Holstra Boring, long, and too preachy.

Mabel Munoz Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

Teddie Blake The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

moonspinner55 Mental shenanigans involving an actor (Stuart Whitman), apparently so desperate for money he'll accept any insane proposition lobbied his way, who masquerades as a mental patient in an asylum. He's hoping to get crucial information out of another patient (Roddy McDowall) on the whereabouts of some hidden loot--but unfortunately, he runs afoul of doctor Lauren Bacall (doing a Nurse Ratched years before her time). Delirious, over-the-top melodrama that's actually a hoot if watched in the requisite silly spirit. Whitman keeps a straight face throughout and actually wins the viewer over, but McDowall is just awful and Carol Lynley is hilariously mercurial as a patient with glossy, shampooed hair. This show rightfully belongs to Bacall, pulling off an extreme role with her usual rigid-jaw aplomb. ** from ****

David (Handlinghandel) Stuart Whitman is seen in a classical acting role and recruited to play a very rough part: He is to be paid for feigning insanity and being committed to psychiatric hospital. The goal is to learn more about a character played by Roddy McDowell, who is confined there.Whitman is excellent, as is McDowell. The latter develops a bit of an unstated crush on the former. So does Carol Lynley, who has a very small role for the major billing she gets.The plot revolves around psychiatrist and researcher Lauren Bacall. This character could give Dr. Caligari a run for his money.It's not hough art but i's exciting and suspenseful. And the acting is excellent all around.

jaxla SHOCK TREATMENT has a delicious hook: an actor is hired to impersonate a lunatic so he can be put in an institution and become friends with a lunatic killer who just happens to know where a lot of money is hidden. Of course, there are all sorts of complications, primarily head psychiatrist Lauren Bacall, who also has her eye on the money and figures out the actor's game. Not a bad set up, but the script is full of holes and lame dialogue and the direction is lackluster. But Bacall, as a precursor to Nurse Ratched, is a hoot as the villain and gets to administer shock treatment to the actor (Stuart Whitman) to try to break him! The ending isn't bad either, a couple of reversals and a nice battle with a pitch fork. This is one to watch with one eye closed on a rainy afternoon, which is just about how I caught in on Fox Movie Channel. In her autobiography, Bacall refers to the film as "truly tacky." She's right on target, both in her performance and her critique!

Poseidon-3 A sort of cousin to Samuel Fuller's "Shock Corridor" (a slightly earlier and far more inventive film), this mental ward drama concerns an actor who feigns illness in order to enter a state asylum and discover the whereabouts of one million dollars. McDowall plays a rose-obsessed gardener who snips the head off of his employer and is committed to the state mental hospital (hilariously, he gets 90 days for his crime and then is to be released!) When it is discovered that McDowall may have hidden away a million bucks of his employer's money, Laire hires Whitman to play nutty and enter the same hospital as McDowall in order to find out where it is. Bacall plays a doctor who helped get McDowall off on an insanity plea in the first place and who may be after the money herself. Lynley is a manic-depressive girl who catches Whitman's eye. Before long Whitman finds that it's easier to get into a mental hospital than it is to get out (though getting out doesn't present TOO great a challenge to him either!) The film has a nice assortment of familiar actors in it and a decent score by Jerry Goldsmith, but it's never as interesting or surprising as one might like it to be. Whitman was rarely a deep or particularly detailed actor and his work here is adequate, but unexceptional. McDowall is properly off-center and does a fine job, but isn't really used much. Faring worse is Lynley, whose character is sketchy at best and whose screen time is both limited and mostly unimportant. (Sadly, these two future "The Poseidon Adventure" co-stars share no screen time here.) Bacall does fine as the haughty, embittered doctor overseeing all the cuckoos, but by the end her character and the film's plot line have gone way off the deep end. The ending is preposterous in the extreme. The whole movie suffers from unbelievability, though. It doesn't help matters that the hospital seems more like a retreat or a club than a medical facility. The patients (even newly admitted murderers and other troublemakers) have free reign to do as they please with little supervision and get to smoke anytime they wish, go to dances and just generally hang out and have a good time! To say that the attention paid to mental illness and its cures is superficial is an understatement. This makes "The Caretakers" look like a deep exposé on the subject. Still, it's a fairly brief, occasionally intriguing movie with an interesting enough hook to warrant a look.