MARK STEVENS IN 'CRY VENGEANCE' FEATURING SKIP HOMEIER

Title: CRY VENGEANCE Year: 1954 Rating: ***1/2

With the exception of a second-act move from an American big city to rural Alaska, the film noir CRY VENGEANCE is a strange, offbeat venture... and wouldn't be if strange and offbeat Skip Homeier didn't play the primary villain...

Despite there being a mob boss that director and star Mark Stevens wants to kill, befitting the revenge title since his family was murdered with half his face burned and deformed before imprisonment... but the tall and lanky Homeier's hit-man Roxey Davis, with white spiked hair that would be normal decades later, soon becomes just about everything...

Skip Homeier in CRY VENGEANCE

Making up for dragging expository scenes that hinder otherwise neat and smokey tavern settings with his target's oblivious bar-working moll Martha Hyers, spending the most time babysitting who's technically the most important character in child starlet Cheryl Callaway as the targeted mobster's daughter...

She's so precious you know our hero-with-antihero-motivation won't pull through on his urban-to-rural journey's goal to off her daddy: but it's henchman Mort Mills and scene-stealer Homeier... the latter turning-out even more evil than he'd initially seemed... that provide Stevens — both as director and actor — some worthy tension on screen.

Skip Homeier in CRY VENGEANCE with Douglas Kennedy

Mark Stevens in CRY VENGEANCE

Richard Deacon in CRY VENGEANCE

Mort Mills in CRY VENGEANCE

Mort Mills in CRY VENGEANCE with Douglas Kennedy

Martha Hyer in CRY VENGEANCE

Skip Homeier in CRY VENGEANCE with Douglas Kennedy

Skip Homeier in CRY VENGEANCE

Martha Hyer, Cheryl Callaway and Mort Mills in CRY VENGEANCE with Douglas Kennedy

Opening Credits of Alaska from CRY VENGEANCE

Opening Credits of Alaska from CRY VENGEANCE

Opening Credits of Alaska from CRY VENGEANCE

Mark Stevens from CRY VENGEANCE

Skip Homeier in CRY VENGEANCE

Martha Hyer in CRY VENGEANCE with Douglas Kennedy