Shock!

Alfred Werker's Shock! (1946) is a rarity, an American 20th Century Fox film that has fallen out of copyright. It was common on videocassette in the mid-'80s, though it never made it to laserdisc. Alpha Video's DVD release is only a fair presentation of the movie. The first reel is very encouraging, very clean, and fairly crisp for the first few minutes, but alas, the image becomes rather grainy as the reel and the entire film advance. By the end, it seems a bit substandard, especially as blemishes show up in the later reels. None of the defects are fatal, but what looks like a legitimate Fox release in the beginning seems a long way from that in the final minutes, with scratches and grain obscuring details we should, ideally, see. An older Alpha title, this disc comes with five chapters rather than the six that became standard in 2003.