"Stark Fear," made in Oklahoma in 1962, was a one-shot feature for both director Ned Hockman (who later taught film production at the University of Oklahoma) and screenwriter Dwight V. Swain. It is a gloriously sleazy little number that ought to be taken up by feminist film criticism pronto, because the male of the species has seldom been depicted so viciously. With one exception, every man in the film is a louse and a rapist, potential or actual. Poor Beverly Garland suffers so much in this film, at the hands of sicko sadist hubby Skip Homeier and assorted other lowlifes, that you would think she would hightail it out of Oklahoma, if not off the planet. But no, she sticks around for worse! - although she eventually recovers her pluck with the help of a female confidante (in what is genuinely one of the more interesting depictions of women's friendship in that era).
The film verges on being a "roughie," a style that was starting to emerge at that time and was full-blown by 1967. It has quite a bit in common with other contemporary local productions such as Herk Harvey's "Carnival of Souls" and Steve Cochran's "Tell Me in the Sunlight." And what is it with psychos and sadists in the early Sixties? "Psycho" (1960), "Peeping Tom" (1960), "The Couch" (1962), "The Sadist" (1963), on and on.
The film verges on being a "roughie," a style that was starting to emerge at that time and was full-blown by 1967. It has quite a bit in common with other contemporary local productions such as Herk Harvey's "Carnival of Souls" and Steve Cochran's "Tell Me in the Sunlight." And what is it with psychos and sadists in the early Sixties? "Psycho" (1960), "Peeping Tom" (1960), "The Couch" (1962), "The Sadist" (1963), on and on.