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"I Wake Up Screaming" is a weird, gaudy, creepy movie. One might call it one of a kind. But it is, in fact, not: "Vicki" is a remake. There are some differences in the storyline but it's different primarily because of casting: It's creative and bizarre in the original and pretty generic in the remake.

Carole Landis and Betty Grable have an authentically pulp look in "Wake." Jeanne Crain and Jean Peters look like sisters. They're both pretty but bland looking. Richard Boone is in the Laird Creger role. He's odd looking, to be sure. He refers to the man who brought the murdered girl from waitress to glamorous star as "pretty boy." He's prettier than Boone (who was a fine actor) but he's nothing special. His lack of color is at the heart of "Vicki's" failure.

Alexander D'Arcy looks great as the actor who also had a thing for Vicki. It's amazing that well over ten years earlier he'd played Irene vocal coach in the sublime "The Awful Truth."

Aaron Spelling (yes, THE Aaron Spelling) is effective and noirish as the whacked-out desk clerk at Vicki's apartment building. But when it comes to whacked-out, no one can top Elisha Cook, Jr., who played this role in the original.

The main problem is that anyone who's seen "I Wake Up Screaming" will know exactly what is going to happen in "Vicki." If anyone reading this happens to want to watch "Vicki" but hasn't yet seen "wake" -- please, watch the first one first.

Both have marvelously tawdry opening credits. "I Wake Up Screaming" has the better ones but "Vicki" is right in there. It's beautifully photographed by Milton Krasner.

I can't even say it's disappointing. What it does it does well enough. Surpassing the original would have taken a miracle.

Vicki (1953)

This film gets a bad rap. It's not brilliant, and it is a weaker version of the bold and gritty "I Wake Up Screaming," but it's beautifully filmed, tightly edited, and it has decent acting throughout.

The one acting exception might be the oddly cast main detective, who as a complex and critical role here, and who is miles from the original performer, Laird Cregar, in 1941. But on the same token I didn't think Betty Grable was convincing in the original, and the role here is filled with an appealing coolness, and a more crystalline beauty, by Jeanne Crain. And it's hard to ignore the astonishing Elisha Cook Jr. in the first version, compared to the awkward and overacted night clerk here.

Comparisons are hard to ignore because the plot is quite identical in both. It's a weird scenario overall, and it demands some forgiveness because of the trick played on the viewer by the detective. "Vicki" is told through a series of flashbacks, many of them, making for a highly constructed and rather choppy experience, which is intentional. The lead male besides the detective is a likable guy, a fairly ordinary fellow despite his position as a bigwig talent promoter in New York. When he is accused of killing the title character (the movie opens with a scene of her corpse being hauled away), it becomes a little Hitchcockian.

But psychology isn't a factor here, and neither is suspense. In fact, there isn't much to grip the viewer besides waiting to see how the plot will unfold, almost as a jigsaw puzzle where the picture in the puzzle doesn't matter so much as the shape of the pieces. Which is too bad. The elements are here for an amazing movie--and an amazing remake, even with today's style of filmmaking. It isn't a disaster, but it lacks a little on every front--except Haller's truly exceptional cinematography--and so we get a decent movie.

But if you like this at all, do see the more impressive (and also flawed) 1941 "I Wake Up Screaming," with a beefy and very different leading man in Victor Mature. And there is an undeniable influence from the slick and far better and more famous 1944 "Laura," complete with its title as a woman's name and a song being written for the movie. If you have seen either predecessor and are simply curious, you won't be ruined or angry if you watch this late noir from 1953, "Vicki." It's pretty good!

Opening sequence is a shot of Times Square with one of the giant billboards plastered with a stories high image of New York "super" model Vicki. Cut to a seedy hotel where a sheet covered body is wheeled out to an ambulance, a toe tag reads Vicki Lynn. Cut to Jersey Shore resort, Richard Boone, NYPD homicide detectiv e, gets out of a taxi looking tired and in need of a vacation, he checks in and is about to go up to his room when he spots the headlines "Vicki Killed". He immediately goes ballistic and phones NY demanding to be put on the case.

Jean Peters, a cute waitress working the late night shift at a typical NYC late night dinner, is discovered by a publicity agent and society columnist. They proceed to make her over into the next "super" model. She becomes an overnight sensation much to the concern of her sister played by Jean Crain and gradually becomes ruthlessly ambitious.

Boone goes on an incensed investigation of Elliot Reid , the Publicity Agent , attempting to railroad him. This is more of a acting ensemble noir rather than visual noir, focusing on relationships, and it lacks much of the stylized noir cinematography or great set pieces that I relish. Regardless of whether or not you are a Richard Boone fan, you'll enjoy his portrayal of an obsessed cop. Peters is good but I still like her better in "Pickup On South Street". All the characters in this film are revealed to be corrupt to some extent.

Before it collapses under the weight of cliché and wooden performances Vicki is a suspenseful whodunit that keeps you second guessing most of the way. In a triumph of form over content this Laura lookalike is textbook economical story telling in its first half hour as tight editing and revealing composition give the film a well ordered pace and a handful of plausible suspects.

Overnight, cafeteria waitress Vicki (Jean Peters) becomes an instant celebrity when she catches the eye of an actor and a theatre critic who promote her. Confident and ambitious she sets her sights on Hollywood but is brutally murdered. An obsessive detective (Richard Boone) demands to be put on the case and his judgment and intent is soon called into question.

Vicki is filled with Freudian and fetish inferences. Suspect intent is ambiguous and the police are brutal in their methodology. All of the characters are petty and unremarkable which levels the playing field most of the way and allows the mystery to flourish. The imagery runs from striking to banal and some of the turns at the end defy logic but for the most part it does what a good mystery does-keep you in the dark for as long as possible.

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....

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.

Let's face it, ELLIOT REID is the last actor I'd expect to replace VICTOR MATURE as the leading man of VICKI--a remake of the Fox film that starred Betty Grable, Victor Mature and Laird Cregar.

Reid's casting is a fatal blow on the believability of the screenplay that has JEANNE CRAIN and Reid as the romantic interest. On the other hand RICHARD BOONE does a marvelous tough guy job as the police detective in love with "Vicki." VICKI is played in rather tough fashion by JEAN PETERS.

The result: JEANNE CRAIN manages to give the most credible performance in this remake--while RICHARD BOONE is properly menacing as the two-fisted detective, but he's really no match for Laird Cregar.

There's a good film noir quality to some stretches of the film, but the low-key lighting usually so effective in this sort of thing is disregarded with brightly lit scenes most of the time--perhaps the fault of director Harry Horner.

As remakes go, it's fair enough--but most fans will prefer the original.

Despite showing the makings of a superior – potentially classic – film noir, Vicki falls just short of that goal. For the second time in the noir cycle, it tells the story of Vicki (or Vicky) Lynn, whose swift rise from hash-slinger to model to toast of the town ends in murder – a crime of passion. It first reached the screen in 1942 under the title I Wake Up Screaming, based on a serialized novel by Steve Fisher. Eleven years later, 20th Century Fox decided on a close remake, which obviously did not go back to the novel but simply freshened up the original script a little – some of the lines remain the same, as do occasional pieces of blocking and shooting.

We first catch site of Vicki staring out languidly from a panorama of posters and billboards that display her face to push luxury items. But almost immediately the glamour turns to ashes as we watch her carried out of her brownstone apartment on a stretcher. Her central role – the haunting linchpin of the drama – is told in flashback (and substantially expanded from that of the previous film version). The role falls to Jean Peters, whose screen career was cut short by her marriage to Howard Hughes; but here, she fails to generate half the magnetism she did in Pickup on South Street, of the same year.

The expansion of Vicki's part is only one of the subtle shifts among the dynamics of the characters. Jeanne Crain, in the early twilight of her stardom, portrays the sensible-shoes sister who cautions Vicki against the false lures of the big town but helps track down her killer. As the publicist who first dangled those lures, making Vicki a shooting star, Elliott Reid can't work up much sympathy as the prime suspect (he's too weak and generic an actor). So the movie's impact rests principally on the homicide cop who carries a secret, smoldering torch for the dead girl – in this version, Richard Boone. Again expanded from the first filming, the performance may be one of the hard-to-cast Boone's best. Not yet victim to the character-actor ugliness that was to befall him, he shoulders his obsession heavily, almost sadly (though he plays much nastier than Laird Cregar did in 1942). And in the small but pivotal role of the desk clerk in the sisters' digs, the earlier Elisha Cook, Jr. is supplanted by Aaron Spelling; Spelling, who would become one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in Hollywood, can't dispel the spell Cook works on us (and excuse those irresistible puns).

The emphasis in Vicki ultimately falls differently from the way it did in I Wake Up Screaming. In 1942, it was offered as a stylish mystery, a Manhattan whodunit. By the early fifties, it had become a story of obsession – a psychological thriller a la Laura, with the same skittishness about the fleeting nature of fame. Whether this change of tone was intentional remains moot, since the script underwent no major renovation. It seems largely the result of the change in cast, with the various roles filled by performers with different strengths – and possibly of directorial nuance. It's a shame this movie stays in obscurity, overshadowed by its forerunner; while neither version achieves the status of Laura, Vicki is by a small margin the more interesting of the two recensions.

A loose remake of I Wake Up Screaming from 1953. Told in flashback, we have the story of a woman, played by Jean Peters, plucked from a diner to become the toast of Broadway but when she's found murdered in her apartment, all eyes dart to the men in her life who facilitated her rise w/a particular hellbent cop, played by Richard Boone, out to get his man no matter how hard he protests. Peters' sister, played by Jeanne Crain, doesn't know who to believe & Boone's persistence to nab the killer starts to scare her even though the killer may be right under her nose. Pretty hard to screw up a story like this so given the lesser known actors on display; Aaron Spelling (?) as a hotel employee who knew Peters & Max Showalter as a journalist still manage to make a mark & make this enterprise an effortless time killer.

Billboard and print model is found dead in her apartment; the New York City police get busy interviewing suspects, though the lieutenant on the case has personal reasons for wanting to find the killer. Adaptation of Steve Fisher's novel "I Wake Up Screaming" (its original title uncredited, perhaps because it was already filmed as such in 1941 with Betty Grable) gets strictly minor-league treatment here. Dwight Taylor's screenplay is uneven; director Harry Horner tends to overcompensate for the script's deficiencies by encouraging his cast to ham it up. Jean Peters, who looks like Jessica Walter and talks tough like Susan Hayward, was an odd choice to play the doomed, would-be starlet. Peters isn't the wide-eyed innocent/hash-slinging waitress the plot suggests, instead coming on with both barrels loaded. As her sister, Jeanne Crain has more of the Cinderella quality Peters should be projecting, and hers is the only substantial acting in the picture. Playing the gruff, snarling lieutenant, Richard Boone is way over-the-top, as is Aaron Spelling in an hysterical role as a wormy desk clerk. Just silly enough to be watchable, though it is never explained why glamorous Vicki is living in that dumpy apartment--nor how her photograph pre-death has managed to land on the cover of every single magazine at the newsstand.

A slick remake of the classic forties noir 'I Wake Up Screaming' with a forties 'psychological' score and a forties flashback structure (one of the flashbacks revealing to the audience what the person telling the flashback would not himself have noticed).

In the Laird Cregar role as the malevolent, permanently hatted detective Richard Boone is aptly described as "the vulture", while the Elisha Cook role is played by future TV mogul Aaron Spelling. (Ironically in real life Good Sister Jeanne Crain led a very sedate private life, while Bad Sister Jean Peters soon gave up acting to marry Howard Hughes.)

"Vicki" is the remake of "I wake up screaming" .

It's an excellent thriller,part whodunit and part film noir ;not only it features two fifties beauties,Jeanne Crain and Jean Peters ,but it also contains one of the most disturbing portrayal of a cop masterfully played by Richard Boone.

"Vicki" is wrapped in a deadly atmosphere where the keynote seems to be "mourning": the flowers in the cemetery or the altar complete with candles and photographs.

The cop's hatred knows no bounds .He cannot forgive Steve ("Pretty boy" ) for being a handsome man whereas himself can only dream of dating the stars (a two-bit star in this case for she was first a waitress in a cheap restaurant).Sometimes the viewer stops and wonders whether this detective is really on the "right" side or whether he gets on with a merciless revenge .Who killed Vicki in the end?

It's Richard Boone's film, an excellent actor in his later films. Here, very young, he plays a disturbed cop, in a little bit exaggerated manner. The other actors are good, and the girls, Jeanne Crain and Juan Peters, are beautiful. It's not the perfect movie, it's not a masterpiece, the script is debatable, but it's worth seeing.

Richard Boone singlehandedly lifts this modest but engaging whodunit to a higher plane: from a regular "genre piece" to a psychological study on obsession, delusion and loneliness. The cop he plays (also a suspect) is creepy, disturbing, and ultimately pitiable. In addition, Jean Peters (the murder victim, seen only in flashbacks) is one of the sexiest actresses of her era. *** out of 4.

Jean peters is vicki lynn, model, singer. Right at the open, we see her lifeless body being carried out on a stretcher. Now we go to flashback to review the suspects. Elliott reid (malone, in gentlemen prefer blondes) is steve christopher, p.r. Guy. Jeanne crain is vicki's sister. Who doesn't approve of this sudden fame. Robin ray ( alex d'arcy) is the big movie star, who likes to be seen with vicki. Columist larry is max showalter. He was also ray cutler in niagara! So when vicki gets invited to hollywood to make a film, someone did her in. For what reason? Vicki's sister. The lieutenant. Don't forget the creepy desk clerk at the apartment building. So many prime suspects. It's really good. Directed by harry horner. He had won two oscars for best art direction. Based on the book by steve fisher (as well as the 1941 film).

From 20th Century Fox, Vicki is the 1953 B remake of I Wake Up Screaming.

It's an unintentional camp classic as far as I'm concerned, for a couple of reasons.

The foremost reason is the identity of the killer.

The second for me is the performance of Richard Boone as a brain dead police officer.

The third is, when the cab pulls up to the curb, it hits a suitcase, and the director didn't retake the shot.

The story is a good one. A beautiful young woman (Jean Peters) is targeted for stardom in New York by a publicist, Steve Christopher (Elliot Reid). The day after she announces she's leaving for Hollywood, she's murdered, leaving behind her grieving sister (Jeanne Crain).

There are plenty of suspects. Cornell (Richard Boone) is set on Steve and thinks nothing of just walking into his apartment, watching him sleep, planting brass knuckles, and questioning him for hours on end mercilessly. Cornell himself used to watch Vicki when she worked in a cafeteria. There's a Broadway actor Robin Ray (Alexander D'Arcy) and a columnist (Max Showalter) who are also suspects.

There was a one-year difference in age between Peters and Crain. Crain is the sensible sister, but she easily could have been the hot glamorous one. Peters is gorgeous in some fabulous gowns.

The cast can't touch the original one, but director Harry Horner did fine by the film. It's entertaining- especially the big reveal.

Like most remakes, this one is a poor imitation of the original, primarily due to some unfortunate casting, especially in the choice of Elliot Reid in the role of Steve Christopher (originally Frankie Christopher, played by Victor Mature). Richard Conte might have been a better choice. There is virtually NO chemistry between Crain (who plays Jill, Vicki's sister) and Reid, which makes her desperation to prove Christopher innocent of Vicki's murder fall rather flat.

Although Boone makes a credible attempt at the 'obsessive creepiness' of Ed Cornell, it is certainly short of the outstanding performance of veteran 'creepy character' actor, Laird Cregar in the original.

The same can be said of the choice of Aaron Spelling (makes you see why he went into producing and gave up acting) as Harry Williams, played by Elisha Cook, Jr. in "I Wake Up Screaming".

All in all, not worth the time to watch this pale by comparison retread unless, like myself, you just want to make your own judgments on the differences between the two films.

I had never heard of this film or of Director Harry Horner. The only reason I watched it was Jean Peters, certainly one of the most beautiful women I have ever had the privilege to watch on screen.

Although not particularly imaginative or original, VICKI offers a whodunnit with a strong psychological component. Direction by Horner is admirable, extracting superb performances from Boone and Reid. Peters is stunningly beautiful, actually sings (and does it well, too!) but her part is short. Crain comes across as a steady but unremarkable performer.

Quite liked the script with the typical flashbacks of the time, and with interesting motivations for the murder.

The B&W photography deserves every plaudit.

Recommended!