Lack of good storyline.

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Despite mostly bad reviews, what the hey, I loaded this up. Early on, voluptuous Ekberg emerges from the surf and hurries to take a shower outside the shack. Nearby is a mental institution, along with a handy escapee clutching a big ole knife. Two screams later, she's in the nuthouse herself, traumatized outta her unnecessary mind. Inside, she falls under the analytical spell of a possessive psychiatrist. Next thing, they're both gone, and she's gyrating her assets, along with chains and ropes, as an exotic dancer.Anyway, murder and attempted murder bolster this trashy Noir. Swear, I'm not making this up. Still undecided? The Red Norvo combo is the nightclub band, Gypsy Rose Lee is the owner. Oh yeah, Miss Ekberg has a vicious Great Dane watchdog, but anyone can get past him if they softly recite the Gettysburg Address.

1958's "Screaming Mimi" is based on a novel by Frederic Brown and stars Anita Ekberg, Philip Carey, Harry Townes and Gypsy Rose Lee. Ekberg is Virginia, aka Yolanda, a drop-dead gorgeous exotic dancer who is institutionalized after nearly being murdered at her stepbrother's house. The kindly psychiatrist (Townes) trying to help her takes the transference a bit too far - he fakes her death and takes off with her. Virginia changes her name to Yolanda and gets a job as an exotic dancer in a club run by Joann Masters (Lee). A reporter named Sweeney (Philip Carey) gets onto a story about a slasher and crosses paths with Virginia/Yolanda and, like every other man, falls for her. In Yolanda's dressing room, Sweeney finds a statue - the same statue was found next to the last murder victim, also an exotic dancer.This is an interesting story for sure with sexual undertones (or shall I say overtones) galore - Ekberg's chained slave dance, the lesbian relationship Joann has with another dancer, the statue fetish, and Ekberg herself, sex on heels. Her first film was "Mississippi Gambler," in which she was uncredited; not surprisingly, she got the attention of the film's star, Tyrone Power, and had an affair with him that lasted into the mid-'50s. She even got to meet his relatives in Cincinnati - and he was still married at the time. Was she good in this? I have no idea; she's so stunning, it doesn't matter. Philip Carey, known today for his portrayal of Asa Buchanan in "One Life to Live" was a hunk in the '50s who was relegated to B films costarring many beautiful women - he's easy on the eyes too and does a decent job as Sweeney. Harry Townes had a huge career in television and underplays the role of Greene, the psychiatrist. He does a good job - if the character appeared sinister, it wouldn't have been believable.A story like this could easily have been given a big budget and big director and been much more effective. As it is, it keeps one's attention with its twists and turns and one of the great va-va-vooms, Ekberg.

Murder and madness hound an exotic dancer (Anita Ekberg), her dog Devil, and a macabre statuette she fetishizes...I love this sordid little Columbia "B" which plays a key role in the evolution of the American Film Noir into the Italian Giallo cycle and helped (along with 1957's THE GIRL IN BLACK STOCKINGS) pave the way for Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO a few years later. The Hitchcock also has a surprise ending concerning the star and a shower stabbing isn't so new, after all. Like Gerd Oswald, Dario Argento used the same lurid Fredric Brown pulp novel as source for his THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE and was actually more faithful (in spirit) to the novel: MIMI grabs the viewer by the throat in the opening scene but the movie would have been more shocking if it hadn't been told in linear fashion. The fact Yolanda was attacked by a maniac years before was one of many surprises and revealed half-way through the novel (as it is in the Argento). Here's how Brown's novel opens: "The protagonist of Brown's novel, William Sweeney, is also a writer, a newspaperman. Walking the streets of nighttime Chicago in the grip of an alcoholic binge, Sweeney sees an amazing thing. Trapped by a giant dog between the double glass doors of her apartment building, a beautiful woman writhes; she has been stabbed by an unknown assailant. She appears to be the fourth victim of a ripper (as Sweeney's paper has dubbed the killer), and she is the only one to have survived. Bewitched by the beautiful victim Yolanda Lang -a stripper who's act includes the dog, Devil -Sweeney begins his own investigation of the crimes. His first lead is a mass-market statuette of a terrified woman, the screaming mimi, sold by the first victim the day she was murdered... Argento changed many details in the process of turning "The Screaming Mimi" into The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, but the most important is this: flawed and weak though he may be, Brown's protagonist is afraid of the universe of madness glimpsed when he gets close to Yolanda Lang. Argento's is drawn to it like a moth to the flame. The American pulp novel "The Screaming Mimi" was passed along to Argento for an opinion by Bertolucci, who intended to buy the rights for himself. Captivated by the novel's central idea, Argento resolved to borrow it and spin off a new story. In fact, he borrowed quite a bit more..." I saw SCREAMING MIMI as a kid on daytime TV and it reely scared the pants off me! I was very upset over the way Ekberg's dog got killed and found the crime scene photos of the other murdered strippers frightening. There was a lot of "adult content" that didn't get by my young mind, either: fetishes, an intense relationship between Yolanda and her dog ...along with lesbianism and dope! When Phil Carey tries to barge in on nightclub owner Gypsy Rose Lee and a young chick, their repartee ("Sorry, I didn't know it was tea for two") leaves no doubt that Gypsy is a dyke and marijuana, in the 50's, was called "tea". I love the "El Madhouse" nightclub -if the Red Norvo Trio's xylophone doesn't drive you nuts, nothing will and sex goddess Anita Ekberg's somnambulistic acting style perfectly suits a stripper with a couple of mental screws loose. Fetish-driven Yolanda Lang, writhing around in rags on ropes (in chains!), caters to the S&M in all of us and I wish there were more films like SCREAMING MIMI and THE GIRL IN BLACK STOCKINGS from the schizophrenic 1950's. I didn't have long to wait, tho: PSYCHO (and later the giallo) were just around the corner! In between were THE NAKED KISS, WHO KILLED TEDDY BEAR?, and...

When I first read Fredric Brown's 1948 novel, I was mesmerized. I have read it a few times since and have no intention of stopping-- it's really one of those forgotten classics of the hardboiled genre. Also being a Fellini fan, I have long been curious to see the film, Anita Ekberg's first starring role, (La Dolce Vita was two years later.) I know that Fellini was a pretty big fan of Brown-- at one point he planned to adapt his sci-fi novel What Mad Universe-- so I'm pretty sure he discovered Ekberg in this film.Though I think the above reviewer was kind of harsh on Oswald and the cast-- especially Harry Townes, who understates the creepy obsessiveness of Doc Greene very well-- the fact is the movie falls short of the book by a considerable margin. I would put most of the blame on screenwriter Robert Blees, who had previously scripted the giant monster movie The Black Scorpion. But for all its faults (unfortunately, the ending is one of the things they botched) the film has its charms. Not only the cinematography but the music performed by Red Norvo captures the mood of the novel very well. And there are scenes that they actually get right. So I guess it's a love/hate thing for me.Before I go, one last sidelight. Gypsy Rose Lee, who's featured in Mimi, was an exotic dancer in the forties and wrote one novel, The G-String Murders-- also about a killer who stalks strippers-- which was adapted as Lady of Burlesque, with Barbara Stanwyck.