Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

Solidrariol Am I Missing Something?

Robert Joyner The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Delight Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

mark.waltz I suppose if I began a tradition of watching this once a year, I might find myself quoting some of the dime store novel sounding lines that a cast of newcomers and veterans get to spout. To their credit, they do it with a straight face, and many of them went on to other works right away, so it comes to reason that this didn't drive them to drink after it was all over. This is an exploitation murder melodrama with a future Oscar winning actress, a blonde bombshell Monroe rip-off and a declining 40's B queen. Then, there's one of the many screen Tarzan's, all together for the story of a character that you only see briefly as a corpse and find out that everybody had some reason to kill her, as well as several other murders that occur in very much the same grizzly way.Having been around with no real success on film, Anne Bancroft is the female star, not the murdered first victim, with Lex Barker as the dead girl's much abused ex who falls for the sweet Bancroft, filled with secrets of her own. Marie Windsor seems uncomfortable trying to retain her glamour, and although still striking, is overly made up which makes her age all the more obvious. Mamie Van Doren is the typical dumb bleached blonde, lacking the charisma of Marilyn, Jayne and even England's Diana Dors. Typical drug store crime magazine setups make this look oh so cheap, and the dialog is atrocious. There's a native American character who hates women and explodes on them while drunk. I felt sorry for this simple minded character and wanted further development on him rather than the stereotypical "drunken Indian" stigma. John Dehner is the law enforcer on the case, while Ron Randell plays another key figure. The ending comes out kg total left field. A strange mix to be sure.

bkoganbing With such shapely feminine types as Anne Bancroft, Marie Windsor, Mamie Van Doren, and Diana VanderVlis, The Girl In Black Stockings surely boasts one of the sexiest casts of women ever in the same film. If you're a leg or a breast man, you can't go wrong with this film.As for the story it's your average B picture whodunit. All of these people are at a resort lodge in Utah when a whole lot of murders start to happen. Lex Barker while on a date with Bancroft discovers the body of the first victim. Two more murders follow and one accidental death of a presumed suspect occurs when sheriff John Dehner and deputies go to question him. Marie Windsor has an interesting part her. A veteran of many a noir film, Windsor is the sister of her quadriplegic brother Ron Randell who owns the lodge. Many years ago Randell developed a psychosomatic quadriplegia when he could not save a woman from drowning. Windsor then dedicates her life to serving her brother. Usually Windsor played sex pots in films, this represents a change of pace for her. But don't kid yourself, she holds her own in beauty with the rest of the pulchritude.As for Randell, he laces his part with appropriate bitterness and he'll be the one you remember if you can take your eyes off the feminine beauty for a bit.In smaller roles are such future stars as Stuart Whitman who arrives at the lodge looking for his runaway bride and Dan Blocker seen briefly as a bartender.The Girl In Black Stockings despite a cheap production and lurid title is a competent enough mystery. And frankly I did not see who the murderer was.

Gangsteroctopus It's astounding how many reviewers here have given this either high marks for being a well-made film noir(-ish) murder-mystery, or for it's high camp value. DO NOT BE FOOLED: this movie doesn't qualify on either the level of basic competence, or on the so-bad-it's-good scale. It's just plain bad, in every way imaginable.But let's get something else out of the way first: for those who want to claim a 'Twin Peaks' connection for this film (which is the reason I was curious about it, initially), such an assertion is basically a bunch of garbage, grasping at less than even tenuous similarities and standard murder-mystery tropes. A girl is murdered. It occurs in a small town. There's an Indian/Native American. And a sawmill. THAT'S IT. David Lynch and Mark Frost did not rip this movie off - and I say that as someone who's not even much of a 'Twin Peaks' fan.Okay, now that we've cleared that up, what about the film itself? You know it's gonna be bad from the very first lines of dialogue exchanged between Lex Barker and young Anne Bancroft. It's the kind of meaningless, pseudo-hip banter that has zero meaning and makes you want to slap the screenwriter, tell him, "Try writing some words that sound like they might come out of the mouth of an actual human being, you hack!" But the main problem (one of MANY problems) is that no one seems to take the murder particularly seriously. Basically John Dehner just sort of wanders around, occasionally asking locals somewhat germane questions, but mostly just gossiping, catching up on their relationship woes, chitty-chat. This dumb-a** couldn't solve the mystery of who put the cookie in the cookie jar.And then there's the guy who owns the motel, the psychologically paralyzed (say what..?) guy who basically sits around (well, he can't do much else, I guess) spouting off some of the most hate-filled, vile, misogynistic bile that you're likely to hear outside of a lockerroom. Now, initially, you think, 'Hunh. That's something of a twist: not romanticizing this character, or trying to make him this sympathetic type' - the way they almost always try to do with pretty much any disabled person in movies and on TV, even nowadays. But after about 30 seconds of this guy, you'll change your mind and start hoping that when Anne Bancroft and Marie Windsor take him in the pool for some hydrotherapy that they'll both get phone calls and leave him to make out on the bottom with the Creepy Crawly. (Okay, I know that they didn't have those back them, but you get the point.) Who the hell would stay at this lodge? There's a common dining room, or restaurant, and every night the customers have to share it with this wheelchair-bound a-hole, watching him get drunk and rave about how much he despises the fairer sex. Yeah, THAT's what I want for dinner theater. How did this guy get into the lodging business, when all he does is bitch about how running this inn puts him into constant contact with the very species for which he is so overflowing with hatred? Like so much in this film (just wait until you hear Lex Barker's 'explanation' for the murderer's motives at the end of the film), it MAKES NO SENSE.And not just that - IT'S BORING! Apparently director Howard Koch told all of his actors to pause for several seconds between each line of dialogue, to savor the 'richness' of drivel they're all spouting (I've never heard so many words used to express so little); or maybe the heat or the altitude made them all punchy. It's bad enough that we, the viewers, don't care what's being said, but when the actors all sound like they're on Quaaludes...Never has 74 minutes passed so slowly, so excruciatingly.I will say that, as someone who loves the '50s as a design era, the Parry Lodge (and the adjoining boutique, the Pink Poodle) are pretty cool to look at; the fact that they shot this stinker on location is about the only thing this movie has going for it, although it also means that the Kanab Chamber of Commerce gets in a number of blatant promos for local businesses and sights. But apart from my interest in the era, this one is a complete and total loser.

melvelvit-1 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...