i must have seen a different film!!

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

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!

VICKI (guess they thought changing "Vicky" to "Vicki" would look more modern or something) plays like a watered-down version of the original I WAKE UP SCREAMING (IWUS), though it tries real hard to remind you of another classic 20th Century-Fox thriller, 1944's LAURA. A LAURA-like painting of title character Vicki Lynn can be seen behind the opening credits. Listen carefully to the background dialogue during the scene where our protagonists hide in a movie theater (we don't see the film-within-the-film, we just hear it): the dialogue is from LAURA! To be fair, VICKI is watchable, but despite the filmmakers' best efforts to evoke superior Fox mysteries, it's ultimately pedestrian and forgettable, lacking the pizazz of its predecessors. Director Harry Horner, who was also the Oscar-winning art director and production designer of THE HUSTLER and THE HEIRESS (THE HUSTLER AND THE HEIRESS -- now that sounds like a fun picture! :-)), worked from Dwight Taylor's earlier IWUS script, this time given a little uncredited tweaking by Leo Townsend. Perhaps Townsend's the one responsible for the nice touch of having Vicki's face plastered all over almost every frame of the film, on posters, magazine covers, etc., even after her death, until the film's wry final shot.However, while the actors are capable and easy on the eyes, the principals just don't have the edge, charisma, and screen presence of the original 1941 leads. In the title role, unlike IWUS's luminous Carole Landis, Howard Hughes protégée Jean Peters is just another pretty girl, albeit with ambition and a hard edge. Indeed, as Vicki's nice, sensible sister Jill, Jeanne Crain is more classically beautiful than Peters. If I were a promoter, Jill's the sister I would've been trying to groom for stardom! :-) But maybe that was the point: our promoter hero is trying to manufacture a star out of the raw material that is Vicki, like so many promoters and stars then and now. Film noir historian Foster Hirsch suggests this, too, in the DVD's interesting commentary track.Speaking of our hero, instead of Victor Mature's beleaguered promoter hero Frankie Christopher, formerly Botticelli, VICKI gives us Elliott Reid as Steve Christopher (a tip of the hat to source author Steve Fisher?). Reid was a light leading man best known for comedy. That didn't necessarily have to be a liability, considering the story has comic moments, but alas, I'm afraid it is. I wanted to root for Reid, but he comes across as a lightweight in every way, pleasant without being memorable. Heck, I'm trying to picture him in my mind right now and I'm having a hard time, that's how little impression he made on me.The sexual tension of IWUS is virtually nonexistent here. I've enjoyed the attractive Peters in more down-to-earth roles such as the 1953 thriller NIAGARA, but here I didn't find her irresistible in either physical or emotional allure. While you can't help but pick up on IWUS's Frankie, Larry, and Robin being drawn to Vicky, in VICKI, the lure somehow isn't as strong between Vicki and benefactors Steve; Robin, played here by suave Egyptian actor Alex D'Arcy; and Larry, played likably by one of our household's fave character actors, Casey Adams. Fun Facts: Under his real name, Max Showalter, Adams co-wrote VICKI's instrumental theme, and he'd also appeared with Peters in NIAGARA, in which Marilyn Monroe commanded the screen in an atypical bad-girl role. Crain and Reid come across like a nice-enough couple, but they simply don't have the sizzle and sparkle that Victor Mature and Betty Grable had between them in the original. At least Carl Betz of THE DONNA REED SHOW is a likable presence as Steve's cop pal.Frankly, the antagonists are far more memorable than the protagonists. Richard Boone stands out most as obsessed cop Ed Cornell. True, Boone is no Laird Cregar; he's nowhere near as physically imposing or silver-tongued as Cregar was. Still, Boone's rough, harsh quality gives VICKI much-needed energy as he snarlingly invades people's space with wild abandon. Seeing vicious Boone zero in on bland Reid is like watching a feral dog attack a pampered puppy; it's not a fair fight, whereas IWUS's Mature and Cregar are more exciting to watch, being more evenly matched physically and temperamentally as well as in the charisma and screen presence departments. (Even Hirsch agrees in his commentary. Sharp guy, that Hirsch! :-)) Aaron Spelling's no slouch, either, as he takes over Elisha Cook Jr.'s role. Yes, you read that right: before he became one of the most successful TV producers of all time, Aaron Spelling was a quirky young actor, and he makes a great weirdo here. Occasionally, Spelling chews the scenery, but at least he's not insipid like most of the rest of the cast.Even the film's lighting and staging is flat and bland, except for the expressionistic lighting of the interrogation and the night scenes. There aren't even any little fun quirks, like the use of "Over the Rainbow" in the original. My verdict: I WAKE UP SCREAMING is the clear winner here, with VICKI worth a look primarily for completists.

***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!

"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.