Marketic It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Console best movie i've ever seen.

Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

tlkiefner 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.

MartinHafer The Victor Mature film, "I Wake Up Screaming", has one of the best film noir titles in film history. It also was a pretty dandy movie. Twelve years later, Twentieth-Century Fox remade the movie as "Vickie". This remake isn't bad at all...but why mess with an already classic film?!"Vickie" is about a top model (Jean Peters) who has been murdered. The cop investigating the case (Richard Boone) is clearly a very disturbed man--obsessed with pinning the killing on a publicity agent (Elliot Reid) responsible for Vickie's meteoric rise to fame. If that means manufacturing evidence or beating a confession out of the poor guy, then Boone is more than willing to do this. Vickie's sister (Jeanne Crain) is certain Reid is not responsible for the killing and is willing to do what she can to help him prove his innocence...as if Boone really cared! The film is very noir in the way it portrays the police. While Boone is clearly an evil nut-job in the countless ways he violates civil liberties, the 'good cops' aren't exactly angels--trying to force confessions out of people through very dubious means. Civil rights attorneys must have had apoplexies watching this film, that's for sure! Even my 1940s and 50s movie standards, these cops were playing fast and loose with the law.As for the acting, it's all very good--as is the story. The only really exceptional element, however, is the chance to see Aaron Spelling (yes, the very famous producer) doing some acting! He plays a nutty guy in a very entertaining fashion--kind of over the top but entertaining nonetheless.Overall, this is a very entertaining film with an interesting plot that is reminiscent of noir films such as "The Killers" and "Sunset Boulevard" because the film starts with a killing and then backtracks to show the events leading up to it. Not a great noir film, but very good.

Neil Doyle Let's face it, ELLIOT REID is the last actor I'd expect to replace VICTOR MATURE as the leading man of VICKI--a remake of the Fox film that starred Betty Grable, Victor Mature and Laird Cregar.Reid's casting is a fatal blow on the believability of the screenplay that has JEANNE CRAIN and Reid as the romantic interest. On the other hand RICHARD BOONE does a marvelous tough guy job as the police detective in love with "Vicki." VICKI is played in rather tough fashion by JEAN PETERS.The result: JEANNE CRAIN manages to give the most credible performance in this remake--while RICHARD BOONE is properly menacing as the two-fisted detective, but he's really no match for Laird Cregar.There's a good film noir quality to some stretches of the film, but the low-key lighting usually so effective in this sort of thing is disregarded with brightly lit scenes most of the time--perhaps the fault of director Harry Horner.As remakes go, it's fair enough--but most fans will prefer the original.

bmacv 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.