Vicki (1953)

Elisha Cook Jr. as Harry Williams and Laird Cregar as Ed Cornell (named after Cornell Woolrich) do a much better job than Richard Boone and Aaron Spelling. Cregar, who died tragically as a result of a crash diet at the age of 31. I also prefer Elliott Reed in "Vicki" over Victor Mature in "I Wake Up Sreaming or "Hot Spot." I can sum it up this way. I would revisit "I Wake Up Sccreaming" but wouldn't watch "Vicki." The novel by Steve Fisher translates well to the screen. Finally, I don't consider this to be a film-noir picture.

This morning I watched VICKI, Fox's reworking of I WAKE UP SCREAMING. It is one remake that does not come close to the original, in my humble opinion. It's a shame, too, because a good cast is assembled-- Jeanne Crain, Jean Peters, Richard Boone, etc.The greatest problem: they all over-act, even Crain who usually is much more restrained in her other pictures. She can't even pick up the phone and say 'yes' or 'I'll be right down' without heavily breathing every word, and over enunciating every syllable. And we have countless interrogation scenes that wind up with the characters screaming, sometimes screeching, just because they're told they did something they obviously did not do. We get hysterical rants from more than one person on the hot seat shouting 'THAT'S NOT TRUE! I DID NOT DO IT!' I can only imagine how many words in the script were typed in all capital letters and underlined, followed with goodness knows how many exclamation marks.As if the characters throwing hissy fits was not enough drama for the viewer, we are also treated to plenty of door slamming. It's one moment after another of over-gesticulated posturing. Though, strangely, the death scene, where Crain discovers Peters' body is underplayed. That is when you would expect a girl to get hysterical upon learning her sister has been murdered in cold blood. Instead, she quickly turns away and the scene that plays out is about the other guy in the room trying to convince her of his innocence. Forget the lifeless body on the floor, that part of the plot is over.But these issues aside, the biggest stretch in this story is the way the detective (played by Boone) oversteps his authority. In one scene he is watching the innocent suspect sleep in bed. Never mind the fact that he is breaking and entering, or is there without a warrant. He wants to listen to whether or not the other guy will mumble a confession in his sleep. Plus there are many other scenes where the detective ruthlessly hounds Crain and anyone else he wants to cast suspicion over. I would think that such harassment would be against the law.Then we get to a scene late in the picture where the switchboard operator admits he was in the room when Peters was killed. Not too astonishingly, he was in the closet. And he gets all worked up when he thinks Vicki is still alive. His eyes bug out to the point they are like golf balls glued on to his face. He then sobs pathetically on the counter before they haul him out.Of course, as anyone who has seen the original film knows, the switchboard operator is not the true culprit. We cut to a concluding sequence in Boone's apartment where our trusty detective is found to have built a shrine to the late ingenue. And once again, where we would expect dramatic fireworks, we instead get a very underplayed bit of business with him mourning softly while holding flowers and admitting his heinous deeds.What's truly heinous is that Fox attempted to remake a film that was perfectly fine in the first place and needed no updating. And that a cast of great performers is reduced to pitiful contrived camp. The fact that this remake was produced at all and turned out as poorly as it did is the real crime.

"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.

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.