La dépravée

Boorish remake of the Margaret Lockwood stormer, with an admittedly surging Faye Dunaway (who gave up a major role in a respectable film of 'King Lear' to appear!) doing the honours.

It's a Michael Winner film: choppy editing and rushed plot existing purely to veer from one lewd outrage to the next let that drop right quick. Another dead giveaway is the preposterous wealth of acting big-hitters - John Gielgud, Prunella Scales, Derek Francis, Alan Bates, John Savident, Denholm Elliott . . the list goes on - which seem bafflingly common in Winner bombs.

Glynis Barber is set to marry rich lord, Elliott. Her pampered sister, Dunaway, arrives for the splicing but within minutes she and Elliott are frolicking in the fronds and she's snagged him for herself. The wedding is coarse, mansion life a bore, and it's not long before the scowling newlywed has taken to roadside wrongdoing, shacking up with vulgarian highwayman Bates - brash, sweaty, no James Mason - along the way.

What Gielgud thinks of it all you can see in his face : a weary grimace every time he delivers a tawdry line. Scales is another whose deportment painfully demonstrates that she too has realised far too late in the day that she's signed up to a complete bummer.

A particular low, amongst many, is Glynis Barber's body-double and an astonishingly bad Oliver Tobias - slapstick wig, someone else's voice - doing a wretched fireside love scene. Listen to Tony Banks (!) gaudy orchestral swell as they manoeuvre into several unlikely and dull sex positions.

Controversy - a Winner requisite - was raised when British censors objected to Dunaway horsewhipping topless Marina Sirtis - another Winner requisite - at a public hanging and started snipping. A furious Winner engaged a posse of the great and the good to defend his film, only for them to later realise the censors were quite right. As the late, great Derek Malcolm once said of another Winner duffer: "I wouldn't have cut it, I'd've burnt it !"

Sirtis - ripe and sultry, for sure - a shoe-in for Mia Khalifa, does deliver the film's one good line, and Winner should have gone the full comedy route instead of the crass ribaldry, gurning and quasi-Hammer Horror music motifs he did. Fatally, the film doesn't know what it is, and ends up merely a clamorous mess dressed up to the nines in swanky costumes and pulchritudinous photography.

Points for the 'Directed by Michael Winner' legend set over a pair of advancing bare jigglies, which was either Winner puckishly anticipating the predictable critical hostility his film met on release, or actively participating in it.

I can't understand the lack of love for this film. It is just a fun costume film with some mild action, all quite entertaining. It's colorful, full of British character actors in good spirits. It also has beautiful scenery from the British countryside and wonderful period costumes from the baroque era.

The film stars Faye Dunaway in the delicious role of Lady Barabara, a very unscrupulous and greedy woman. Faye enjoys herself but she could have let rip a little more, gone the extra inch to portray this very wicked lady.

On the whole an amusing matinée movie. I think if it had less nudity it could have been a film for the whole family, as it was a lot of kids who could have enjoyed it were left out. Maybe that's part of the reason the film wasn't a hit back in 1983.

Just watched this the other day and, while the film itself was a bit of a mess, Faye Dunaway's performance makes this watchable. From the first moment we see her appear on screen, she owns the screen and you just can't take your eyes off her.

Miss Dunaway was still incredibly gorgeous at this stage and willing to take risks with her performance that few other actresses would. How many legendary actresses would be willing to engage in a whip fight with a topless woman?

While she is let down by the poor dialogue and uninterested/uninteresting supporting performers, she certainly gives it her all. At times she may go a little over the top but she is the only thing that makes the film watchable.

Another film I had the misfortune to pay money to see. Major over acting on the part of Alan Bates, Faye Dunaway, and Faye Dunaway's eyebrows. You also get to see two women, naked from the waste up, whipping each other.

Mrs. Dunaway, you should have known better.

To mark the passing of Michael Winner and to celebrate the film's 30th anniversary(2013) the time would now seem to be propitious to finally release this movie on DVD even if it's only a DVD-R as most older movies are these days. Of course it all boils down to who currently owns the rights. Originally made for the Cannon banner, most of those films wound up being purchased by MGM whose DVDs are now being distributed in conjunction with 20th Century Fox.

There could also be a problem with the soundtrack by Tony Banks (of Genesis fame). He may be due royalties which the current owner of THE WICKED LADY doesn't want to pay. That happened to a number of late 1960s and early 1970s American International titles when they first came out on video. There could be many different reasons for the delay but whatever they are, they need to be worked out! If the film looks great on VHS (which it does), think of what a proper aspect DVD would look like.

The film was roundly panned upon its original release in 1983. The Brits hated it because they saw it as an unnecessary R rated remake of the beloved 1945 film with Margaret Lockwood and James Mason and the Americans hated it because they either didn't realize that it was meant to be tongue-in-cheek or found it too over-the-top for their liking. To criticize Dunaway's performance as overblown is to totally miss the point. Alan Bates, John Gielgud, Denholm Elliot and the rest of the cast are having a fine old time and the cinematography by Jack Cardiff (THE RED SHOES) is gorgeous to behold.

There is definitely gratuitous nudity and the nearly X rated horsewhipping scene is truly outrageous but that adds to the overheated atmosphere of the film. It's either your cup of tea or it isn't but either way it deserves to be available in the digital format. Is it a fun historical romp or overdone cinematic trash? Let each viewer decide!... For more reviews visit The Capsule Critic.

POSTSCRIPT: A Blu-Ray / DVD version was finally released by Kino Lorber in 2015 and although still available, it is outrageously expensive.