(1964) 3.5 Nathan Southern Denis Sanders's wickedly funny and morose, B-budget crackerjack psycho-thriller goes a long way toward redeeming the idea of watching exploitative schlock. It's a ghoulish drive-in comedy on themes of mental illness, like What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? or Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte, but director Sanders avoids the grotesquerie of the Robert Aldrich efforts and -- from the first sequence on (when we see two pet graves marked "Bootsie II" and "Bootsie III") -- keeps the material lightly amusing. Even though the filmmaker builds the movie from sensationalistic, tabloid material, his sense of humor enables us to view it without feeling debauched; we walk away feeling pleasantly entertained. The film's highlight -- a riotous early sequence in which actor Dale Nelson (Stuart Whitman) feigns insanity (as part of a con) by hurling a public wastecan through a department-store window, seizing the mannequin, and babbling nonsense in front of cops -- perfectly establishes the slightly off-the-wall tone of the film, as does the absurd immediacy of the officer's reaction ("Call the sheriff's office - tell them we have a candidate for county psycho!"). Yet Sanders never goes completely over the top; he plays his hand well, keeping the basic drama gripping and suspenseful, only gradually revealing, in a Hitchcockian vein, just how encaged Nelson has become by the bitch-on-wheels hospital administrator Dr. Edwina Beighley (Lauren Bacall). Ultimately, the entire drama hangs on the thrilling question of Nelson's escape from Beighley's dungeon. The logical fabric in the second half of the script is a bit weak, with a few too many plot holes, such as mental patient Cynthia's (Carol Lynley) blink-of-an-eye recovery (a development that smacks of scriptwriter's convenience). But the all-in-good-fun attitude of Sanders and his scenarists renders these flaws negligible, and Bacall -- a bit past her prime in 1964 -- should be lauded for playing exploitation so effectively, much more admirably here than she did two decades later, in the wretched and embarrassing slasher movie The Fan. As a bonus, the film packs in fun supporting performances by Roddy McDowall (as a flower-obsessed, hedgeclipper-wielding maniac) and a young Ossie Davis, as a resident of the mental institution. And Lynley shines in a sweet and sympathetic role. Her fans might stand up and take note of this little film; it isn't nearly as well known or as critically championed as her 1965 Bunny Lake Is Missing -- but, on a cruder, coarser level, this is a much more enjoyable movie.

Shock Treatment on AllMovie

Shock Treatment (1964)

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flags

Not For Children

genres

Thriller

sub-genres

category

Feature

directed by

Denis Sanders

countries

USA

released

1964

run time

94 min.

produced by

20th Century Fox

released by

20th Century Fox

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by Iotis Erlewine synopsis

In this off-beat melodrama, a crazed gardener is relegated to a mental hospital after beheading his wealthy boss. The scuttlebutt around the asylum is that the killer has stolen over a million dollars. A professional actor is hired to feign insanity, enter the hospital, and look into the puzzling mystery.

characteristics

- Cons And Scams

- Mental Illness

- Doctors And Patients

- Trapped Or Confined

- Treasure Hunts

- Psychiatrist

- Patient [medical]

- Private-detective

- Medical-treatment

- Manic

- Masquerade

- Psychiatry

- Mental-institution

- Shock

- Therapist

related movies

MENTAL ILLNESS

DOCTORS AND PATIENTS

CONS AND SCAMS