Vicki

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.

"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?

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.

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.

"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.