The Girl in the Black Stockings (1957) Desert Resort Film Soleil Noir

"I'm having such a wonderful time!"

Ensemble Noir

Directed by Howard W. Koch (Shield for Murder (1954), Big House, U.S.A. (1955). Written by Richard Landau and based on the story "Wanton Murder" by Peter Godfrey. Cinematography was by William Margulies and the Music was by Les Baxter.

The film stars an interesting ensemble of actors . Lex Barker (who was in Classic Noir Crossfire (1947), then a bunch of Tarzan films in the early fifties and then TV. He went on to star in Euro Frontier Epic Old Shatterhand which sort of primed the pump for the Spaghetti Western phenomenon in the mid sixties) Barker plays David Hewson an L.A. lawyer on vacation. .

Anne Bancroft (New York Confidential (1955), The Naked Street (1955), Nightfall (1956), and ten years later as the Ionic Mrs Robinson in The Graduate (1967)) as Beth. Sex bombshell Mamie Van Doren as Harriet Ames, John Dehner (he had some minor roles in He Walked by Night (1948), Vicki (1953) and was in quite a few Westerns) as Sheriff Holmes. Australian actor Ron Randell (Sign Of The Ram (1948)) who made a few Bulldog Drummond and balanced his career between film and Broadway, as Edmund Parry. Classic Noir actress Marie Windsor as Julia Parry, Gene O'Donnell as Joseph Felton, John Holland as Norman Grant, Diana Vandervlis as Louise Miles, Richard Cutting as Dr. Aiken, Larry Chance as Indian Joe, Stuart Whitman as Prentiss, Gerald Frank as Frankie Pierce, and Dan Blocker as the Bartender.

Ann Bancroft as Beth Prentis and Lex Barker as David Hewson

Diana Vandervlis as Louise Miles and Mamie Van Doren as Harriet Ames

Marie Windsor as Julia Parry

John Dehner as Sheriff Holmes 

 Ron Randell as Edmund Parry

It's a bit campy as it is probing cautiously into the cracks of the crumbling Motion Picture Production Code. If there is one glaring omission from this late period exploitation Noir it is the lack of any flashback to the actual female of the title. Oh we get a pretty scathing description of her from Edmund Parry. But in hindsight some sort of flashback would have made the monologue visually more powerful.

Edmund: Why did she have to stay? Why didn't she just pack up and go?
Julia: Its over now she can't hurt anybody.
Edmund: She was poison. Like a disease.

. . .a few minutes later talking to the sheriff.

Sheriff Holmes: I got a job to do, I don't like it. A girl was slaughtered and carved up like a side of beef tonight.
Edmund: I must say the man eating witch deserved it. But she might have chosen some messy public place a trailer camp at Zion National Park or Bryce Canyon.

Sheriff Holmes: You're not unhappy about the dead girl?
Edmund: Unhappy... Romance on the gold standard. A common creature whose every word, every breath,  every gesture, was the show of an empty shallow strumpet. Miss Morgan was an example of a completely justifiable homicide.

Perhaps you had to be there back in the zeitgeist of the late Eisenhower years to get the significance of the title. A girl in black stockings must have been a verbal dog whistle for a dope smoking, jazz listening, bongo playing, poetry reciting, sex crazed Beatnik chick.

"Rebellious Beatnik women developed a distinctly recognizable style in the 1950s and 1960s. They gave up trying to follow trendy fashion, opting instead for loose men’s shirts over slacks or faded jeans, and plaid skirts with black stockings. These very dark stockings had very little sheerness to them. In many cases, black leggings or snug fitting ankle pants were worn instead of stockings and were paired with a jersey shirt or loose sweater.

Diana Trilling, the wife of literary critic James Trilling, wrote after attending a poetry reading in 1959 at Columbia:  ‘so many young girls, so few of them pretty, and so many dreadful black stockings.’

Needless to say, normal society did not appreciate the Beat style. None of my ’50s catalogs even offer black stockings for sale. It was clearly an underground anti-fashion movement." (VINTAGE DANCER)

Another, hidden from view aspect, of black stockings was the implication that the bohemian women who wore them didn't shave their legs or by inference anywhere else apparently. lol That she wore black stockings is sort of akin to the scandalous revelation in Anatomy Of A Murder of Mrs Manion not wearing a girdle. Basically no girdle = jiggle = slut. My how times have changed.

This sqeuene in the trailer below never made it into the film. Looks like a case of bait and switch.

The Film

So the story starts at an outdoor dance at a place called Three Lakes which in reality are three deep  pools in the draw of a mostly dry stream bed about seven miles out of Kanab, Utah.

It's an outdoor shindig, a lot of the guests from Parry's Lodge are out there doing it up. Los Angeles lawyer David Hewson has paired off with Beth Dixon around the far edge of the pool. David thinks he may be getting lucky, but Beth is playing a little hard to get. As David flicks on his lighter for a cigarette, the flame illuminates a dead, bloody, butchered, woman in slashed black stockings.

Beth screams.

Compared to what you see in today's cinema it's tame and its in black and white. But back in a theater in 1957 it must have been quite shocking to see the scene below.

The dead woman is Marsha Morgan, lately a guest at Parry's Lodge, her throat is cut her body lacerated, her black stockings in shreds. Beth's scream brings the dancers running around the edge of the water to the grisly scene. The Sheriff John Holmes, and his handful of officers arrive on the scene along with a small town crew of concerned citizens and assorted yahoos. Some are doing double duty as an undertaker/coroner, shutterbug/crime scene photographer, others are trackers, investigators and rubberneckers.

Holmes begins his investigation by searching the murder scene and interviewing the patrons of Parry's Lodge.



The lodge, a real business (still going strong), was home away from home for the many of the Hollywood Western film crews that used the scenic locations around Kanab.

Edmund Parry, the lodges paraplegic owner, is a bitter man. A vemenant misogynist.  He vents his anger on the wanton women that occasionally check in for accommodations. Parry's affliction is apparently psychosomatic. The story goes that when he was back East, he met a woman fell head over heels, and was all set to marry the girl of his dreams when she dumped him just before the wedding. He couldn't handle rejection something snapped in his head and he's been paralyzed ever since.

Edmund is cared for by his sister Julia, his personal assistant Beth and Joe a Native American who functions as a sort of helper handyman. Edmund tells Julia that she really knows how to wipe his nose, and I might say, probably his ass.

As Holmes narrows down suspects he discovers that Marsha broke off a date with local excon mill-worker Frankie to go to the dance with David. David broke off his date with Louise Miles for the date with Marsha but he stands her up and hooks up with Beth instead. A bit confusing. On top of all those women we have a cheesecake model Harriet Ames who has latched on to Hollywood has been, boozer Norman Grant. Grant is there drying out and reading the script of what he hopes will be his big comeback.

Now from the film poster and promotional material you get the impression that Mamie Van Doren is the girl in black stockings of the title however you never see her in any of those outfits, in fact you never see Van Doren's stocking-ed legs. However it's apparent that, at least on the inside Marsha and Harriet are birds of a feather.

Gerald Frank as Frankie Pierce lt., and Dan Blocker as the Bartender rt.

The sheriff questions Frankie

While the murder investigation continues Indian Joe is captured running around the hills around Three Lakes drunk as a skunk with the murder weapon a filet knife from the lodges kitchen. He claims he killed rabbit. Not woman.

A new guest checks in named Joseph Felton. He ends up dead in the pool the next day. Did he just fall in, hit his head and drown? Sheriff Holmes has another death to investigate.

Gene O'Donnell as Joseph Felton

cheap hearse

Indian Joe is cleared when it's found out he was tying one on in a bar at the time of Marsha's slaying, and excon Frankie backs into a buzzsaw when he sees Holmes and his deputies show up at the saw mill.

Teepee Burner and Tailfins

Frankie backing into buzz saw

At a dinner party thrown by the Parrys, a drunk Harriet decalers over and over that she's "having a wonderful time," while throwing herself on Edmund's lap and kissing his cheek.

Edmund has the look of a man who just walked into a kitchen and smelled cabbage, while Julia looks disgusted. Grant meanwhile calculates pretty quickly that its his night to get lucky, while Harriett is obviously in the mood, and that he better get her steered to a mattress ASAP.

David, after witnessing Harriette's shenanigans and Julia's reaction, begins to suspect that maybe Julia is the killer protecting Edmund from wanton women.

It all goes Noirsville when later that night somebody sneaks into Grant's room while he and Harriet are making it. Grant gets his bell rung and while hes old cocked, Harriett gets her throat cut and her arms hacked.

Noirsville

The entire film has a kooky sex vibe to it that couldn't fully be exploited in 1957. Barker displays his vine swinging physique, but he doesn't really sell us his attorney character. Van Doren (the last of the Hollywood blond bombshells The last M standing of the three M's of the Eisenhower years still living BTW). . She does what you'd expect her to do. Her typical “tiny, shiny, and tight” wardrobe has her assets on full display.

Ann Bancroft plays it low keyed almost mousey. Windsor is believable as the overprotective sister to her piece of work brother Randell who growls over the top rants at the sight of women continuously throughout the film. Dehner sort of plays a cliche small town Western sheriff he's got the part down pat. Chance gives a pretty spot on but also cliche performance as a drunk Native American. It's also a  nice surprise seeing Stuart Whitman and Dan Blocker.  It's an interesting piece, in a way also has a Twin Peaks vibe going on with its small town setting, murdered woman opening, sawmill, and eccentric characters.  A Café au lait Noir with minimal noir stylistics but worth a look 6-7/10. Screen caps are from an online streamer.

Here below is the Musings of a Noir Dame, Noir-ista Margot Shelby aka Jennifer Rabbit, with another review enjoy!

The Girl in the Black Stockings, directed by Howard Koch (Shield for Murder), is more of a thriller/slasher film with exploitation touches than Noir and quite a decent little flick, campy and highly entertaining with good location shooting and decent dialogue. The movie has gotten a lot of flak over the years, but I find the ridicule quite undeserved.

Maybe I just have a thing for pulpy B movies but I like The Girl in the Black Stockings, a  misleading title if there ever was one. No girl wears stockings of any kind in the movie. *(correction. the dead Marsha did)

Technically this could be called late period Noir, but rather than focusing on doom, gloom and pessimism, it is strangely wacky and jam-packed with suggested depravity, sex and psycho-babble. Noir was going into a different direction, exploitation was on its way in and this movie foreshadows more realistically brutal and shocking thrillers like Psycho or Peeping Tom.

Everybody seems to have nothing but sex on the brain here and everyone has sexual hang-ups, and in the end we find out it was sex (should be spelled in all caps) that made the killer go over the edge. Well, well, it's just unfortunate that the whole thing isn't trashy and lurid enough. The posters, the title and the set-up promise pulpy luridness but they don't quite deliver what they promise, and if we expect glorious all-out trashiness, we don't get it. All the wonderful sinfulness is only hinted at.

On vacation at Parry Lodge in Utah, hunky lawyer (!) David Hewson (Lex Barker), out on a romantic date with Beth Dixon (Anne Bancroft) finds the badly mutilated body of a party girl. Soon the bodies start piling up, there's no shortage of suspects because the visitors to the lodge are a strange lot.

The cast is very good, though the performances are strangely off-kilter and veer into camp territory quite often.

Lex Barker is Lex Barker and he struts around in swim shorts a lot of the time. No complaints there.

Mamie Van Doren is bodacious as always, her tangible assets are plenty on display and she has the best campy scene the movie in which she literally throws herself at the hotel owner.

The best of the cast is probably Ron Randell who plays completely paralyzed embittered lodge owner Edmund Parry, who's eaten up by an all-consuming hate for the world, everybody who lives in it and most of all himself. His injuries are purely psychosomatic, he has been paralyzed since his lady love left him decades earlier. His ice-cold seething hate for women and his obsession with sex are chilling to watch. It's a very strange performance, at the same time off-kilter, hammy but oddly effective nevertheless.

For the longest time the audience is made to believe that he's only shamming his injury.

Marie Windsor, who could vamp it up with the best of them, plays his too-devoted sister who takes care of him. It's a bit odd to see her as repressed spinster and not the femme fatale.

Her possessiveness knows no bounds, there are definitively incestuous undercurrents in their relationship. The way she caresses her brother is not in the least sisterly, and it was her who drove her brother's girl-friend away. In fact it's a bit shock to find out she's Edmund's sister, not his wife.

Anne Bancroft is slight under-utilized here, she had much meatier roles in Nightfall and New York Confidential. Though she turns out to be the serial killer, the motives for her crimes are too murky, it is only alluded too that she was supposedly made to do "shameful" things. There we go again. Even in the 50s there were films that didn't shy away from giving a bit more detail.

A fun little time waster!