Sick Product of a Sick System

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

In addition to the superbly photographed, fast-paced, totally riveting noir classic I Wake Up Screaming (1941) in which a super-attractive Betty Grable, aided by heavy-handed Victor Mature, has a hard time escaping the minions of the law led by the magnificent Laird Cregar, Fox has also issued the not-half-as-exciting re-make, Vicki (1953), which the studio virtually threw away on its original release so that all attention could be focused on The Robe and CinemaScope. Vicki starts most promisingly. In fact Jean Peters makes a far more seductive "Vicki" than Carole Landis. Unfortunately, Elliott Reid makes an extremely weak hero, and Jeanne Crain is no Betty Grable. Although Richard Boone makes a fair stab at the Laird Cregar part, it all comes to a most unsatisfactory and unsatisfying climax when the murderer is flaccidly unmasked by an all-too-familiar ruse and then tamely led away without any of the promised action and excitement the script has been leading us to expect!

A fairly close remake of the 1942 proto-noir "I Wake Up Screaming," "Vicki" was filmed and released 11 years later. During the picture's opening credits, however, with its elegant music and close-up portrait painting of a beautiful murder victim, "Vicki" may instead bring to mind another Fox noir, 1944's "Laura"; I'd swear that the typeface of the titles of the two films is even the same! "Vicki" features a cast of "lesser names" than did "IWUS," but follows the same basic plot path. Here, Jean Peters plays the title role, originally portrayed by Carole Landis, of Vicki Lynn, a pretty NYC model who is murdered while on the verge of her big Hollywood break. Jeanne Crain fills in for Betty Grable, playing her sister (a huge upgrade in terms of looks and acting ability, I feel), and Elliott Reid (I know...who?) takes over for Victor Mature, as the publicity man who gets Vicki's career started. Richard Boone here plays Ed Cornell, the maniac cop on the case (a debatable improvement on Laird Cregar's hulking presence), while future TV mogul Aaron Spelling (!) plays a wacky hotel clerk, taking the part once essayed by the great Elisha Cook, Jr. So yes, lesser names, perhaps, but the presence of Jeanne Crain, one of the greatest of screen beauties, always helps carry a picture...for this viewer, anyway. "Vicki" is a fairly compact film with little flab. It is well played by all and features a moody score by Leigh Harline. Director Harry Horner, a man better known in Hollywood for his contributions as an art director and production designer, acquits himself quite well here, lavishing great attention on his use of light and shadow. Watching the film, I was also reminded, by Carl Betz' presence as a sympathetic cop, of another Fox noir that I had recently seen, "Dangerous Crossing" (a superior film to this one), which also stars Betz and Crain. In all, "Vicki" is a lesser noir, but still great fun. Oh...at the film's tail end, one of the characters is revealed as being a nutjob for having constructed a shrine to Vicki in his living room; perhaps I should consider scrapping the Jeanne Crain shrine that I was going to build in mine....

VICKI (guess they thought changing "Vicky" to "Vicki" would look more modern or something) plays like a watered-down version of the original I WAKE UP SCREAMING (IWUS), though it tries real hard to remind you of another classic 20th Century-Fox thriller, 1944's LAURA. A LAURA-like painting of title character Vicki Lynn can be seen behind the opening credits. Listen carefully to the background dialogue during the scene where our protagonists hide in a movie theater (we don't see the film-within-the-film, we just hear it): the dialogue is from LAURA! To be fair, VICKI is watchable, but despite the filmmakers' best efforts to evoke superior Fox mysteries, it's ultimately pedestrian and forgettable, lacking the pizazz of its predecessors. Director Harry Horner, who was also the Oscar-winning art director and production designer of THE HUSTLER and THE HEIRESS (THE HUSTLER AND THE HEIRESS -- now that sounds like a fun picture! :-)), worked from Dwight Taylor's earlier IWUS script, this time given a little uncredited tweaking by Leo Townsend. Perhaps Townsend's the one responsible for the nice touch of having Vicki's face plastered all over almost every frame of the film, on posters, magazine covers, etc., even after her death, until the film's wry final shot.However, while the actors are capable and easy on the eyes, the principals just don't have the edge, charisma, and screen presence of the original 1941 leads. In the title role, unlike IWUS's luminous Carole Landis, Howard Hughes protégée Jean Peters is just another pretty girl, albeit with ambition and a hard edge. Indeed, as Vicki's nice, sensible sister Jill, Jeanne Crain is more classically beautiful than Peters. If I were a promoter, Jill's the sister I would've been trying to groom for stardom! :-) But maybe that was the point: our promoter hero is trying to manufacture a star out of the raw material that is Vicki, like so many promoters and stars then and now. Film noir historian Foster Hirsch suggests this, too, in the DVD's interesting commentary track.Speaking of our hero, instead of Victor Mature's beleaguered promoter hero Frankie Christopher, formerly Botticelli, VICKI gives us Elliott Reid as Steve Christopher (a tip of the hat to source author Steve Fisher?). Reid was a light leading man best known for comedy. That didn't necessarily have to be a liability, considering the story has comic moments, but alas, I'm afraid it is. I wanted to root for Reid, but he comes across as a lightweight in every way, pleasant without being memorable. Heck, I'm trying to picture him in my mind right now and I'm having a hard time, that's how little impression he made on me.The sexual tension of IWUS is virtually nonexistent here. I've enjoyed the attractive Peters in more down-to-earth roles such as the 1953 thriller NIAGARA, but here I didn't find her irresistible in either physical or emotional allure. While you can't help but pick up on IWUS's Frankie, Larry, and Robin being drawn to Vicky, in VICKI, the lure somehow isn't as strong between Vicki and benefactors Steve; Robin, played here by suave Egyptian actor Alex D'Arcy; and Larry, played likably by one of our household's fave character actors, Casey Adams. Fun Facts: Under his real name, Max Showalter, Adams co-wrote VICKI's instrumental theme, and he'd also appeared with Peters in NIAGARA, in which Marilyn Monroe commanded the screen in an atypical bad-girl role. Crain and Reid come across like a nice-enough couple, but they simply don't have the sizzle and sparkle that Victor Mature and Betty Grable had between them in the original. At least Carl Betz of THE DONNA REED SHOW is a likable presence as Steve's cop pal.Frankly, the antagonists are far more memorable than the protagonists. Richard Boone stands out most as obsessed cop Ed Cornell. True, Boone is no Laird Cregar; he's nowhere near as physically imposing or silver-tongued as Cregar was. Still, Boone's rough, harsh quality gives VICKI much-needed energy as he snarlingly invades people's space with wild abandon. Seeing vicious Boone zero in on bland Reid is like watching a feral dog attack a pampered puppy; it's not a fair fight, whereas IWUS's Mature and Cregar are more exciting to watch, being more evenly matched physically and temperamentally as well as in the charisma and screen presence departments. (Even Hirsch agrees in his commentary. Sharp guy, that Hirsch! :-)) Aaron Spelling's no slouch, either, as he takes over Elisha Cook Jr.'s role. Yes, you read that right: before he became one of the most successful TV producers of all time, Aaron Spelling was a quirky young actor, and he makes a great weirdo here. Occasionally, Spelling chews the scenery, but at least he's not insipid like most of the rest of the cast.Even the film's lighting and staging is flat and bland, except for the expressionistic lighting of the interrogation and the night scenes. There aren't even any little fun quirks, like the use of "Over the Rainbow" in the original. My verdict: I WAKE UP SCREAMING is the clear winner here, with VICKI worth a look primarily for completists.

Cheaply produced remake of TCF's I Wake Up Screaming (1941). That's surprising since Fox was a big-budget, glamor studio, at a time too when production was turning to elaborate color films because of TV. Nonetheless, the b&w sets are uniformly drab, even when supposedly upscale. The visuals could really use more noir to spice up the drab. So who did kill heartlessly successful model Vicki (Peters). Seems like a lot of people had reasons, including cop Boone and sister Crain.Film suffers from bland leading man Reid who unsurprisingly went from here to TV, and from Boone who's much better at being mean than being love sick—catch that last scene, one I expect the actor would just as soon forget. Future TV mogul Spelling also gets a big histrionic opportunity. At least he doesn't look like Hollywood. My guess is that director Horner is not at his best when coaching actors.It's a complex plot with a lot of cross-currents, erratically worked out. Maybe the most interesting is Boone's anger at Reid for promoting hash house waitress Peters into the fashionable world of high-class modeling. Now she's literally out of Boone's class and Reid is to blame. So now cop Boone doesn't care who killed Peters, just as long as he gets even with "pretty boy" Reid. I don't think they taught that at the Police Academy.Too bad the overlong screenplay wasn't pared down to eliminate the many dead spots, or that an A-list director wasn't put in charge. And too bad the production values don't measure up. But perhaps most unfortunate, it looks like a demotion for the under-rated Jeanne Crain after a number of A-films. But, it's 1953 and studios are cutting high-priced contract players, so I guess it's not surprising that the lovely Crain, who's the one bright spot in this film, left TCF after finishing here. Anyway, the movie itself amounts to an inferior re-make, unless you enjoy occasional camp.