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the audience applauded

Don't Believe the Hype

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Lex Barker, Marie Windsor, Anne Bancroft, Mamie Van Doren, score by Les Baxter,Stuart Whitman in a tiny role, directed by Howard Koch.Filmed like a Perry Mason episode, the movie is interesting but has no real tension, drama and a flaccid climax. And talk, lots and lots of talk. It will be the destruction of pictures, I tell ya. It's still fun to watch, though. Eye candy for any persuasion: Lex Barker in swim trunks and Mamie Van Doren in skin tight dresses. Anne Bancroft early in her career. Given her later work and stature it would have seemed a long shot if this picture was any predictor. Marie Windsor is always a treat, but largely wasted in this as her wheelchair bound brother's caregiver.Easy to guess the perpetrator in this one, but still fun to watch.Goof: Lex Barker takes off in a 56 Chrysler which turns into a 55 Chrysler during the same trip, then back again into a 56 Chrysler as he pulls up to his location.

Thought this 1957 film starring some very great actors would be entertaining or at least a good murder mystery. The film takes place in a Utah Mountain Lodge where there are a large group of tourists and also behind the scenes very sick people running this lodge. The manager is a man who is handicapped and taken care of by his sister who waits on him hand an foot and this man seems to hate all kinds of women and is also a mental case. One night, a girl is murdered and slashed to death with a knife multiple times and it looks like they have a serial killer on their hands. Lex Baxter, Anne Bancroft and Mamie Van Doren all add a great deal to this story with their great supporting actors roles. There are other murders and the film goes completely around in circles until you have already figured out who the killer is and you can't wait for the film to end.

"The Girl in the Black Stockings" is a B movie, and I don't give it the tremendous historical significance one of the other reviewers did. It's obviously made cheaply, and the story is awkward. Directed by Howard Koch, it has a surprising lack of pace. The stars are Lex Barker, Anne Bancroft, John Dehner, Ron Randell, Marie Windsor and Mamie Van Doren. The plot concerns murders at a resort - in fact, the film begins with the discovery of a dead body, and several more follow. Dehner plays the sheriff. The resort is owned by a man with hysterical paralysis (Randell) and his sister (Windsor), who takes care of him. There's a Barrymore-type actor preparing for a comeback with the help of a va-va-va-voom blonde (Van Doren), and several guests, including Barker and Bancroft, who apparently have some sort of history together.The acting is okay with the exception of a very young Bancroft, who smartly underplays what could have been an extremely over the top character. Barker was very handsome and fit, but after reading that Lana Turner threw him out when she learned he was abusing her daughter Cheryl, it's hard to watch him. Most of the characters really aren't fleshed out enough to give the actors something to work with. Stuart Whitman has a small part, as does Dan Blocker, who plays a bartender.Not great.

THE GIRL IN BLACK STOCKINGS and SCREAMING MIMI, both made at the tail-end of the American Film Noir cycle (1941-1958), predicted something wicked this way comes -a savage darkness that would reach fever pitch in Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO just two years later. This kind of "noir" would eventually be mirrored in the Italian gialli of the '60s and '70s before finally coming home to roost with Brian DePalma's DRESSED TO KILL in 1980 and beyond. THE GIRL IN BLACK STOCKINGS is a lynch-pin and unique for a number of reasons. Female serial killers are a rarity in real life -and rarer still in films up to that time- and she's a brutal sex-slayer of women no less, possibly a film first. The film's "Americana" Utah resort locations (with wardrobe by "The Pink Poodle of Kenab") are used to excellent sun-shiny effect; the outdoor scenes reflect a "normalcy" that belies the darker indoor melodrama and the film's stark B&W low-budget TV look and feel shows up in THE SCREAMING MIMI as well, accounting for a lot of their dark charms. The "gender confusion" of these films manipulate the audience shamelessly in much the same way PSYCHO would and shows that horrible things can happen in broad daylight, a shower -or a lighted room. Midway through THE GIRL IN BLACK STOCKINGS, the killer opens the door to a couple's room and watches while they make out. After getting a voyeur's thrill that sets the twisted psyche raging, the killer barges in, knocks the man out and butchers the girl!Lawyer Lex Barker (more a giallo hero than a noir anti-hero), in Utah to get away from the rat-race of L.A., gets sucked into a whirlpool of sex and savagery in a shocking opening sequence that sees him use his cigarette lighter in the dark to bring to light the mutilated body of a woman. His date, runaway bride Anne Bancroft, is in Utah escaping a marriage where her husband made her do such "shameful" things that she had to escape him. There's no dearth of suspects and potential victims, everyone has sexual hang-ups and the cast plays those hang-ups to the hilt. The resort's owner, Ron Randall, hates women -he actually became paralyzed because one left him. His sister, Marie Windsor, caresses and kisses his brow the way a wife would -and it was she who drove her brother's woman away. A Native American ranch-hand hates all women because he cared for, and tended to, Randall until Windsor hired Bancroft to do it. Hmmm... There's a young buck recently released from prison (who hasn't had a woman in two years!), an aging Addison De Witt-type actor and his Miss Caswell (Mamie Van Doren), the sheriff and other various and sundry guests. Life is cheap in this compact thriller. Some of the cast get taken out between sex-slayings just to keep the film in high gear. A private investigator drowns in the hotel's pool and the ex-convict gets backed into a buzz-saw at the lumber-mill where he works. A fantastic ending rises from the murk when Annie's husband (Stuart Whitman) comes to fetch her, explaining that she just escaped from the nut-house. He had to put her there after their wedding night. It was S-E-X that flipped Annie. Just like Norman Bates in PSYCHO ...and Yolanda Lang in SCREAMING MIMI ...and Dr. Elliot in DRESSED TO KILL.The tale is not a great mystery -isn't it always the one you'd least expect? The wheelchair-bound killer had already been done to death ever since Warner Bros. DOCTOR X way back in 1932 so that lets Randall out. Who or what was left besides Bancroft? The blistering Utah sun? What's interesting here is that Anne Bancroft plays the same "mouse" she did in 1952's DON'T BOTHER TO KNOCK -only this time, it's the mouse and not the platinum blonde bimbo (Van Doren here) that has a few mental screws loose. This trashy, lurid barrel of fun can't reely be appreciated in just one sitting. Once you know that Anne Bancroft's the culprit, watch her throughout the film and catch the clues she's trying to give us that she's the killer. See who she looks daggers at and why. Look closely when Lex attempts to embrace or kiss her. Best scene: Mamie Van Doren drunk at the dinner table, throwing herself on paralyzed Ron Randall. His horrified look, and the mixed deep-dish looks of the other guests (freaking out for sexual reasons of their own) in freeze-frame is priceless! Scenes like this have been spoofed many times- a near-analogy would be a room full of gangsters all reaching under their coats for their rod at the same time in a crowded nightclub. Look for Dan Blocker (Bonanza's Hoss) as the bartender. The film reeks of S-E-X ...wholesome and otherwise. There's some lingering shots of Lex Barker in his bathing trunks and the Va-Va-Voom attributes of Mamie Van Doren are often on display. The violence quotient is high and although nothing's shown (for too long, anyway) it's not hard to get the drift and creep out. "Slaughtered like a side of beef. Throat slashed ...even her arms and legs." Anne Bancroft, as well as the rest of the cast, are in top form giving it all they've got in their respective ways. THE GIRL IN BLACK STOCKINGS is seminal -and "killer" for so many reasons and in so many ways...