Stark Fear/Review

From The Grindhouse Cinema Database

< Stark Fear

Ellen Winslow (Beverly Garland) is trying her best to keep her three-year marriage afloat but there’s a problem: her salesman husband Gerry (Skip Homeier) isn’t making enough money. To remedy the situation Ellen—long legged, coquettish, willing—takes a job as a secretary to a man that, unbeknownst to her, was once a rival of her husband.

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It’s true that her new position further alienates her from Gerry, but it’s also true that Jerry is a “sadist,” a man who takes pleasure in making women suffer, a man with an unresolved mother complex.

Threadbare but engaging (Garland is superior) there’s a lot in Stark Fear to keep you engaged. A visit to a Native American dance is curious, a stop-by at a swinger’s party is threatening, a brutal graveside rape is grotesque, a visit to a jukebox museum is odd, and the a sleepy Oklahoma town filled with eager-to-perform-for-the-camera locals is haunting. These are real people in their own habitat interacting with film performers; people play-acting situations while their real-people counterparts are actually living them.

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Directors Ned Hockman/Skip Homeier’s straightforward approach to telling this poverty-row exploitation oddity is, in the end, effective. Stark Fear is a film that titillates, but at the same time, makes a social/ psychological commentary. It's a cautionary tale of a love-starved young woman who gives her dangerous, conflicted and abusive husband one too many chances.



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