La scandaleuse

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.

Wicked Woman doesn't waste any time getting started. Billie Nash (Beverly Michaels) blows into town, finds a room to rent, meets her creepy neighbor, takes a job serving drinks in a bar, and sets her sights on Matt Bannister (Richard Egan), the bar's owner and her key to money and Mexico. That's the basic set-up - the rest is a trashy, good time.

Wicked Woman is a perfect example of making an entertaining film with no money. Everything looks cheap, but it hardly matters. In fact, the cheap look only adds to the overall tone and tawdry feeling. Director Russell Rouse and screenwriter Clarence Greene really get a lot of the $1.95 budget they had to work with. Beverly Michaels is a revelation. Her Billie, with that super slo-mo sashay, is perfect as the titular Wicked Woman. She oozes cheap sensuality. And, you'd have little difficulty believing she'd easily do away with Bannister's wife if it meant she gets what she wants. The rest of the cast is just as good with Egan, Percy Helton, and Evelyn Scott all giving nice performances.

My biggest complaint with Wicked Woman is the film's ending. I really wanted to see everything blow-up spectacularly in Billie's face. Billie never really gets what she deserves. And the way Bannister's wife so easily forgives him doesn't ring true. Bannister should also have suffered more. Still, these are minor quibbles. In the end, Wicked Woman is a rock solid little trashy B-noir that I easily recommend.

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!

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?

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.