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.

The late 50's was a strange time for Movies. There were rumblings of an "expansion of consciousness" if you will, that resulted in attempts, like this one, to explore lurid, unmentionable gruesome violence (against Women), and sexual themes that were previously only barely hinted.If you were paying attention, it was obvious that the Arts were becoming a more liberal expression of primal urges (Rock n' Roll) that were always there but rarely talked about in polite company. So here we have this lackluster Serial Killer Movie that was just aching to escape from Studio and Audience conventions, but alas, it was not to be.The "grisly" Murders are very Ho-Hum, one if you can imagine, is just a guy being pushed into a swimming pool. The rest take place off screen. There is a lot of Psycho-Babble, the most scathing coming from a paralyzed hater of all Women. Some of this is slightly entertaining in a trashy kind of way, but not quite enough to save this stiff and incompetently Directed Movie.People talk and talk and say very little. The Sheriff's investigation is basically talk and talk, occasionally on the telephone, and everyone seems to have sunstroke rendering them immobility and inability to emote. This is a strange one at best, but at its worst is slowly paced, mostly uninteresting, and lacking any flare.

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...

What can you say about a movie whose three female stars are Anne Bancroft, Marie Windsor and Mamie Van Doren? Well, that none of them is used at anywhere near her full potential (except maybe Van Doren, the sum of whose potential is exhausted at first glimpse). And that's basically the problem with this little tailfins-era whodunit about a serial killer at a Utah mountain lodge. Its very real potential is never delivered. The characters and plot strands are handled perfunctorily, mechanically; they're interesting and offbeat but not satisfyingly developed, so the solution comes as a bad surprise and something of a cheat. Owner of the lodge, Ron Randell, is a psychosomatically paralyzed woman-hater nursed by his doting sister (Windsor). Les Barker (not to be confused with Les Baxter, who wrote the score!) loses no opportunity to display his physique poolside as a vacationing L.A. attorney who's wooing the diffident Bancroft. Van Doren does her platinum-blonde bombshell shtik and John Dehner, as the sheriff, seems to have wandered in from a Western shooting nearby. The movie looks good, in a simplified, populuxe way, and winds up like a better-than-average TV drama from circa 1957. Too bad: The Girl in Black Stockings had all the makings of a more interesting movie.