Shock 1946

Janet Stewart arrives at the Belmont Arms Hotel hoping to find her husband, Paul Stewart, already checked in, only to discover that he hasn’t appeared and has been presumed dead for two years after being a prisoner of war. The front desk can’t locate her reservation, and the hotel’s manager, Blake, ultimately finds her a room. That first night, she falls into a troubled sleep on the couch and experiences a vivid, unsettling dream: she sees Paul arrive, but she cannot reach him through a closed door as he cries out for help. When she wakes, the sound of a distant airplane lures her to the window, and she overhears a heated argument in a nearby room. In the glow of the hallway, she glimpses a man at a window who proclaims he wants a divorce and is involved with someone called “Elaine.” The wife threatens to expose him for his affair, and in a sudden surge of rage he grabs a candlestick and strikes her, leaving Janet horrified and emotionally drained.

The next morning, Paul Stewart returns, intending to surprise Janet, but she remains seated on the couch, transported and unresponsive. A hotel doctor is summoned and notes that she seems to be in shock and needs a specialist. He suggests contacting Dr. Cross, who is staying at the hotel, and it soon becomes clear that Dr. Richard Cross is the very man Janet witnessed murdering his wife. Paul explains that Janet has had a rough couple of years since learning he had survived the war, and that his plane was delayed. After examining Janet, Cross is troubled by the sightlines to his own private room and recommends that she be taken to his private sanatorium rather than a regular hospital, fearing exposure or a breakdown in a standard setting.

At the sanatorium, Cross confronts Janet with what she said she saw, and he confides in his assistant and lover, Elaine Jordan, that Janet’s account confirms his crime in the eyes of others. He laments that the killing wasn’t intentional and that he once wished he had turned himself in, yet he carried the body away and had it hidden in a trunk bound for his lodge. Elaine pushes him to manipulate Janet into believing she imagined the whole scene, and Cross vacillates between moral restraint and his own fear of exposure.

Tension rises when a disturbed inmate, Mr. Edwards, wanders into Janet’s room. Elaine tries to remove him, they struggle, and Janet, seeing the commotion, panics and mistakes Edwards for Cross. Elaine realizes they now have leverage to declare Janet insane and commit her, reasoning that no one would believe her story if she’s deemed delusional by others.

News then shifts to a darker turn: Mrs. Cross’s body is found in a mountain ravine and initially ruled an accident. Yet District Attorney O’Neill visits Cross to reveal that a hotel break-in with a beating matches a potential pattern and that a formal autopsy may uncover another victim of Cross. The threat of exposure intensifies Cross’s reluctance to act against Janet, and he contemplates a drastic insulin shock treatment as a way to reveal the truth—though he privately resists carrying it out.

As the DA presses on, Cross faces the reality that the coroner has labeled Mrs. Cross’s death a murder and identifies the candlestick as the weapon. He finds himself cornered between his fear of punishment and his growing guilt. Paul, pursuing a second medical opinion from Dr. Harvey, learns that insulin therapy can unmask a patient’s truth, especially when administered in a controlled sequence. Harvey notices that Janet remains convinced of what she saw, and he and Paul race toward the sanatorium to intervene.

Cross proceeds with the fourth insulin dose, but as Janet resists and the tension peaks, he alters course and urges Elaine to bring dextrose to save Janet. Elaine refuses to help him save her, and in the ensuing struggle Cross ends up strangling Elaine. Help arrives just in time: Dr. Harvey administers adrenalin to revive Janet, who recovers quickly. With no escape from culpability left, Cross resigns himself to arrest as District Attorney O’Neill leads him away, and Janet’s perilous ordeal comes to a tense close—leaving her to confront the aftermath of a case built on manipulation, fear, and the blurred lines between sanity and crime.