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Shock Treatment (aka Love Potion)
Julian Doyle
UK, 1987, 86 minutes
Now available in USA on DVD
Review by David Clark (1990)

Julian Doyle is a music video director (for Kate Bush among others) and Monty Python and Terry Gilliam henchman; one of the executive producers on this film was the late Graham Chapman. 

Shock Treatment opens with Delaware Camden (Nancy Paul) at a publishing party given for the writer brother she idolises. He’s a heroin addict; he ODs, vomiting over his girlfriend’s breasts as he does so, and dies. A gloomy funeral follows. Two years later, Delaware is addicted too.

Her father sends her to a rehab clinic outside Bath, a sombre old house presided over by the creepy Dr Samphyre (John Rowe) and his staff. The film follows Delaware and her fellow addicts through treatment and withdrawal. It’s a realistic account of the normal rehab stuff; the careful application of guilt by the staff, nasty videos of victims, group discussions, moralising and so on. Delaware’s depression worsens as the film rolls on. Her stash is stolen, her room-mate ODs, one of the other patients leaves, still an addict, having tricked her father into withdrawing her from the clinic, and another blows the septum out of his nose. Cold turkey sets in and Delaware gets some heavy nightmares.

However, it’s not as simple as that. Things get weird. Spooky old Avesbury House has been used as an asylum for centuries and is reputedly haunted, and one of the other addicts provides some uncannily accurate Tarot readings. This atmosphere is achieved in some style, with quotes from The Prophecies of Merlin, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, The Secret Doctrine, etc, and glimpses of paintings by Poussin, Blake, Dadd, Bosch and the rest of the gang. But this isn’t all – it looks like some unpleasant plot is being hatched. There are secret labs, a door marked ‛Danger – No Entry’, a dead sheep in the shower, and there seems to be Something Nasty In The Basement.

Delaware tries to escape, finding herself betrayed by her boyfriend and led to the labs in the cellar. Confronted by Samphyre, prepared to perform surgery on her, she manages to get away, fleeing through a chaotic series of memories and apparent hallucinations, to be eventually found in the road by a passing motorist and taken to her father. I won’t reveal what happens next, but it comes as the film’s major – very major – surprise.

Actually, the moderately astute viewer may not get this shock, because there’s a rather obvious clue quite early on. Still, despite the arguable flaws, director/co-writer/editor Julian Doyle has made a watchable, humane and effective film. There’s little real horror and if Shock Treatment doesn’t treat you to many real shocks, it is quietly compelling and handles its delicate subject matter with some sensitivity. I can’t help thinking of it as being a bit TV though; strip out the mystical underside, and the film comes over like something by Phil Redmond. Which is not the end of the world, but does suggest Shock Treatment might be better placed on Channel 4 at 9 pm.

Intriguing; needs watching twice for the sake of the mystical stuff.