Bergorks If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

Orla Zuniga It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Marva-nova Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Haven Kaycee It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

dzizwheel Lex Barker, Marie Windsor, Anne Bancroft, Mamie Van Doren, score by Les Baxter,Stuart Whitman in a tiny role, directed by Howard Koch.Filmed like a Perry Mason episode, the movie is interesting but has no real tension, drama and a flaccid climax. And talk, lots and lots of talk. It will be the destruction of pictures, I tell ya. It's still fun to watch, though. Eye candy for any persuasion: Lex Barker in swim trunks and Mamie Van Doren in skin tight dresses. Anne Bancroft early in her career. Given her later work and stature it would have seemed a long shot if this picture was any predictor. Marie Windsor is always a treat, but largely wasted in this as her wheelchair bound brother's caregiver.Easy to guess the perpetrator in this one, but still fun to watch.Goof: Lex Barker takes off in a 56 Chrysler which turns into a 55 Chrysler during the same trip, then back again into a 56 Chrysler as he pulls up to his location.

bkoganbing With such shapely feminine types as Anne Bancroft, Marie Windsor, Mamie Van Doren, and Diana VanderVlis, The Girl In Black Stockings surely boasts one of the sexiest casts of women ever in the same film. If you're a leg or a breast man, you can't go wrong with this film.As for the story it's your average B picture whodunit. All of these people are at a resort lodge in Utah when a whole lot of murders start to happen. Lex Barker while on a date with Bancroft discovers the body of the first victim. Two more murders follow and one accidental death of a presumed suspect occurs when sheriff John Dehner and deputies go to question him. Marie Windsor has an interesting part her. A veteran of many a noir film, Windsor is the sister of her quadriplegic brother Ron Randell who owns the lodge. Many years ago Randell developed a psychosomatic quadriplegia when he could not save a woman from drowning. Windsor then dedicates her life to serving her brother. Usually Windsor played sex pots in films, this represents a change of pace for her. But don't kid yourself, she holds her own in beauty with the rest of the pulchritude.As for Randell, he laces his part with appropriate bitterness and he'll be the one you remember if you can take your eyes off the feminine beauty for a bit.In smaller roles are such future stars as Stuart Whitman who arrives at the lodge looking for his runaway bride and Dan Blocker seen briefly as a bartender.The Girl In Black Stockings despite a cheap production and lurid title is a competent enough mystery. And frankly I did not see who the murderer was.

Neil Doyle Whatever inspired Howard Koch to direct this B-movie was certainly not the script, full of atrocious dialog and given dead pan acting by everyone in the cast except RON RANDELL as a bitter crippled man being cared for by his wife, MARIE WINDSOR. Randell at least attempts to give some backbone to his role, but nothing works as he delivers most of his dialog through clenched teeth.JOHN DEHNER is the sheriff at a Utah lodge, who questions suspects of a brutal murder with absolutely no conviction. He seems distracted by something or other even as the investigation becomes more complex and seems almost bored with his role.ANNE BANCROFT and MAMIE VAN DOREN are figured prominently among the women in the cast but do nothing here that contributes to the film's effectiveness. Whatever noir material there is in the script's potential, is left untapped from beginning to end. LEX BARKER shows off his physique but was much more convincing when he was playing Tarzan than he is here.Summing up: A complete waste of time. There's an amateurish feel to the whole thing.

melvelvit-1 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...