The Truly Obscure: Ned Hockman

[Working off that list, I began a series of posts on the directors in questions under the heading "The Truly Obscure."]

Ned Hockman, the director of Stark Fear, was an interesting fellow:

"Charles Nedwin "Ned" Hockman began his motion picture career as a combat cameraman during World War II with the U.S. Army Air Corps Motion Picture Production Unit. Housed in the old Hal Roach Studios, Hockman helped to photograph hundreds of training films under the supervision of unit commander Ronald Reagan. Later, Hockman would go afield to photograph the hellish fighting conditions in the Burma-China Theater of Operations, rubbing elbows with Stillwell's Raiders and photographing the first instance of medical evacuation via helicopter, deep in the Burmese jungle. Upon return to civilian life, Hockman helped to establish film production studies at the University of Oklahoma; became a charter member of the University Film and Video Association; directed Stark Fear (1962), his first and only feature-length motion picture, and became a leading proponent of luring "runaway" film productions to Oklahoma. Many working motion picture professionals (around the world, as well in Oklahoma) can trace their roots back to this man and acknowledge him as a great teacher and true friend." (IMDB)

Hockman later worked on a couple of Oklahoma City-based productions directed by Christopher Reynolds: the slasher film Offerings (1989) as a production manager, and the police melodrama Lethal Justice (1991) as an actor.

I very much like the wording of one IMDB reviewer who described Stark Fear as an "oil field dark noir like menacing B-movie"!!

POSTSCRIPT: AT of The Blackboard had pointed out that Stark Fear "was shot in Oklahoma or some such place. Beverly Garland is the wife of a loony who is the son of a leading family of the town, Skip Homeier. He's brutalizing her. She spends a lot of time driving around some interesting bleak landscapes. Some of the interior photography is quite atmospheric but the story is murky. In an interview, Garland said the show was put together by a professor of theater arts in the state university and that, after a few days, it became evident that he didn't know how to direct a film, so Homeier more or less took over, just to get it done."