Shock

Less than the sum of its parts, but the incredible premise, good photography, and Price make it worth a watch.

A rather silly psychological thriller, Hitchcock-lite with only a fraction of the suspense. Weak performances across the board. Lynn Bari makes a lame femme fatale, and even Vincent Price is only at about 40% Vincentpriceiosity. Nothing about it is offensively bad (except, I suppose, the suggestion that woman are mentally frail) but it's purely by-the-numbers and uninspiring. It's got a funky dream sequence, though.

Psychobabble noirs can be a bit annoying, but they can still be fun, this one is both. It's hard to be too harsh since malpractice is part of the plot, but still it's not a plot device I enjoy. Price is fun as always, though he reins it in a bit, and I'm not sure that's for the best. Lynn Bari as the femme fatale steals what would usually be his thunder with a dark performance. The whole narrative is a bit weak but it's not bad by any means and the pacing makes it easy to ignore the flaws.

The premise was extremely interesting, and definitely the kind of thing that would fall right on its ass if it were remade today. There were a lot of extraneous scenes, though, that just lengthened the plot or reiterated what we knew. Still a very novel film and an interesting one, worth watching at least once.

If Hitchcock had directed this it could be one of the great movies. The plot is perfect, Price and Shaw are fantastic. It could come together a bit more tightly, but it's still better than Hitchcock's own psychological murder thriller, Spellbound. A fun little gem of a noir.

Decent noir with a good low key performance from Price.

This movie really is shocking, especially since I didn't really read anything about it beforehand, but anyway, this movie is about a woman who goes to a hotel to meet her husband who she just learned was not lost in the war. At the hotel, when she is waiting around in her room, she sees from her window, a man and his wife quarreling about a divorce, and then the guy kills the wife. The woman goes into shock, and when her husband comes back, he gets a doctor, who says she needs a psychiatrist.

Vincent Price's sinister plan wasn't sinister enough. Felt like a thin execution of a good idea. I still liked it, but with a little more ambition I'm sure I would have loved it.