Out In The Chiller-Thriller 1940s Film Night- Vincent Price’sShock

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

DVD Review

Shock, starring Vincent Price, 20th Century- Fox, 1946

It is hard to believe that Vincent Price the star of so many really, 1950s really, scary horror movies where as the evil genius behind some scheme he scared the bejesus out of many members of the generation of ’68 could actually portray in this film nothing more than a skirt –addled shrink. That is the hard reality behind this B-film thriller,Shock, from 1946. Here the evil genius, if that is the correct term, is Vincent’s paramour, another in a line of cinematic nurses from hell.

Here is the skinny on why old Vincent is nothing but a skirt-addled guy. Naturally a successful psychiatrist who ran a high-end sanatorium would be away from home quite a bit and that was our boy’s undoing. He, in his lonely hours, began an affair with his main nurse and wanted to divorce his wife. Problem was the wife wanted to drag his name through the mud in revenge. So Vincent solved the problem pronto he killed her in a hotel room and later disposed of the body up at the couple’s lodge. But once you start down the murder row you never know what will happen. And what happened was something that old Vincent certainly would not like and that was that a young war bride waiting for her returning POW husband at that very hotel heard the scuffle that led to the murder. In reaction she froze and that mental freezing led her to come under old Vincent’s care as the nearest shrink. Perfect.

Well, almost perfect. Well, not really perfect at all because despite about seven different therapeutic strategies pursued by Vincent with his nurse- lover egging him on that war bride would not fall down on her abiding conviction that Vincent had murdered, murdered most foul, his dear wife. In the end her distraught returning warrior husband began to believe her and put a stop to Vincent’s dastardly campaign. Oh yah, Vincent in the end decided he had to draw the line somewhere, somewhere deep in his medical training and could not finish the war bride off. He could however finish off that evil genius of a nurse who had him skirt-addled, skirt-addled big time. Hey come to think of it you should wait until the 1950s and watch Vincent at work, let’s say in something like The House Of Wax. This one is just so-so.