Shock - 1946 movie review

Shock is a film noir from 1946, and it gave Vincent Price an early leading role as a murderous psychiatrist. It's a minor picture in many ways, a typical B movie perhaps, with a supporting cast whose members I've never heard of, just as I'm unfamiliar with the director and writers. But it's decent light entertainment.

The story begins with a young woman checking into a hotel, where she is due to reunite with her husband, who has been a prisoner of war. He is delayed, and as she waits nervously, she looks out of the window of her room. In true Rear Window fashion, she looks into another window, and sees a man battering his wife to death with a candlestick after an argument over their divorce. That man is Vincent Price.

When her husband shows up, she is in a state of shock. He calls for medical help, and the doctor tells him that luckily there is an expert in mental health problems in the hotel. It goes without saying that this turns out to be....Vincent Price. He realises he's been spotted by the woman, and makes sure she is transferred to a sanatorium that he runs, assisted by the nurse for whom he wanted to leave his wife.

It's a pretty good set-up, and the story moves along at a decent pace towards its inevitable conclusion. Price's performance is excellent, since he brings an element of thoughtfulness and conscience to a part that is quite lightly written. It's worth watching Shock just for Price's contribution. Interestingly, the film was condemned on release by a critic who thought it might deter war veterans with PTSD from seeking psychiatric help. This is, I think, a good example of a mistake that critics continue to make. It seems undesirable to judge books and films primarily in relation to their treatment of a particular social agenda, however important that agenda might be, above all if their intention is just to entertain.

The Bat - 1959 film review

Long before Ethel Lina White, and her tales of women in jeopardy, even longer before Gillian Flynn, Paula Hawkins, and company and their stories of girls in difficulty, there was Mary Roberts Rinehart. Mary it was who established the "woman in peril" story in the twentieth century, taking ingredients from Mrs Braddon and other Victorian writers, and fashioning them afresh in creating stories of suspense with female protagonists.

The most famous Rinehart story was The Circular Staircase, and the play that she and Avery Hopwood developed from it, The Bat, has been filmed several times. The version that I've come across recently on Retro Movies dates from 1959, and stars Vincent Price, although really Price is just one figure in an ensemble cast.

The Bat was marketed in those more innocent times as a horror movie, but essentially it's a classic mystery, with a least likely person suspect. There are two crimes at the heart of the story. First, there's the mysterious serial killer "the Bat". Second, there's a chap who steals a million dollars from his bank in a robbery that struck me as profoundly misconceived. The hapless thief dies early in the story, shot by Vincent Price.

This is a creepy mansion story, and the key question is: where is the secret room in the mansion, and the loot hidden within it? We are treated to a variety of plot developments, including the cutting of phone lines, before the truth is revealed. Yes, it's hokum, but it's done with a zest which means that the film is quite watchable, despite flitting from one cliche to another.