Wicked Woman

You can't judge a book by its cover, unless you don't care to remain oblivious to what the book might contain. The same holds true for low-budget films like Wicked Woman. Yes, a thread of superficiality runs through it, but if we judge this film as "trashy" as one reviewer here did, we risk comparing it unfairly with other films that were simply not in the same league. I prefer to judge this film based on what it actually gives us, not what it could give us. Such films don't measure up to the five-star flicks of Film Noir but they supply the mortar around which the bricks are laid. This film served/serves a purpose with its glimpse of seedy boarding room in small town America, showing us the transiency of the period. Once upon a time I, too, chose to "Go Greyhound" as a means to my adventurous ends, and I appreciated the tone established when Billie Nash she steps off that smokey bus that brought to this ubiquitous town from who knows where...and then again at the end when it takes her away again, perhaps to yet another thread-bare town?

I recently watched one of my favorite "B" films of the 1950's Wicked Woman on Turner Classic Movies and it was fun to see again. Platinum blonde Beverly Michaels decked out all in white and prancing around in "slow motion" is a knockout in the title role. She is on the move for trouble and she gets plenty.After checking into a rooming house she gets a job as a hostess in a local bar and she connives a scheme to entice handsome owner Richard Egan and thats when the fun begins. Together they lock lips and sneak around his well meaning alcoholic wife Evelyn Scott which presents some tense moments. However character actor Percy Helton is also a border at the rooming house and has other ideas which could dampen the scheme. It all boils down to a knock down drag out finale which is hilarious thanks to the three key players. A treat for the "B" movie film buff this film is rarely shown and it is not on video.

Beverly Michaels, a long drink of ice water, plays Billie Nash, who blows into town on a Greyhound bus, rents space in a cheap boarding house, gets a job as a drinks waitress in a dive, and throws herself at the owner (Richard Egan). There are, however, complications. Egan's wife (Evelyn Scott)helps run the bar but drinks too much; Michael's across-the-hall neighbor (Percy Halton) is a lecherous "runt" with designs, and a habit of spying, on her. When Michaels and Egan plot to sell the bar and abscond to Mexico, the complications get out of hand. "Wicked Woman" is one of those mid-50s grade-Z features that is oddly compelling -- the acting is far better than you'd expect. And there's a grisly fascination in the depiction of the lousy rooms for rent with hotplates and heartache, and in the rough-and-tumble working-class saloons where late-stage alcoholism is a commonplace. The movie hints at darker developments that never really take place yet somehow maintains a curious, crummy integrity. Definitely worth a watch.

Seen on TCM in the wee hours, this sordid little noir features the bleached blonde sexpot Beverly Michaels who had been dumped by cheesy Svengali Hugo Haas having switched his attentions to Cleo Moore. Bev makes Marilyn look like a goddess. As she saunters through the dismal sets which include a rancid rooming house, a barful of working-class mediocrities, and generic city streets, swaying her hips with a pokerface, you know this girl has hit bottom and is not likely to go much farther up because all she has is sex for brains. [A late scene shows her with a toothy, gummy grin which may answer the unasked question: why does she so rarely smile?] Down to her last dollar she gets a room, a barmaid job, a slimy admirer across the hall (the weird, weird Percy Helton) and proceeds to seduce the barman (Richard Egan had fallen this far in only a few years?), his bar-owning lush of a wife, and go for the money. The idea is of a continuing cycle of spider trapping fly in her web of deceit and avarice. When the fly is devoured, she moves on to another town. My question: after a few more low-grade films and a couple of TV appearances, what happened to Beverly Michaels? Can't be the same one who shows up 30 years later as a party girl in a British film, can it?

This is one of those movies that is just a little film but somehow, I can't describe it, it works for me! I love it! I love the black and white, the really dated environment, that blonde hoochie mama, the storyline, etc. etc. Just a fun movie to watch and escape with because it's quite campy. I think the ladies will like it and I never saw that blonde actress before but I thought she played her part well the way she just used the men and had them all drooling over her. She had a great figure too.

I'm not a Richard Egan fan but that's okay, she makes it worth watching!