Stark Fear (1962) Online

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.

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

"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.

Kind of creepy. Low budget film noir directed by Ned Hockman. Filmed mostly around Oklahoma City, Norman and Lexington Oklahoma. A black and white drama about an unemployed man Gerald Winslow (Skip Homeier)that physically and emotionally tortures his wife Ellen(Beverly Garland). She craves her husband's love, but his sadistic pleasures forces her into the arms of a former business partner and her new boss(Kenneth Tobey). Photography is grainy and some of the acting miserable. The story is interesting and well paced. Garland is perfect as the pathetic wife that just wants a little attention. She survives mental torture, rape and humiliation to find out that her husband has a fixation on his dead mother. Homeier is down right devilish and his first scene lets you know pretty much what to expect from him. The guy is a jerk, creep and sadistic low life. Also in the cast: Paul Scovil, Hannah Stone and George Clow.

"Stark Fear," made in Oklahoma in 1962, was a one-shot feature for both director Ned Hockman (who later taught film production at the University of Oklahoma) and screenwriter Dwight V. Swain. It is a gloriously sleazy little number that ought to be taken up by feminist film criticism pronto, because the male of the species has seldom been depicted so viciously. With one exception, every man in the film is a louse and a rapist, potential or actual. Poor Beverly Garland suffers so much in this film, at the hands of sicko sadist hubby Skip Homeier and assorted other lowlifes, that you would think she would hightail it out of Oklahoma, if not off the planet. But no, she sticks around for worse! - although she eventually recovers her pluck with the help of a female confidante (in what is genuinely one of the more interesting depictions of women's friendship in that era).

The film verges on being a "roughie," a style that was starting to emerge at that time and was full-blown by 1967. It has quite a bit in common with other contemporary local productions such as Herk Harvey's "Carnival of Souls" and Steve Cochran's "Tell Me in the Sunlight." And what is it with psychos and sadists in the early Sixties? "Psycho" (1960), "Peeping Tom" (1960), "The Couch" (1962), "The Sadist" (1963), on and on.

Beverly Garland is just looking for her husband after a nasty spat where he belittles her after she agrees to quit a job. Jerry is a tense, bitter, and verbally abusive louse perhaps this way because of his upbringing by a pariah of a mother he worshipped. Every where she goes, men grope, grab, attempt to molest, and jerk around Garland, whether it be at a swinger's party, in Gerald's home town, or wherever it may be, it just seems as if the lusty eyes, behavior, and hands of creeps show up to bother her as she searches for a man who seems to have become enemy #1. After a heinous rape at a graveyard (as Jerry watches from behind the tombstone of his dead mother, the scumbag!), at the hands of her husband's sleazy old town chum, Harvey Saggett, Garland returns home to the city, trying to pick up the pieces of the shambles that is her life soon deciding to work for Cliff Kane (the great B-movie actor, Kenneth Tobey, one of those actors I cheer inside when he shows up in on screen) for an oil company. Her life and career take off and it seems romance is blooming between Cliff and Garland's Ellen Winslow, but you have to wonder when that evil scuzzball will wind up showing back up to ruin things. Ellen knows Cliff is the one, but Gerald has to be removed from her life like a cancer cut out of the body before it is consumed by the disease. I can understand why Garland considers this her least favorite film mainly because her character is so puzzling. She gets upset—and I'm talking major anger, here—about the idea that Gerald and Cliff hated each other and competed for a top job at the oil company, to the point that she gets wasted and storms off from a meeting with the head boss. She has a self-loathing and guilt that even has her pondering a reunion with Gerald! Garland, in a drunken stooper, debates with Tobey over "wife stealing", just embarrassing herself. Even as Gerald ridicules her on the phone, Ellen still wants to see this piece of garbage. Gerald even concocts a scheme involving Harvey, the enraged missus, Cliff, and Ellen, hoping multiple murders occur! The situations and character decisions in this movie defy logic and features side-splitting dialogue (like when Ellen calls Gerald a sadist and defines it for him during one last confrontation which results in him nearly strangling her!) because Ellen is a head-scratcher. I'm not sure what else one man has to do to get his point across that he doesn't want to be with a woman, but no matter how Gerald behaves, Ellen seems insistent upon trying to reconnect. This is a nasty piece of work, moments of tenderness only show up when Tobey enters the picture but even his character gets dumped on by the irrational/illogical Ellen, throwing temper tantrums over minuscule matters involving that cipher of a husband. Skip Homeier, a veteran of television and movie westerns, nails his part as Gerald, a breed of cretin that is too familiar, the kind that takes pleasure when dishing out misery. Gerald functions, it seems, only to antagonize and emotionally tear asunder; it is amazing how under his grip Ellen seems to be! This is not a good movie; it is ugly to look at, cheap, full of awkward scenes and uncomfortable performances, but I couldn't take my eyes off of it. It is, for better or worse, imminently watchable…a definite train wreck movie. The way eyes follow and undress Garland is rather amusing, and she was definitely a looker...however, this is not one of her finest hours, but the performance/character is certainly a memorable one, if for all the wrong reasons.

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!

This weird little B&W film noir is a low budget tuffy. Beverly Garland gives a strong performance as a very messed up woman with self esteem issues married to a very cruel man. This is not a comedy - it's not even a drama - it is a wow-can-you-believe-this-woman's-luck movie. There is dialogue that makes you laugh right out loud, the direction is clumsy, there times when the score is so wrong for what is going on during the story that you wince - all in all - a fun fest for lovers of strange and offbeat cinema. B-movie actor Kenneth Tobey (the lead in the original The Thing) actually plays the nice guy in this and Garland's husband is one of the most despicable males ever on screen - in fact, aside from Tobey, almost every man in this movie is a sleazy, rapin;, chain smoking drunk. Yep. The film also has great character names that get said a lot - like Harvey Suggett and Cliff Cain. The marriage scenes make Revolutionary Road or Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf look like Neil Simon plays.

Beverly Garland is totally absorbed in this oil field dark noir like menacing B-movie.She as well as the film are real diamonds in the rough.All familiar class actors who give it their all.In glorious black and white.Watch late night then see Double Deal with Marie Windsor from 1950.

Beverly Garland is winning in the role of Ellen Winslow, a young woman married to a vile, insecure man named Jerry (Skip Homeier), who doesn't like that she got a job when he seemingly made enough money to support both of them. Jerry soon disappears, and poor Ellen is obliged to search for the bum when his boss demands that SHE do something about it! Ellen then runs into a variety of sordid, unsavoury characters while falling in love with her new boss, Cliff Kane (the great Kenneth Tobey).

Ellen is the kind of character that would surely anger feminists, as she tends to blame herself for everything. That said, Beverly may have singled out this flick as her least favourite, but there's no denying that she still deeply commits herself to this performance. Ellen IS sympathetic, enough so that you wish she'd have more moments where she got tough and stood up for herself. At her lowest point, she gets raped by Jerry's old friend Harvey Suggett while combing his hometown.

After disagreements with cast & crew, credited director Ned Hockman walked off the picture, leaving it to be finished by co-star Homeier, who's excellent at making his character truly despicable. Within seconds of meeting him, we're hoping he comes to a bad end. Tobey is as engaging as he's ever been, although even his character has a "history" that may have coloured his actions. The supporting cast consists of unknowns, although the guy playing Suggett is suitably creepy, and Hannah Stone has an effective presence as Ruth, Ellens' friend.

Although "Stark Fear" may wear its influence right on its sleeve (right down to leading lady Garland resembling Janet Leighs' Marion Crane), it does have a very seedy atmosphere that helps to carry it through an amusing 86 minute run time. It's no lost classic, but it should entertain lovers of low budget cinema reasonably well.

Seven out of 10.

I have never considered Beverly Garland to be "smokin' hot" but in this film practically everyone does! Heck, again and again she is raped or practically raped by slobbering perverts and by the end of the film she has a new man in her life. Unfortunately, the film totally sucks--and not just because they try to convince us that Garland is like a pork chop in a pack of hungry wolves!

The film begins with Garland married to an abusive man. He's cruel, jealous, vicious and a step away from killing her. When this dirt-bag disappears from her life, you'd think she be thrilled but she spends much of the film looking for him! Lady--this guy is vile and you're better off without him! Later in the film, she learns that he'd lied about his past. Following some clues, she goes to a Deliverance-like town where the husband grew up and she is constantly trying to understand why he became the man he was. However, in the process, she is practically raped by one of her husband's old "friends" and yet she continues to hang around him or at least not call for help when he keeps attacking her. Eventually, she can't stop him and she is raped on top of a grave--while the husband watches!!!! Yet, her response is to go back home and wonder what made the men act that way!!! In fact, repeatedly throughout the film, Garland seems dumber than a can of tuna and even tries to reconcile with the husband!!! Until she FINALLY wakes up at the end of the film, she is bounced around like a brain-dead pinball. And, in the process, she takes off much of her clothes, there's talk about rape and sexual sadism and it's all a very trashy and stupid mess. This is like a film for sickos where they edited out all the really explicit stuff, so even pervs won't enjoy the mess.

The only ones who might enjoy it are bad movie fans or anyone who might have Beverly Garland and want to see her embarrass herself!! Yes folks, it's THAT bad!! By the way, if you don't know who Garland is, she is a very familiar face to TV, having played Steve Douglas' wife on "My Three Sons" and on such other shows as "Port Charles". All in all, she had almost 200 credits to her long career...yet I bet she NEVER could live down or forget STARK FEAR!!!

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.

It's One Of My Favorite Movies! This Is Extremely Outstanding!!!!!!

****SPOILERS**** It what she described as being the most taxing and difficult acting role in her career Beverly Garland plays abused and brutalized wife Ellen Winslow who's deranged husband Gerald , Skip Homeier, uses every kind of underhand tactic to get her to leave him even going so far as murder. Ellen's saving grace in the film is her kind hearted as well as a bit naive, in not knowing what she's going through, boss oil man Cliff Kane, Kenneth Tobey, who suffers almost as much abuse as she does in the movie . As things soon turned out even Cliff isn't quite the "Knight in Shining Amour"" that Ellen thinks he is. Cliff in fact was a partner with Gerald, before she met him, in an oil deal that went bust and bankrupted him.

The confusion in the film is due to it's director Ned Hockman walking off the set and having the inexperienced Skip Homeier, in his first and only attempt in directing a movie, take over. This has the last half of the movie makes no sense at all as Homeier due to him directing it totally disappears from sight. As things turned out that was the best decision that Homeier ever made. The film gets so confusing in Ellen going to her husband's home town in Oklahoma to find out about his past. It's there that she ends up getting raped in the town cemetery by one of Gerald's drinking buddies Paul Scovil as Gerlad gleefully watched From a safe distance. Scovil later was set up by his "good friend" Gerald in having his gun toting wife Edna catch him together with what had to be a kidnapped Ellen in a sleazy motel room. It's a terrified Scovil who then ended up, by running for his life, crushed to death by a tractor trailer.

***SPOILERS*** As for Beverly Garland and her co-star Kenneth Tobey like the troopers that they were they stuck it out until the very end fully knowing what a turkey that they were in and made the ending a bit upbeat by doing that. In the final moments of the movie Beverly Garland's Ellen Winslow and Kenneth Tobey's Cliff Kane, who looked and acted like he was heavily sedated, take off for Mexico City to start a new life for themselves as husband & wife with psycho sadist ex-husband Gerald now literally out of the picture.

STARK FEAR is a cheapjack indie drama from 1962, shot in black and white and in just a couple of locations. It's posited as a tense thriller involving a battle of wits between the sexes, but in fact this is more of a stodgy drama in which the supposed psychological thrills are few and far between. The plot is about a cruel husband who mistreats his wife, putting her in danger, and of how she manages to pluck up the courage to fight back. It's very long-winded and slow, with below par production values.

It's amazing how lavish a film can look but still be so bad. The sets for this cheaply made exploitation movie are truly good considering that the camera work is so shoddy. It starts off fine with Beverly Garland planning a birthday party for her husband, Skip Homeier. She looks a little nervous, and you can see why. He's a total abuser, both verbally and physically, calling her a tramp one minute then making love to her the next then accusing her of sleeping with her boss-to-be then making love to her again then telling her that he's getting a divorce. Why doesn't she let him go? 'Cause she's woman, mind you, and the women in these films never let anything go without a fight. You might call her noble, some others might call her fool, but she just refuses to leave him alone even when it's clear to the entire audience that she's asking for nothing but trouble if she sticks around.

His boss tells her that he's on the verge of being fired for suddenly announcing he's taking a month long vacation if he doesn't show up for work the following day. She's out and about looking for him, ending up in seedy apartment buildings filled with drunks who try to rape her, a boarding house where the salty landlady declares that she's on the verge of shooting her own husband, and finally, with both her boss-to-be and a very persistent best friend, barely fighting off her boss's declaration of love and possibly getting a headache listening to her friend's extremely obnoxious declaration that all men are wife beaters which soon she is tossing at her boss even though his declarations of love seem totally sincere.

The final nadir in the coffin of this psychological drama (more psycho than logical) is her screaming at her estranged husband of everything she's discovered about him. Certainly, the husband is no gem, but any man would go bonkers having to listen to the wife he supposedly hates go off on him about everything she has discovered about him, basically ripping his whole self-image apart at the scenes, and guess what, it all comes back to his mama. Kenneth Tobey tries his best to add some dignity as the good-hearted older man who loves Garland with all his heart, but Hannah Stone goes over the top as her best friend who is way overboard in giving advice in a more than just demanding way. Garland's character is certainly understandable for most of the film as she is falling apart, but there seems to be something lacking in Homeier's brooding husband to make him understandable.