Stark Fear

Ellen Winslow (Beverly Garland) has had enough of her controlling husband Gerald (Skip Homeier) after he gets all cranky on his birthday because she took a job with a Cliff Kane (Kenneth Tobey), a former business rival of his. He says he wants a divorce and splits, but she goes off to find him when his boss says he might be fired. She starts to delve into his past and realizes everything he has told her is lies. Meanwhile, with hubby nowhere to be found, she starts falling for Cliff. This Oklahoma-lensed flick has a few good scenes and some nice B&W photography. Oklahoma folks will no doubt get a kick out of the locations. The creepiest bit has Ellen trapped inside an organ repair shop while being stalked and the machines turn on. But the plot is too foreign to me in terms of its drama. I mean, the lead lady's big conflict is whether or not she should see someone while -- GASP! -- she is still legally married but separated. How the times have changed!

This weird little B&W film noir is a low budget tuffy. Beverly Garland gives a strong performance as a very messed up woman with self esteem issues married to a very cruel man. This is not a comedy - it's not even a drama - it is a wow-can-you-believe-this-woman's-luck movie. There is dialogue that makes you laugh right out loud, the direction is clumsy, there times when the score is so wrong for what is going on during the story that you wince - all in all - a fun fest for lovers of strange and offbeat cinema. B-movie actor Kenneth Tobey (the lead in the original The Thing) actually plays the nice guy in this and Garland's husband is one of the most despicable males ever on screen - in fact, aside from Tobey, almost every man in this movie is a sleazy, rapin;, chain smoking drunk. Yep. The film also has great character names that get said a lot - like Harvey Suggett and Cliff Cain. The marriage scenes make Revolutionary Road or Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf look like Neil Simon plays.

The title, date, subject matter and the presence of Beverly Garland and Kenneth Tobey led me to expect a rough, tough woman-in-peril psycho thriller; which it certainly has elements of, the script including words like 'rape' and 'pervert', the rape taking place in the graveyard of a creepy small southern town straight out of 'Deliverance'.

But heroine Ellen Winslow also pulls herself up by her bootstraps and gets a responsible job, and has several heart to hearts with manless female buddy Ruth Rogers. The film's troubled production in Oklahoma shows in the often disjointed and overwritten end product, and it has a wholly inadequate music score that is often either inappropriately jaunty or simply not up the demands of the dramatic moments. But some of the photography is excellent, and most of the supporting cast (presumably recruited locally) turn in memorable work.

Beverly Garland finds her husband, Skip Homeier, has abadoned her. When she goes looking for her, she finds a bunch of people whoink he's a swell fellow, and don't understand why he never introduced them to his wife. Eventually she shrugs her shoulders, gets a job, and discovers Homeie is planning to kill he.

I don't undestand why a divorce won't answer. butis set in Texas. The movie seems querulous and whiny, although Miss Garland is not. Perhaps this attitude is due to the fact that the original director, Ned Hockman, quarreled with the cast, en walked off, leaving Homeier to finish the shoot.

(1962) Stark Fear PSYCHOLOGICAL DRAMA

Co-produced and directed by Ned Hockman has Gerald Winslow (Skip Homeier) scolding his wife, Ellen Winslow (Beverly Garland) for accepting a desk job from his rival Cliff Kane (Kenneth Tobey) during when she was trying to celebrate his birthday. And before he breaks up with her, he gets more rough with her, even slapping her around. And then after she makes a call to Cliff to turn down for a job, it is not long before he scolds her some more before he demands for a divorce. She then confides to her best friend, Ruth (Hannah Stone) pledging for her job back. There is no mention about dividing up assets or the house they use to live in, for Gerald appears to just like disappear. When she is informed by her husband's bosses her husband is this close to getting himself fired, she then goes on a search rant, just so she can tell him of the news. And while she does this dumb thing by visiting the same city where he grew up in, she then gets herself assaulted by an old friend of his we find out later it was all part of Gerald's plan in the first place.

If it was not for Ellen's best friend Ruth, she would have made so many dumb and idiotic choices it would not even be worth mentioning. She neither calls the police when her husband assaults her or that during that era or on that environment the police do not care whether women are assaulted or not. Anyways, the does have a good ending but one would have to go through a lot of nonsense to get their. 5 out of a 10 is a respectable thumbs down for me despite those good things.