You’ll Get A Jolt from Michael Caine in “A Shock to the System”

For reasons best left to the cultural anthropologists to decode, the late-’80s/early ’90s gave rise to several films that skewered the world of advertising. (Think Crazy People, How to Get Ahead in Advertising, and, for the purpose of this post, A Shock to the System. Based on the 1984 novel by British author Simon Brett (trivia alert: He is the man who produced the original radio series of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), the film stars Michael Caine as hard-working Madison Avenue ad exec Graham Marshall. He finds his world turned upside down after he is unexpectedly passed over for the promotion given to a hard-charging younger colleague (Peter Riegert). Making matters worse, his shrewish wife (Swoosie Kurtz) never let him forget it, constantly berating him about the job he was massed over for. Then, one day, a stressed-out Marshall inadvertently causes a deadly accident in the subway in which a panhandler is killed. When he gets away with this, he comes to the conclusion that murdering his rivals could be the best possible way to climb the corporate ladder. As directed by Jan Egelson, A Shock to the System is a much-praised satire on modern morality (or the lack of it), so much so that it would make a great double feature with American Psycho, a film with which it shares some similar thematic elements. Now available on Blu-ray from Shout Select, we recommend this darkly comedic genre-basher for a glimpse at a truly underappreciated performance from the always captivating Michael Caine.