The portrait under the opening credits conjures up memories of Laura, although this 1953 Fox noir quickly reveals its real roots: it's a remake of the studio's marvelous 1941 thriller I Wake Up Screaming, a movie sometimes tagged as the first true film noir. Once it gets underway, Vicki demonstrates how short it falls of its predecessors. A famous model (Jean Peters) is murdered, leading a weirdly obsessive detective (Richard Boone) to hound her press agent (Elliott Reid) about the case. The dead woman also had a sister (Jeanne Crain), who is so dull she makes you regret which sibling got killed. The flashback-heavy story plods along in a virtually suspense-free zone, enlivened only by some extremely offbeat casting decisions. Elliott Reid (Jane Russell's suitor in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) has a lighter-than-air quality that makes him an odd but entertaining choice as romantic leading man, Max Showalter (billed here as Casey Adams) brings his frog-eyed energy as a society columnist, and future TV mogul Aaron Spelling pops up as a hotel desk clerk. As for Richard Boone, he needed some age and a few more wrinkles before he would become the delicious character actor he turned into later. And so we are left with a whodunit more sleep-inducing than intriguing. --Robert HortonMore...
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