Shock (1946)

A woman witnesses murder and suffers such a shock, she is admitted to a psychiatric facility in a catatonic state and of course the doctor-in-charge turns out to be Vincent Price's Dr Richard Cross, the murderer, but luckily for our catatonic patient, the dastardly doctor dispenses with the hefty candlestick he used on his wife's head (beside an open apartment window) and in the hospital decides  far more cautious methods are needed to overcome obstacles to his securing a wife-free future: he does things like rap on the beside table rhythmically as he whispers in the woman's ear, trying to confuse her. 

★★☆☆☆

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The Bat (1959)

Apart from the screamtrack, the only other things screaming in this charmless horror thriller, which strips the original Broadway play of its comedy, are the cheaply and unimaginatively dressed sets, the dreary dialogue, the plodding plot and the sleepwalking actors, all of them screaming, 'No-one cares," about the story of a The Avengers tv-style masked serial killer The Bat who pays visits to Agnes Moorhead's crime writer's southern mansion, momentarily upsetting the women inside before they seemingly forget and get back on with their leaden conversations.

★★☆☆☆

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House on Haunted Hill (1959)

Horror fans, turn off the lights and delight in all the macabre things - disembodied heads, antisocial party favours, ghosts, ghouls, acid baths, skeletons and magic ropes - that turn up in the House on Haunted Hill, the murder-site-for-party-hire where Vincent Price's Frederick Loren invites five guests to stay - no, challenges them to survive! - over the course of one grisly night and one ludicrous plot!

★★★☆☆

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Laura (1944)

Like Hitchcock's Rebecca released four years earlier, the title character of this Otto Preminger-directed mystery thriller, Laura, casts a spell over everyone and like Rebecca, she's dead at the movie's outset but nonetheless presides over every scene, particularly as there is a portrait of her that watches over her apartment where Dana Andrew's detective, a man in a fedora who calls women 'dames' (for this is pessimistic film noir, not Du Maurier's romantic thriller) is investigating Laura's murder at the hands of one of her society friends.

★★★★☆

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House of Wax (1953)

This 1953 horror mystery starring Vincent Price, a remake of the 1933 The Mystery of the Wax Museum, is preoccupied with getting all it can out of its state-of-the-art 3D technology and so features drawn out scenes like one of a high-kick cabaret dance and another featuring a street performer doing odd things with three ping pong bats and balls, which show-off the 3D tech but add nothing to the horror and mystery involving body snatching, murder, and a hideous figure stalking through the shadows of NYC, and so this reviewer prefers the 1933 original!

★★★☆☆

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