his perpetually glum, hang dog expression while Anabel Shaw had little to do but act hysterically or comatose depending on the scene.
Both he and nurse Lynn Bari (Elaine) have been conducting an affair and the murder that Shaw witnessed was Price murdering his wife.
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.
A young woman (Anabel Shaw) goes into shock after she witnesses a murder.
Watching this sudden murder sends Janet into a catatonic state of shock that she remains in when her husband, Lt. Paul Stewart, finally arrives the next morning.
Anyway, Lt. Stewart, who only wears his uniform throughout the film, employs the services of the respected Dr. Cross, an early performance by Vincent Price, who coincidently is the very same man that Janet saw murdering his wife.
Not Bad. Anxious Janet Stewart (Annabel Shaw), waiting on the return of her POW husband, sees Vincent Price kill his wife.
A subject that would be fully achieved by Samuel Fuller 17 years later,"Shock" is an entertaining thriller.It begins as a Freudian movie in the grand tradition of the movies dealing with psychoanalysis in the first half of the forties ("Dark mirror" "Secret beyond the Door" "spellbound" "cat people" etc)but it is closer to a detective story the ending of which a bit similar to "Notorious" released the same year.Vincent Price is ideally cast as the machiavellian doctor .Admittedly,there are flaws :the young lieutenant is very naive ,but after all,his wife was worrying for years ,it was WW2 ...Clinics are a place you feel ill at ease.It was one of the first times (strewth it may very well be) a criminal had planned to do away with a witness in a hospital.And in a mental hospital at that..
Anabel Shaw is he young military wife who goes into shock when she sees a murder being committed from her window.
The plot follows a young woman who goes into shock after witnessing her neighbour, an esteemed psychiatrist, brutally murdering his wife with a candlestick.
Shock is the story of a woman(Anabel Shaw),who witnesses from her hotel room a woman being killed by her husband(Vincent Price).
She goes into shock and is found the next morning by her husband recently released from a POW camp.Because the hotel doctor is summoned to treat her,the murderer realizes he was seen and then tries to eliminate the only witness.
Not really a good movie.The plot Dr. Cross, a psychiatrist, is treating a young woman, Janet Stewart, 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.
With Janet housed at his institute, Dr. Cross conspires with his lover/nurse Elaine (Lynn Bari) on how to be get rid of this witness.A excursion into video roulette led me to this fun little horror- thriller that might be one of the first REAR WINDOW-type stories for the screen.
I really enjoyed this one,, sure it doesn't have a lot of the guts and blood or scare tactics as most of the Vincent Price movies, but I felt like this particular movie didn't really need that,, a woman waiting at a hotel for her husband to come home form WW2 , get's the news that her husband is delayed but will be home soon,, so right before she goes to bed she walks to the window and witnesses something horrific ,, a man choking a woman to death..
even looked a bit like Rathbone—and uglier Rathbone.A woman witnesses a murder, she sees, from her hotel room where she was waiting for her husband, she sees a guy killing his wife, and she, this hidden witness, falls in a shock, becoming still and expressionless; and then she becomes the patient of the man whom she saw murdering someone.
In Shock, young wife Janet Stewart (Anabel Shaw) arrives at the Belmont Arms Hotel in San Francisco to meet her soldier husband, Lt. Paul Stewart (Frank Latimore).
All is known in the first six minutes.) Yes, it's Dr. Richard Cross (Vincent Price)...the man who is the murderer.
Egging him on is his lover, nurse Elaine Jordan (Lynn Bari), a woman who sees nothing especially wrong with mixing up injections, turning a deranged patient on to young Janet, overdosing Janet with insulin as part of shock therapy or just having her committed to an insane asylum for life.
Dr. Cross (an amazingly young Vincent Price) is treating a young patient for shock, as she went into a coma when she saw a man kill his wife with a candlestick.
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.
But when an investigator finds traces of wax on the victim's body & Janet proves to be more resilient than Cross can handle, he hatches upon a scheme to 'accidentally' kill her with an overdose of insulin.Shock was a minor thriller from the mid 1940s, notable for the fact that it was one of horror legend Vincent Price's early films.
As always Vincent Price performed in his usual professional manner but it was Lynn Bari (as Dr. Cross' nurse, "Elaine Jordan") who I thought was the more sinister of the two and actually carried this movie.
Prehistoric Price vehicle, before he become a major horror star in HOUSE OF WAX, where he portrays a psychiatric doctor at an institution who attempts to silence a patient under his care who suffered a traumatic shock after witnessing him murder his wife with a conk on the head using a candlestick after she threatened his career due to his adultery with a fellow nurse working under him.Janet Stewart(Anabel Shaw;spending most of the screen time in a bed either sedated or trying to warn others of the murder she witnessed)has been long awaiting her husband, Lt. Paul Stewart(Frank Latimore), who was a three-year POW, and has been battling nightmares regarding their separation from each other, spending time in a hotel worrying about the potential of his not showing up.
What doesn't help is Janet's awakening long enough to finger Cross as the murderer, producing an even more difficult situation for Cross, but Elaine is concocting a scheme to convince their colleagues(..and husband Paul)that she's simply delusional, perhaps even crazy.I must say that the performances(..particularly Price and Bari)are effective and the story is suspenseful.
I've seen Shock a couple of times and features an early lead role for Vincent Price, who gives a good performance.From her hotel bedroom window, a woman witnesses a bloke kill his wife with a candlestick after she finds out about his affair.
After trying to persuade her he didn't do it and then trying to kill her by giving overdoses, she is OK at the end and the doctor is arrested for murder.The rest of the cast includes Lynn Bari and Frank Latimore.Shock is an interesting little chiller.Rating: 3 stars out of 5..
Vincent Price, at a time when his career in expensive features was beginning to slide, is a psychiatrist who murders his wife for the love of another woman, Lynn Bari.
Price and Bari know that Shaw has seen the murder.
The plot about a young woman who is admitted to a sanitarium run by the same man she witnessed murder his wife the night before from her hotel balcony isn't very suspenseful.
About all the film has is good parts for Vincent Price, Lynn Bari, and later a District Attorney played by Reed Hadley.