Amare per uccidere

Arlene Dahl was a beautiful woman. She doubtless still is. She had a cold look, which works for this movie. She plays a gold-digger with little heart. The character seems to be icy physically, too: She likes what men can get her but romance and sex do not appear to be among her interests.

Herbert Marshall, for decades a leading man, ends up in this too. He plays one of the men she uses.

There are similarities between this and "Baby Face" with Barbara Stanwyck. That movie packs a real wallop, though. This one is chic but tepid.

Fab 50s fashions are the best thing this film has to offer with its story of a woman who works at some shirtwaist dress company who manipulates her way out of the "hoodlum" infested neighborhood in NY she comes from, claiming to be from tonier Boston! Sadly it seems they ran out of a costume budget halfway through, when, in spite of having hooked her biggest fish yet, she starts wearing outfits over again (such as a hideous white stole) - outfits less stylish, strangely, now that she lives in Paris!

The locations/sets are to die for. As is Arlene Dahl - gorgeous - but I kind of find her even more remarkable later in her life on the game show circuit. That's some long lasting glamour she's got! Besides as a young gal she looked too much like Janet Leigh. She married some hotties in her time and offsprang some too. Wow. Lex Barker, Lorenzo Lamas. Mmmm mmm! Not too shabby, tabby!

The film was introduced by a historian reading excerpts from a transcript of a suit brought by AD against the studio over a composite photo made for publicity purposes for which she maintained she never posed (and it certainly isn't in the film) in which someone kisses her nude shoulder. She insisted it was a "wanton" image, while maintaining she was "no prude". The court however found the image "delicate and artistic" or some such... she lost the case. All the same she says this is one of her favorite vehiculars. Well, I haven't seen any of her others but either they were pretty bad or her taste in hotties is better than her taste in pictures!

Anyway, the mitigating finale of the film is kind of a disappointment, as is the general low level of her wickedness throughout. Sure, she's "cheap and horrible" as Mildred Pierce said of Veda, but the whole story is told in more amusing pointed and flat out woman hatingly in some of those Hollywood precode films like "Babyface" with Babs Stanwyck (who never married any hotties). "Wicked" pulling its punches didn't really add much to it. Girl, if this is "wicked as they come" then I guess there are no whores, only (violated and somewhat narcissistic) madonnas!

Wicked as they come is the suggestive title of this 1956 British drama, with Arlene Dahl as the protagonist. It is the story of a beautiful woman, who reveals symptoms of misandry from an early age, but ruthlessly uses men as means of social and financial advancement.

The film portrays this life path, with a refusal of emotional involvement, which accumulates enemies and seems destined for a tragic end.

It's an interesting, original, well-paced film, a little melodramatic for some people's tastes, but one that can be enjoyed until the end, as a result of the plot's ongoing developments.

With Philip Carey, Michael Goodliffe and veteran Herbert Marshall, among the actors who embody the suitors passed over by the Machiavellian Kathy.

Wicked as They Come is directed by Ken Hughes who also co-writes the screenplay with Sigmund Miller and Robert Westerby. It stars Arlene Dahl, Philip Carey, Herbert Marshall, Michael Goodlife and Ralph Truman. Music is by Malcolm Arnold and cinematography by Basil Emmott.

Adapted from the Bill S. Ballinger novel, story has Dahl as a poor but beautiful girl who realises that her sexuality will get her all the finer things in life - at whatever cost.

Efficient little British Noirer that makes up for a lack of originality with some strong psychological smarts.

We are all guilty of it, film fans and critics that is, in how we often compare a film recently viewed with something of a similar ilk that is far better. One such case is Wicked as They Come, a piece coming late in the original film noir cycle that sticks a major league femme fatale out there front and centre. Dahl's Kathy Allen (nee Allenbourg) is hot to trot, a viper of the highest order, her beauty and sexuality is stunning, thus men line up to eat out of her hands. Where once was sane and astute business men, now sit lap dogs soon ready to fall into the vipers nest.

If that sounds familiar then of course it is, even from the pre code days there were film makers exploring the sex as a weapon angle, toying with bad girl persona's as a course of cinematic titillation. Ken Hughes knows his draw card is Dahl, who even in black and white is heart achingly gorgeous, a smouldering vixen to literally die for. The story trajectory is nothing new, Kathy tramples on every man she can to feather her own nest, but sooner or later things have to come to a head, where the reason for the distorted psyche will out and the crossroads of life ominously appears at film's closure.

Better films out there that deal with the same themes? Yes, absolutely. That doesn't mean this should be readily dismissed as a viable option to those with an interest in such femme fatale dalliances. Dahl is super, her male co-stars equally so, and Hughes steers it safely to a perfectly ambiguous finale. Welcome to noirville, men enter at your own risk. 7/10

This priceless British copy of an American crime film comes to you courtesy of rising young director Ken Hughes with a tongue-in-cheek tone set from the outset by shots of fifties London accompanied by a noisy jazz score provided by Malcolm Arnold, with noirish photography by Basil Emmott.

Set in the days when travel by plane was considered the high of glamour, the presence of Sid James as Arlene Dahl's stepfather serves as a visual reminder of Miss Dahl's humble beginnings (early on she's seen wielding a broken bottle) before she rises in the world while wreaking havoc on all the men in the cast,