Stark Fear

"Stark Fear" is the story of Ellen Winslow (Beverly Garland), who hungers for affection but finds herself chained to a hate-warped husband Gerald (Skip Homeier.)Once Skip shows up as the husband, there is little doubt where this one will go, as Skip was always scary, even when he wasn't playing scary characters.

Ellen gets a job, which is more than George seems to be able to do, but he disappears in a jealous rage, but Ellen's sense of loyalty and duty won't let her abandon him---she intends to stick by her man---so she goes looking for him in his home town. Gerald attacks her anew, and she is subjected to painful humiliation and abuse by Gerald's best friend, lecherous old Harvey Suggett, at a Comanche tribal dance. The hidden Gerald watches with sadistic delight.

Ellen buries herself in her work, to forget her anguish, and falls in love with her employer, Cliff Kane (Ken Tobey), and they both take a business weekend at the "Little Switzerland" resort in Arkansas, which may or may not feature both yodeling and hog-calling. But Ellen and Cliff, good for them, are not willing to let love slip over into a shoddy affair. Shoddy does not bother Gerald, especially when Hannah Stone is wandering about in her undies.

Ellen tells Gerald that he is too emotionally warped for marriage and divorces him, and to prove she is wrong he tries to kill her. No one can go around calling a Skip Homeier character warped and not expect to pay some consequences. She also learns that he witnessed her humiliation by Harvey Suggett at the Comanche dance.

What's a poor girl to do? Marie Windsor would have cashed Skip's ticket in the first reel.

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!

Beverly Garland is winning in the role of Ellen Winslow, a young woman married to a vile, insecure man named Jerry (Skip Homeier), who doesn't like that she got a job when he seemingly made enough money to support both of them. Jerry soon disappears, and poor Ellen is obliged to search for the bum when his boss demands that SHE do something about it! Ellen then runs into a variety of sordid, unsavoury characters while falling in love with her new boss, Cliff Kane (the great Kenneth Tobey).

Ellen is the kind of character that would surely anger feminists, as she tends to blame herself for everything. That said, there's no doubt that Beverly still deeply commits herself to this performance. Ellen IS sympathetic, enough so that you wish she'd have more moments where she got tough and stood up for herself. At her lowest point, she gets raped by Jerry's old friend Harvey Suggett while combing his hometown.

Homeier is excellent at making his character truly despicable. Within seconds of meeting him, we're hoping he comes to a bad end. Tobey is as engaging as he's ever been, although even his character has a "history" that may have colored his actions. The supporting cast consists of unknowns, although the guy playing Suggett is suitably creepy, and Hannah Stone has an effective presence as Ruth, Ellens' friend.

Although "Stark Fear" may wear its influence right on its sleeve (right down to leading lady Garland resembling Janet Leighs' Marion Crane), it does have a very seedy atmosphere that helps to carry it through an amusing 86 minute run time. It's no lost classic, but it should entertain lovers of low budget cinema reasonably well.

Seven out of 10.

STARK FEAR stars Beverly Garland as Ellen Winslow, the unfortunate wife of the infantile, sadistic maniac known as Gerald (Skip Homeier), whose hateful madness knows no bounds.

Enter Cliff Kane (Kenneth Tobey), the nice man for whom Ellen might have worked, if Gerald had allowed it. Cliff knows all about Gerald's issues, and has had just about enough. When Gerald goes missing, Ellen goes looking for him, and the seedy fun begins.

This is a nice, dark journey behind the facade of a rural small town. Mysterious and sort of creepy, Ellen's search leads her into the underbelly of life. Ms. Garland plays it straight, with increasing desperation. The final revelation is quite satisfying...

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.