Shocker

We queued up Shock (1946) because it stars Lynn Bari, but more importantly, Vincent Price. We didn’t really know anything else about it, and that was enough.

It starts with Anabel Shaw checking into a San Francisco hotel. Her husband, who she thought was lost in the war is coming home, and she has arranged to meet him here. Nervously, she waits, and waits, falls asleep and has nightmares, wakes up and walks to the window. Across the way, she sees Vincent Price arguing with a woman, and kill her.

When her husband, Frank Latimore, shows up the next morning, he finds her staring out the window, unresponsive, in shock. The hotel doc recommends the best brain doctor in town, who is staying right at this very hotel: Vincent Price. And he knows what she saw.

Price and his nurse, Lynn Bari, take her to his private sanitarium, and try to brainwash her into forgetting. When that doesn’t work, they decide to take stronger steps: insulin shock treatment, ending with a fatal overdose.

This may not be the greatest B-movie, but it has a great concept. Everyone thinks Shaw was driven mad by the loss and re-appearance of her husband. When she accuses Price of killing his wife, that just confirms it. The tension in the insulin scene is incredible - sending someone into insulin shock over and over is very scary torture, even when it isn’t being done to hide a murder.

Our leap of faith was justified, and even if it hadn’t been, it’s only 70 minutes long.