Shock To The System begins on a dark night with Chad Allen as openly gay private eye Donald Strachey meeting Jared Keeso who wants him to find somebody. No sooner does he hand Allen a $5000.00 retainer check than someone tries to run him down with a car. The next day he's found dead of a pill and liquor combination and the coroner calls it suicide.To even the dumbest cops you'll find in any detective story you don't hire a PI for a job and then kill yourself. But the Albany cops don't want to go any farther, but Allen has the scent. Young Keeso was the poster boy for an Ex-Gay therapy group the Phoenix Foundation headed by Michael Woods and his wife Anne Marie DeLuise. That seems the place to start though Keeso's mother Morgan Fairchild tells Allen that it was some gay seeking vengeance on her son for betraying the movement.In a move that requires real acting on his part, out and proud detective Chad Allen goes undercover in the foundation claiming to be a troubled gay man seeking a cure from the curse of homosexuality. Some of these scenes and later some scenes of self examination and introspection on his own life with partner Sebastian Spence show some really moving acting by Chad Allen.Shock To The System throws us a ton of red herrings as suspects and believe me you will never figure out the real motive for this and another homicide of one of the patients. That being said you won't figure out who the killer is. I didn't until about 30 seconds before it was revealed.Chad Allen has made four Strachey stories and hopefully will do more. Having the series shot in Canada I have to say that British Columbia doesn't look anything like Albany, New York so that's a bit of let down in the sense I'm familiar with Albany. But there is a more fundamental difference between these stories and most pulp detective work.Be it Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, Mike Hammer or any of a thousand lesser imitations your basic straight detective is a love them and leave them type with a new dame in every story. But the Donald Strachey stories emphasize that Strachey is a domestic type who has settled down with the love of his life who works for a State Senator in Albany. The two are very much in love and the films and books show that at every opportunity.The books were written and the films made at a time when LGBT folks are pushing for marriage rights and in 2006 when this film was made we didn't have them in New York. It's interesting to speculate that the idea for a gay private eye originated 20 year previously or if such stories are written 20 years in the future when marriage is secured whether a pulp hero like Donald Strachey will be your typical detective loner dealing with a bar crowd and loving and leaving a succession of young party boys. And I would not dare speculate on what lesbian detective fiction might be like if someone is inspired to write a series of those stories.But at this point in time Donald Strachey is a hero of those times and hopefully we'll see more of him in future work.

A young man caught up in some "ex-gay" therapy organization asks PI Donald Strachey to find someone, slams a check in his hand for $5000 then winds up dead from an apparent overdose before he can tell the detective who he's looking for. Strachey suspects foul play and investigates the charismatic leader of the local anti-gay therapy group to see if they had something to do with the kid's death. Sure enough, secrets are exposed and more death comes and clues pile up and a little luck helps Donald in the end.I wish I could say I loved this little murder mystery, but "Shock to the System" is one of those projects that could have been so damn good in the hands of people who really cared. And I'm not referring to the actors. Chad Allen gives a fine, sometimes heartbreaking performance as Strachey. He's given able backup by Sebastian Spence as his life-partner and Nelson Wong as his new secretary with an attitude about his title. Even Morgan Fairchild does nicely with a thankless role.But director Ron Oliver and writer Ron McGee offer up such perfunctory work, and cinematographer C. Kim Miles lights everything at night so minimally that you can't see half of what's going on, you wind up with incoherent shots and second rate staging and a plot that has things happen because they have to happen at that point for the story to move along. I know this is supposed to be a noir-ish flick, with nods to "The Maltese Falcon" and "The Big Sleep" and "Out of the Past" and all that, but it's done without any sense of style, meaning or even a hint of passion to it. Compare the plots of those great movies to this one, and it comes across as written by a 13 year old.From here be spoilers so read not further if you don't want to know.Consider the murder of Larry, who was helping Strachey's client, Paul Hale. The guy's been invisible for days. Strachey can't find him. Nobody's seen him. But finally he surfaces in a place where it would be hard to get to him. He has just enough time to fill Strachey in on what was going on and drop an important clue when the lights go out. Strachey goes looking to see what's up, pistol drawn. And the killer kills Larry then has a shootout with Strachey and gets away. It wasn't just clumsily written and staged, it was absurd. How could the killer know Larry was there unless Stachey lead them there? How would the killer know Strachey would go the wrong way down the corridor to give said killer a chance to kill the kid? And if the killer DIDN'T know Strachey was there, how did they know to be there at the exact right time to find Larry? None of this is explained in the end. In fact, the final explanation makes no logical sense, not even when dealing with a warped mind. It was nearly insulting.BUT...and this is a big one...the script does delve somewhat into the question of ex-gay therapy and its philosophical and moral meaning. And the questions such people can raise, even in a relatively well-adjusted gay man -- like what would life had been like if I hadn't been gay? For raising those issues and for the lead actors, I give it a 7...which is above average, but it really could have been so much better if the director and writer and DP had really cared.

"Trevor Cornell is one of the most successful reparative therapy providers in New York," says Timmy Callahan. "I wonder what his idea of 'successful' is," says Donald Strachey, a private eye. "Dressing badly," says Callahan, "decorating your home with duck decoys, breaking out in a rash whenever Barbra Streisand sings." To explain: Reparative therapy means conversion from being gay or lesbian into happy, contented heteroes. Timmy Callahan (Sebastian Spence) is a political type in Albany, New York. Donald Strachey (Chad Allen) is not only a capable and tough private eye in Albany, he and Timmy are married. "At least," as Strachey says, "as close as two men can get to it...more important, I'm in love with him." Those who find a gay agenda under every leaf, revolver and bloody baseball bat may not like this movie. On the other hand, those with a fondness for well-constructed mysteries that feature politics, victimization, murder, martinis and phenalzine should enjoy the story, the style of Donald Strachey and the puzzle. Bet you don't guess the murderer. It's worth pointing out that you don't need to be a collie to enjoy "Lassie" or a guy with a gut to enjoy John Wayne. And you don't need to be gay to enjoy Shock to the System. The movie has it's faults...it was made for cable with awkward acting in some of the secondary roles and it has that clean, careful look of most made-for-TV films. But the mystery is satisfyingly complicated, with a nice number of red herrings. Chad Allen makes a believable, interesting private eye. And his happy home life with Timmy would probably be the envy of many married couples, gay or straight. Paul Hale, a frightened 20-year-old man, wants Strachey to help him. But before he can tell Strachey what he wants, he is found dead. At first it's thought Hale died of a stroke, but when a lethal mixture of alcohol and barbiturates is found in Hale's system, Strachey decides to find out what was going on. And that takes him undercover to the Phoenix Foundation, a successful institution led by Dr. Trevor Cornell and his wife, where gays and lesbians, Dr. Cornell says, can find their true path to heterosexuality. It turns out that Hale was going to be a poster boy for the Foundation when Cornell announced a major push to go nation-wide with his cures. Not only does Strachey find himself taking part in group therapy and flashing back to his own earlier life, he gets threatened, beaten up, chased and shot. Almost as frightening, he encounter's Hale's wealthy, well-groomed and surgically-enhanced mother. "My son was not gay!" she says. "He was...confused." Strachey eventually solves the crime. Justice, formal and informal, is dealt out. Donald Strachey is the gay private eye in eight mysteries written by Richard Stevenson, beginning with Death Trick in 1981. They are first-rate reads with clever, involved and sometimes violent plots. In other words, they aren't gay mysteries...they're mysteries that happen to feature a gay private eye. Two of the books have been made into cable movies; this one was shown in 2006 and Third Man Out was shown in 2005. The books are well worth reading if you like mysteries. This movie is no classic, but it makes it's "gay agenda" points low-key enough that they don't interfere with the story. And although there is a bit of beef cake that shows up from time to time, one or two friendly smooches and a quick flash of frontal nudity, the movie has none of the leering smarminess that seems built-in to many of the boy-girl Hollywood films nowadays.

Good script. Good acting. Good production. Good editing. Everything about it: good. Okay, maybe one or two weaker performances in minor roles, but nothing actually bad.I have to say, this strikes me as really a gay film. That might sound obvious, but hear me out. Brokeback Mountain is about same-sex attraction, unrequited love, etc., but in no way shape or form would I call it a gay movie. Shock to the System has a gay sensibility. We feel we're really in the gay community, observing the rest of the world from OUR point of view. Usually films with this perspective are sub par, if not very sub par.What a pleasant surprise to find a good genre picture made from our point of view. I really enjoyed this movie, and I was completely thrown by the various red herring strewn along the way. I'm no big fan of mysteries (a reason I wasn't particularly eager to see this movie), but this one kept me engrossed. The plot handily incorporates the subtext of what it is to be gay in a way that reinforces the story line. Kudos.The more I think about it, the more I have to say, much to my surprise, I really liked this movie.