Le crime était signé

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!

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.

"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.

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.

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.