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.
Review of Stark Fear
