Stark Fear

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!

"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.

The title, date, subject matter and the presence of Beverly Garland and Kenneth Tobey led me to expect a rough, tough woman-in-peril psycho thriller; which it certainly has elements of, the script including words like 'rape' and 'pervert', the rape taking place in the graveyard of a creepy small southern town straight out of 'Deliverance'.

But heroine Ellen Winslow also pulls herself up by her bootstraps and gets a responsible job, and has several heart to hearts with manless female buddy Ruth Rogers. The film's troubled production in Oklahoma shows in the often disjointed and overwritten end product, and it has a wholly inadequate music score that is often either inappropriately jaunty or simply not up the demands of the dramatic moments. But some of the photography is excellent, and most of the supporting cast (presumably recruited locally) turn in memorable work.

Beverly Garland is mentally abused by her husband Skip Homeier. She has taken on a job under Kenneth Tobey to make ends meet, but Homeier sees it as another excuse to have a go at her. Garland doesn't know what to do to please Homeier, but her upbringing tells her she must stick with him, despite her best friend Hannah Stone telling her otherwise. When Homeier disappears, and his boss tells her he is about to lose his job because of it, she goes in search of him. She goes to the small rural town he grew up in where she is confronted with his past and even has to deal with rape.

This was the final movie I watched from the 6-movie 'Weird-Noir' DVD set. It is not all that weird and really not all that noir, but more of a psychological horror/exploitation movie. What sets it apart from the rest of the movies is that it seems to have had a (relatively speaking) bigger budget, as well as more talented actors. Homeier is a truly despicable sadist, Garland portrays her naive character well, and Tobey is a solid character actor (I didn't recognize his name, but I've seen his face dozens of times). It also has a longer runtime at 85 minutes, which is too long, the movie has some rather slow sequences and could've used some tightening and more rigorous editing. 65-70 minutes seems like a more appropriate length.

The movie is pretty direct in showing Homeier's mental abuse, and gets downright ugly when it comes to Garland's rape, and especially Homeier's reaction to it (which is filmed really effectively, in probably the best shot of the entire movie). There is also a nice chase sequence between the two which ends in a jukebox repair shop, which does feel kinda weird because it feels like it's filmed in seedy big city alleyways, while it takes place in a small town with less than 1000 inhabitants. But suffice it to say, there is no ambiguity in Homeier's character, and one wonders what Garland saw in him originally that made her want to marry him.

It's a bit of a frustrating watch. The movie has some good things, and the principal actors know their craft well. But it's way too slow, the plot makes no sense in too many places, and it looks flat aside from a few nice shots. According to Garland the movie was frustrating to make as well, with original (one-time) director, Ned Hockman, walking away from the set angrily, leaving Skip Homeier to finish directing the movie. It was her least favorite movie to do. I can't recommend this one. 5/10

Ned Hockman's STARK FEAR is yet another obscure low budget "psycho- thriller" heavily influenced by PSYCHO and not just because B-movie babe Beverly Garland resembles Marion Crane while looking at herself in the rear view mirror on her way to a sleazy motel. Husband Skip Homeier (who took over directing when Hockman quit) is a sadistic "pervert" (read homosexual) with a mother fixation and Bev's a plucky masochist who blames herself for everything that happens. When Skip goes missing, she looks for him (God only knows why) in an Oklahoma hometown just this side of DELIVERANCE where she's raped in a cemetery by his childhood friend. Unbeknownst to his ravaged wife, her husband's secretly watching in the shadows of his mother's grave and keeps her bloody bra as a souvenir. He's later holed up in a motel room with her rapist and no explanation's given (connect the dots) as Garland goes home and throws herself into her work where her boss (genre fave Kenneth Tobey) falls in love with her ...but he's got a secret, too, of course. There's no end to this woman's woes.

The IMDb Trivia on the film says it was Beverly Garland's least favorite of all her movies but I don't know why since she gives it all she's got and turns in a sincere performance in a film that's equal parts sleaze and hokum. Bev's best friend actually tells her to stay with her abusive husband rather than end up a spinster like herself and after Garland is raped, she, of course, blames herself and not her attacker. And although she loves him, she won't go all the way with her boss because she's (gasp) still married. Geez Louise. A truly bizarre "shocker" that looks like it's trying to say something, I just don't know what.