Vicki (1953)

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

***SPOILERS*** On his first vacation in years New York cop Let. Ed Cornell, Richard Boone, sees the local newspapers headline story of the brutal murder of top fashion model Vicki Lynn, Jean Peters. It's then without as much as a second thought Let. Cornell drops everything and shoots back to the Big Apple in trying to solve Vicki's murder.With Vicki's publicist Steve Christopher, Elliott Reid, found at Vicki's murder scene, her hotel room, it becomes very obvious to Let. Cornell that he's the murderer and doesn't bother looking for anyone else. Even though Christopher emphatically denies killing Vicki saying that he just happened to come upon the scene after Vicki's killer left the room. Despite being brutalized by a brutish Let. Cornell, who in some scenes looks and behaves like the famed movie Creeper Rando Hatton, Christopher sticks to his story; As him being the wrong man in the wrong place at the right time, for Let. Cornell, when Vicki was murdered!It's later when Christopher checks out Vicki's murder for himself that he runs into her big sister Jill, Jeanne Crain, whom she shared her hotel room with. It's Jill that informs Christopher about this creepy looking guy who was aways watching her little sister when she was a waitress at the Webster Cafeteria in midtown Manhattan. Even though the very outwardly and sociable Vicki took it all in stride Jill was very concerned about him and what he had in mind for her kid sister! It later turned out that this weirdo was non other then Let. Ed Cornell! The man who insisted to be placed in charge of the Vicki Lynn murder case!Re-make of the 1941 film noir classic "I Wake up Screaming" the movie Vicki is pretty good on its own merits. Jean Peters is absolutely gorgeous as the ill fated Vicki Lynn whom men just go completely bananas over at the very sight of her. In fact it was Vicki's haunting and smoldering, as well as all-American girl, good looks that in the end lead to her brutal murder! Let. Cornell had it in for Steve Christopher even before Vicki's murder in him being jealous of Christopher being Vicki's lover, which in fact he wasn't, while he, an admitted Peeping Tom, was left out in the cold, with his raincoat, or the outside looking in.****SPOILERS**** As we and Christopher later learn it was Let. Cornell who was at the Vicki Lynn murder scene doing his usual Peeping Tom act by staying hidden in her closet. And it was Let. Cornell, in not wanting to expose himself, who let her killer go free. Not wanting to be exposed as some kind of pervert, why was he hiding in Vicki's hotel room in the first place, Let.Cornell instead turned his sights on the innocent Steve Christopher who dropped in to see Vicki after her killer checked out! Not because Christopher murdered Vicki but because it was him, not Let. Ed Cornell, whom she was in love with!

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.

"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.

A beautiful waitress (Jean Peters) is spotted through the front window of an all-night diner by a couple of public relations types, who decide to make her into a high fashion model. After a few weeks, her image is plastered everywhere, for cigarettes, perfume, etc. The Cinderella story ends abruptly with her murder. The film mixes the mystery of who did it, because all the men who knew her fell for her, with the obsessive desire of the homicide detective (Richard Boone) who, it turns out, was watching her nightly through the same window, but never went inside to ask her out or even to introduce himself, thus scaring the poor girl, who thought he was some kind of weirdo. It turns out, for the benefit of the film, he was, and that, by far, is the film's most intriguing aspect.