Shock (1946): watch the full film free, legally

A witness at the hotel

Shock is a 1946 American psychological horror thriller directed by Alfred L. Werker. Produced and distributed by 20th Century Fox, it stars Vincent Price as Dr. Richard Cross, Lynn Bari as Elaine Jordan, Frank Latimore as Lt. Paul Stewart and Anabel Shaw as Janet Stewart.

Janet Stewart reaches a hotel expecting her husband Paul to have checked in ahead of her. He has not arrived, and the uncertainty is especially painful because Paul has been presumed dead for the previous two years. The clerk cannot find Janet's reservation and says the hotel has no vacant rooms, until the manager finds one for her. Exhausted, Janet falls asleep on a couch and dreams that Paul has arrived but she cannot open the door to him as he cries for help.

After waking, Janet hears an airplane and goes to the window. In a nearby room, she sees a man arguing with his wife. He demands a divorce and says he is in love with Elaine; his wife says she will agree to a divorce but will tell others that he has entertained his lover in their apartment. The argument turns violent. Janet, horrified and emotionally spent, collapses into a chair.

Dr. Cross and Janet's confinement

Paul arrives the following morning and finds Janet staring into space. The hotel doctor believes she is in shock and recommends a specialist, Dr. Cross, who is staying at the hotel. Paul explains that Janet has had a difficult time since learning that he survived two years as a prisoner of war and that his plane was late. Cross examines her, realizes that her room had a direct view into his own, and recommends moving her to his private sanitorium rather than a hospital.

At the sanitorium, Janet speaks in a half-conscious state about what she witnessed. Cross tells Elaine Jordan, his assistant and lover, that Janet saw him kill his wife. He says he did not intend to kill her and regrets failing to call the police after putting the body in a trunk and sending it to his lodge. Elaine urges him to persuade Janet that her memory is imagined, despite Cross's uncertainty about the plan.

A disturbed inmate, Mr. Edwards, enters Janet's room one night. When Elaine struggles to remove him, Janet panics and mistakes Edwards for Cross. Elaine argues that the incident will support a declaration that Janet is insane, allowing her to be committed indefinitely and making her account hard for others to believe. Meanwhile, Mrs. Cross's body is discovered in a mountain ravine and her death is initially ruled accidental. O'Neill of the district attorney's office later tells Cross that a more detailed autopsy is planned because another suspect has been arrested after a hotel assault.

Suspicion, treatment and critical response

Cross continues to regret not going to the police, while Elaine presses him to use a series of insulin shock-treatment injections on Janet. He considers a fourth injection that would be an overdose, but initially says he cannot do it. O'Neill then returns with news that the coroner has declared Mrs. Cross's death a murder and that the weapon was a candlestick. Paul seeks a second opinion from Dr. Franklin Harvey after Janet persists in saying that she saw Cross kill his wife with a candlestick. He shows Harvey the newspaper report identifying the same weapon, and Harvey and Paul head for the sanitorium.

The supporting cast includes Stephen Dunne, credited as Michael Dunne, as Dr. Stevens; Reed Hadley as O'Neill; Renee Carson as Mrs. Hatfield; and Charles Trowbridge as Dr. Franklin Harvey. Henry Hathaway was originally intended to direct the film.

Bosley Crowther of The New York Times objected particularly to the film's treatment of psychiatry. Writing in the period after World War II, Crowther described the film as a “social disservice” for fostering “apprehension against the treatment of nervous disorders,” and criticized producer Aubrey Schenck and distributor Twentieth Century-Fox for a lack of consideration toward people needing treatment. Philip K. Scheuer of the Los Angeles Times called it a nominal “B” feature that screenwriter Eugene Ling and Werker had given “a grade-A suspense.” Jonathan Malcolm Lampley wrote in Women in the Horror Films of Vincent Price that Cross foreshadows the mad doctors and scientists Price would often play later in his career.

Film details from the Wikipedia article “Shock (1946 film)”. Text adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0.