Shock Movie Review

Shock is a 1977 Italian horror movie directed by Mario Bava and starring Daria Nicolodi and John Steiner.

Dora Baldini(Nicolodi)is moving into her old home with her new husband, Bruno(Steiner) and her son, Marco. She had some mental problems in the past, but she is fine now. She finds a porcelain hand and she puts it on a shelf. Marco is acting a little weird. He is being visited by his father's ghost.
His swing moved by itself. Dora feels that something is not right in the house. She throws a housewarming party. She sees Marco scowling at her when she goes to kill Bruno. He tells her that he has to kill her. She falls and hurts herself. She remembers her first husband and his drug use. She finds a razor blade in between the keys of her piano. Marco sneaks into her bedroom and steals her underwear. She finds Marco in the cellar. He seems ill. She discovers her underwear in his drawer and she starts to panic.

Things go from bad to worse as Marco sets a trap for her and she hurts herself. Her son cuts Bruno out of pictures. Dora starts to become very agitated over the whole thing. She tells Bruno what has been going on. Dora thinks that she should never have come back to the house as it has bad memories for her. Bruno worries about her mental health. We discover that she has mental breakdown and spent time in a clinic. She begins to have disturbing nightmares. She sees horrible images of ghosts and knives. Meanwhile, Marco is giving her the evil eye at every opportunity. Dora takes her son to the doctor to see if it is something psychological but the doctor can't find anything wrong with him. He tells her that her problems might have passed on to Marco.

Things get worse for Dora as she hears the piano playing but there is nobody there. She sees more bizarre things and Marco approaches her worth a picture of his father and he asks her why she killed him. She remembers her first husband, Carlo. He gave her drugs and she killed him. Bruno returns from work and she tells him that she killed Carlo. He thinks that she is having an episode and doesn't take her seriously. She tells him that she is being haunted by Carlo. Bruno slips her a sedative and she has awful nightmares about Carlo. She wakes up and finds Bruno knocking down a wall in the cellar where the body of Carlo is buried. He knew that she had killed her husband and he protected her.
He cleaned up the mess and he hid the body. That was why they had to come back and live in the house. Dora loses her head and she kills Bruno.

She hides Bruno's body behind the wall. The porcelain hand shatters. She sees her son Marco but now he is Carlo. Everything becomes blurred. Dora freaks out as she is locked inside the house with Marco. She falls down into the cellar and she kills herself by cutting her own throat. The movie ends with Marco having a tea party with the ghosts of his parents. His father's ghost pushes him on the swing. I really enjoyed this movie. It was very interesting. The character of Dora was well played by Nicolodi. She played the part of the damaged and fragile woman very well. I liked the idea of the son being possessed by the dad and in the end, it all came together and it made sense. There are some creepy scenes in this as Dora begins to break down and it is a very tense movie. I have been meaning to see this for so long and I finally did. I am glad that I saw it as it is a very good horror movie with some eerie scenes. I would recommend this one. I will give it a 7/10.