Ned Hockman's STARK FEAR is yet another obscure low budget "psycho- thriller" heavily influenced by PSYCHO and not just because B-movie babe Beverly Garland resembles Marion Crane while looking at herself in the rear view mirror on her way to a sleazy motel. Husband Skip Homeier (who took over directing when Hockman quit) is a sadistic "pervert" (read homosexual) with a mother fixation and Bev's a plucky masochist who blames herself for everything that happens. When Skip goes missing, she looks for him (God only knows why) in an Oklahoma hometown just this side of DELIVERANCE where she's raped in a cemetery by his childhood friend. Unbeknownst to his ravaged wife, her husband's secretly watching in the shadows of his mother's grave and keeps her bloody bra as a souvenir. He's later holed up in a motel room with her rapist and no explanation's given (connect the dots) as Garland goes home and throws herself into her work where her boss (genre fave Kenneth Tobey) falls in love with her ...but he's got a secret, too, of course. There's no end to this woman's woes.

The IMDb Trivia on the film says it was Beverly Garland's least favorite of all her movies but I don't know why since she gives it all she's got and turns in a sincere performance in a film that's equal parts sleaze and hokum. Bev's best friend actually tells her to stay with her abusive husband rather than end up a spinster like herself and after Garland is raped, she, of course, blames herself and not her attacker. And although she loves him, she won't go all the way with her boss because she's (gasp) still married. Geez Louise. A truly bizarre "shocker" that looks like it's trying to say something, I just don't know what.

Kind of creepy. Low budget film noir directed by Ned Hockman. Filmed mostly around Oklahoma City, Norman and Lexington Oklahoma. A black and white drama about an unemployed man Gerald Winslow (Skip Homeier)that physically and emotionally tortures his wife Ellen(Beverly Garland). She craves her husband's love, but his sadistic pleasures forces her into the arms of a former business partner and her new boss(Kenneth Tobey). Photography is grainy and some of the acting miserable. The story is interesting and well paced. Garland is perfect as the pathetic wife that just wants a little attention. She survives mental torture, rape and humiliation to find out that her husband has a fixation on his dead mother. Homeier is down right devilish and his first scene lets you know pretty much what to expect from him. The guy is a jerk, creep and sadistic low life. Also in the cast: Paul Scovil, Hannah Stone and George Clow.

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.