The Horror!? 47: Shock (1946)

A woman checks into a hotel to await the arrival of her husband coming home from WWII, only to become witness of a murder in an adjoining room. Thanks to really bad impulse control a man kills his wife while they discuss divorce to help him marry his lover. The dear witness falls into a catatonic shock, like every good woman in a psycho thriller should. It's a great way to spare the poor actress having to do much acting and enables the plot to progress, as the soon consulted psychiatrist is not only (young) Vincent Price, but also the murderer. The psychiatrist, Dr. Cross, talks the finally returned husband into committing her to his psychiatric clinic.
At first he only tries to brainwash her into forgetting what she witnessed, but soon his femme-fatal-ish lover, who works as a nurse in the clinic, convinces him to murder his patient in the course of insulin shock therapy.
As you can see, the script is not very original, but at least it is tight and plays quite well with the fear of sane people in the grip of a malicious psychiatric system. An effect that is even stronger on the modern viewer, since the state of psychiatry in the 40s today seems primitive and barbaric, treatments and curative principles dangerous and ineffective, not to say not quite sane.
The direction is mostly basic, though not distractingly so. In its early scenes the movie promises something more in a short but technically very interesting dream sequence. This kind of stylistic flourish sadly soon disappears.
And then there is Vincent Price, who doesn't portrait Dr. Cross as demonic maniac, but as a driven man full of self doubt who just isn't strong enough to do the right thing although he very much knows what is right or wrong. Price's performance is what gives Shock a much needed sense of originality and life and makes it a movie well worth seeing.