La scandaleuse

Beverly Michaels rolls in on the bus, finds a cheap room and gets a job pushing booze at Evelyn Scott's bar. She keeps her eyes for the easy touch -- creepy tailor Percy Helton is anxious to mend her clothes for her, and Miss Scott's husband, Richard Egan, is tired of dealing with with a wife who's drinking up all the profits, and anxious to trade her in on a blonde whose waist seems to be about half of her two other ample statistics.

Miss Michaels does everything except chew gum and stick it behind her ear to indicate the sort of woman she is, and is fascinating in a trashy way, just smart enough to know she's dumb, and to also know that men are not going to look at her face when she talks. Quite clearly her performance impressed the co-writer and director of this movie, Russell Rouse. They got married a couple of years later, had a couple of kids, and stayed married until his death.

This was a fun movie to watch. I saw it last week while attending the SF Film Noir Festival.

Beverly was a knockout of a woman. One of the rare tall actresses. The makers of the film probably had a hard time finding other tall people to act along with her. The popular character actor Percy Helton shows up again as a nagging wanna be friend to the stunning Beverly who uses him for her gain.

The festival tried to get her to attend from her place in Arizona but she said no. Her son the editor Christopher Rouse also tried unsuccessfully to get her to San Francisco. Oh well it was still a lot of fun.

Saw this 7/28/17 on a watchable version via YouTube. Not bad at all, does not try to push the budgetary limits. Rouse has a good script, and he keeps it moving. The leads, Beverly Michaels (a stick-limbed Mamie Van Doren), Richard Egan, Evelyn Scott, and Percy Helton all perform well. Scott, appearing as a boozy version of Rosemary DeCamp, gives a layered, believable performance as the wife of the Egan character. A larger than usual role for the reliably arachnoid Helton. The film hints, mercifully without showing, that Michaels yields to his sexual advances, a unique, unsettling milestone in a long career deserving of a Motion Picture Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement as a Homunculus. OK – maybe "Wicked Woman" does not strictly follow some "noir" rule book." But who cares about categories, other than just "movie"? And this is a pretty good one for the money! Seventy-seven minutes, and hard to find a second wasted.

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.