Good concept, poorly executed.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Just go with it -- suspend all disbelief and enjoy! Her sister may have just been murdered, but lovely Betty Grable giggles as she makes with a hacksaw on big lug Victor Mature's handcuffs! Laird Cregar menaces as a giant, obsessed detective who purrs philsophically! All that and Elisha Cook Jr.! Fox staff composer Cyril J. Mockridge provides the score -- giddy alternating repetition of 'Over the Rainbow' and Gershwin pastiche ('Rhapsody in Blue'?), as love theme and underworld suspense motif, respectively. Sounds as slapped-together-in-a-hurry as the film looks -- in a good way! The crazy pace and goofy energy are this film's admirable strengths.Watch for the not-even-close/no-time-to-get-it-right rear projection as Cregar and Mature take an uncomfortable drive uptown in a convertible. Otherwise the design and lighting/photography are swell.Ace perennial English butler Allan Mowbray gets to expand his comic and dramatic range as a flamboyant aging stage actor/superb physical coward. Charles 'oh yeah, that guy' Lane appears as his typical taciturn, semi-bald, bespectacled self in the role of the cooperative florist -- not quite the usual 'angry authority' bit he played hundreds of times on film and TV into the 1990s. (Lane, a founding member of SAG, passed in 2007 at age 102 -- one of the last survivors of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.)This is a good film to study regarding the phenomenon of 'star quality' -- never was Victor Mature's self-admitted aggressive lack of interest in Acting more apparent, or more perfectly utilised!

"Beautiful Model Found Murdered" screams the headline in the New York Daily Call. Prominent sports promoter Frankie Christopher (nee Botticelli, Victor Mature) is grilled by detectives who suspect him for the murder of model Vicky Lynn (Carole Landis) at 76th Street in the city. In flashback Frankie explains how he discovered Vicky – a waitress at the time – and their subsequent business connection. Because of a lack of physical evidence, Frankie is not arrested although menacing detective Ed Cornell (Laird Cregar) insists that he is the killer. In fact Cornell becomes overly obsessed with pinning the crime on Frankie even to the point of overlooking several obvious suspects, like strange switchboard operator Harry Williams and callous gossip columnist Larry Evans. What is Cornell's agenda? In any case, Vicky's sister Jill (Betty Grable), who initially disliked Frankie, gives her perspective in flashback to the police of the time of her sister's business split with Frankie. Vicky had told Frankie that – despite his advancement of her career – she was leaving (for Hollywood) as she has just signed a long-term acting contract after passing a screen test. The next day Jill found Vicky's prostrate body with Frankie hovering above it in the sisters' shared apartment. Cornell trails Frankie around town in a disconcerting manner. From his sleep in his bedroom Frankie awakens to find the sinister detective staring at him. The investigator had hoped that he would talk in his sleep! Another time, after Frankie gave him a ride, Cornell taunts the promoter with a miniature hangman's noose. Still another time Cornell sneakily works his way into Jill's apartment. When Cornell plants brass knuckles in Frankie's apartment to implicate him in Vicky's murder, Frankie goes on the lam. But Frankie will use a Tootsie Roll to good advantage!Meanwhile Frankie and Jill begin to date and eventually fall in love. He tells her that his real last name is Botticelli. "Mrs. Botticelli?" utters Jill. The couple has to play sleuths to get down to the bottom of the mystery. There is a nice scene where Jill sneaks outside her building via the fire escape, never slipping despite prowling around in her high heels. We see even more of her famous legs at the Lido plunge. Anyway, the two learn that someone has been sending flowers on Vicky's grave every day. Then Frankie discovers that detective Cornell has set up a shrine to Vicky in his apartment. So who killed her?Victor Mature, Betty Grable, and Carole Landis act wonderfully and are good-looking, but this has to be Laird Cregar's movie. See his shadow early on when, like the creep he is, he stalks the dining room where Landis works. Cregar, porcine at six feet three inches and 300 pounds, is one terrifying crooked cop. An interesting contrast is with beefy Orson Welles in "Touch of Evil" (1958). Catch Cregar in "The Lodger" (1944) and "Hangover Square" (1945). The former movie is about Jack the Ripper while in the latter Cregar is a classic composer who plays his piano while a building goes down in flames all around him. Three years after "I Wake up Screaming" he was dead at age 31. Lovely Carole Landis never made it to age 30, although, as she had some success in real life, she fared better than her screen persona Vicky who does not make it to Tinseltown. At the end Landis was four times married and her career bottomed out. Of course Betty Grable would become a famous World War II pinup gal. She had already acted in "Million Dollar Legs" (1939) and "Down Argentine Way" (1940). Mature had already starred in "One Million BC" (with Landis) in 1940; he would also act in "My Darling Clementine" (1946), the underrated "Cry of the City" (1948), and many others. He had better range than he himself realized, for he played several important and diverse historical figures: Samson, Crazy Horse, Doc Holliday, and Hannibal. By the way, despite the title, no one wakes up screaming!

'I Wake Up Screaming' came out around the time 'The Maltese Falcon', which is considered the first true film noir. 'Screaming' has some noirish elements including some dark lighting, a femme fatale of sorts and a man falsely accused of murder but it can't make up its mind whether its appeal is slanted toward the lover of a good mystery or romance. Indeed, the occasionally insufferable soundtrack features one too many tidbits of 'Over the Rainbow', occasionally ruining the dark atmosphere of menace that a true film noir should engender.'I Wake Up Screaming' disappoints on many levels. First there's the murder victim herself, Vicky Lynn (played by Carole Landis, who tragically took her own life approximately seven years after this film's first release). Vicky is a waitress turned would-be actress, after being discovered by sports promoter, Frankie Christopher (Victor Mature). One wonders why these high society types (who are friends of Christopher), fall head over heels for the unconnected Vicky, who has nothing to offer except maybe her looks. The way they fawn over this unproven neophyte is truly embarrassing. Not all actresses at that time got ahead simply because of their looks—there was something also called 'personality' but unfortunately the films' scenarists here chose to present the requisite go-getter as a generic bimbo. Maybe this is the reason why Vicky's sister, Jill (Betty Grable), along with Christopher, fail to emote when they learn of Vicky's murder. Yes, this bothered me but then again, when you intentionally create such generic characters, it stands to follow that real emotions will invariably not end up on display. I also found Victor Mature to be hopelessly miscast as Christopher, who should be a more hardened, streetwise character. Mature is simply too much of a 'nice guy' to play a tough guy sports promoter. Betty Grable is more fitting as the goody two shoes sister but too much time is taken up with Grable and Mature canoodling, and taking us away from the aforementioned atmosphere of dread (it should be noted that the DVD extras feature a song that Grable sings that was cut from the final print; that only goes to show the mindset of the films' producers before they decided to turn 'I Wake Up Screaming' into something a tad bit more grittier).The 'Screaming' plot is really nothing to write home about. Yes there's a nice little twist when Jill recognizes creepy Detective Ed Cornell (menacingly and finely played by Laird Cregar who also met a sad demise at an early age), as the guy who had stalked Vicky earlier, while she was working as a waitress. Cornell is the bad cop who breaks into Christopher's apartment, misappropriates evidence without a warrant and ultimately still attempts to arrest Christopher, even though he has already obtained a confession from the real killer. We get the idea early on that Cornell is both a bad guy and pushy to boot but things really fall apart at the climax when it's revealed he's a pathetic sad sack stalker, who has pictures of Vicky plastered all over his apartment. Instead of killing Christopher (which of course would not have worked well for a 1941 audience but would have been a better ending today—I'm thinking of John Houston in 'Chinatown', the real bad guy pedophile who gets away with it), Cornell, sheepishly and pathetically, takes his own life.The real killer turns out to be a big let down: Harry Williams, the bellhop, whose obsession with Vicky was even worse than Cornell's (Elisha Cook Jr. provides the proper histrionics, as the noted 'B' actor was always good at playing neurotics and petty criminals).Oh yes, there are two other characters, an over the hill actor and cynical Broadway columnist, who are the 'red herrings' designed to distract you from figuring out who the real killer is. Again, when we do find out that Harry Williams did Vicky in, he just seems so tangential to the main story, as if it were an aside in a play (also, please clue me in how the police can call Harry a "suspect", simply because he went missing for a day or two—later they discover the was visiting relatives in Brooklyn, and have to let him go). The 'I Wake Up Screaming' denouement is wholly appropriate, as we find the two lovebirds, Jill and Christopher, once again canoodling in the 'ritzy' night club which both sisters found so exciting. The lightweight ending might be good for the family friendly aficionados who dig the happy endings and the silly romance, but film noir has clearly taken a back seat, in this puppy love, pseudo-thriller.

Sometimes it's the acting that makes a movie good. Other times it could be the directing or the script and other times the music or cinematography. In this movie, all the elements of movie-making are brought together to produce a great movie. In this movie the film-noir technique is used to great effectiveness to bring out and compliment the essential coldness of the story. Also, the performances of Betty Grable and Carole Landis as sisters was incredible. First, they looked like sisters and second, they acted like sisters. Of course, it helps an actress's career if she's attractive, but she still has to be able to act and both of these ladies could act. Laird Cregar's performance was uncanny. He was the epitome of obsession. His performance carried the movie. Victor Mature was wonderful. He could act and in this movie displays an wide range of emotions. The story is itself is compact, concise, and coherent and moves along at a fast pace. This movie is a classic and warrants a lot more attention.