Purely Joyful Movie!

People are voting emotionally.

Good concept, poorly executed.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Elisha Cook Jr. as Harry Williams and Laird Cregar as Ed Cornell (named after Cornell Woolrich) do a much better job than Richard Boone and Aaron Spelling. Cregar, who died tragically as a result of a crash diet at the age of 31. I also prefer Elliott Reed in "Vicki" over Victor Mature in "I Wake Up Sreaming or "Hot Spot." I can sum it up this way. I would revisit "I Wake Up Sccreaming" but wouldn't watch "Vicki." The novel by Steve Fisher translates well to the screen. Finally, I don't consider this to be a film-noir picture.

***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!

Like most remakes, this one is a poor imitation of the original, primarily due to some unfortunate casting, especially in the choice of Elliot Reid in the role of Steve Christopher (originally Frankie Christopher, played by Victor Mature). Richard Conte might have been a better choice. There is virtually NO chemistry between Crain (who plays Jill, Vicki's sister) and Reid, which makes her desperation to prove Christopher innocent of Vicki's murder fall rather flat.Although Boone makes a credible attempt at the 'obsessive creepiness' of Ed Cornell, it is certainly short of the outstanding performance of veteran 'creepy character' actor, Laird Cregar in the original.The same can be said of the choice of Aaron Spelling (makes you see why he went into producing and gave up acting) as Harry Williams, played by Elisha Cook, Jr. in "I Wake Up Screaming".All in all, not worth the time to watch this pale by comparison retread unless, like myself, you just want to make your own judgments on the differences between the two films.

Despite showing the makings of a superior – potentially classic – film noir, Vicki falls just short of that goal. For the second time in the noir cycle, it tells the story of Vicki (or Vicky) Lynn, whose swift rise from hash-slinger to model to toast of the town ends in murder – a crime of passion. It first reached the screen in 1942 under the title I Wake Up Screaming, based on a serialized novel by Steve Fisher. Eleven years later, 20th Century Fox decided on a close remake, which obviously did not go back to the novel but simply freshened up the original script a little – some of the lines remain the same, as do occasional pieces of blocking and shooting.We first catch site of Vicki staring out languidly from a panorama of posters and billboards that display her face to push luxury items. But almost immediately the glamour turns to ashes as we watch her carried out of her brownstone apartment on a stretcher. Her central role – the haunting linchpin of the drama – is told in flashback (and substantially expanded from that of the previous film version). The role falls to Jean Peters, whose screen career was cut short by her marriage to Howard Hughes; but here, she fails to generate half the magnetism she did in Pickup on South Street, of the same year.The expansion of Vicki's part is only one of the subtle shifts among the dynamics of the characters. Jeanne Crain, in the early twilight of her stardom, portrays the sensible-shoes sister who cautions Vicki against the false lures of the big town but helps track down her killer. As the publicist who first dangled those lures, making Vicki a shooting star, Elliott Reid can't work up much sympathy as the prime suspect (he's too weak and generic an actor). So the movie's impact rests principally on the homicide cop who carries a secret, smoldering torch for the dead girl – in this version, Richard Boone. Again expanded from the first filming, the performance may be one of the hard-to-cast Boone's best. Not yet victim to the character-actor ugliness that was to befall him, he shoulders his obsession heavily, almost sadly (though he plays much nastier than Laird Cregar did in 1942). And in the small but pivotal role of the desk clerk in the sisters' digs, the earlier Elisha Cook, Jr. is supplanted by Aaron Spelling; Spelling, who would become one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in Hollywood, can't dispel the spell Cook works on us (and excuse those irresistible puns).The emphasis in Vicki ultimately falls differently from the way it did in I Wake Up Screaming. In 1942, it was offered as a stylish mystery, a Manhattan whodunit. By the early fifties, it had become a story of obsession – a psychological thriller a la Laura, with the same skittishness about the fleeting nature of fame. Whether this change of tone was intentional remains moot, since the script underwent no major renovation. It seems largely the result of the change in cast, with the various roles filled by performers with different strengths – and possibly of directorial nuance. It's a shame this movie stays in obscurity, overshadowed by its forerunner; while neither version achieves the status of Laura, Vicki is by a small margin the more interesting of the two recensions.