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Wednesday, November 21, 2018

THE WICKED LADY (1945)

With James Mason as the dashing ‘highwayman’ thief and Margaret Lockwood as the ‘Wicked Lady’ who partners him, that’s after stealing her best friend’s fiancé (Griffith Jones) and cheating on him with Michael Rennie, this tongue-in-cheek historical ought to be good ludicrous fun. And writer/director Leslie Arliss gets about halfway there . . . it’s ludicrous. Very popular in its day, what with leading lady Lockwood’s heaving bosom and Can-You-Top-This villainy . . . murder included; she makes that cunning little vixen Scarlett O’Hara look like a nun. But what a shoddy piece of goods it is, with Gainsborough Pictures production values that Monogram Pictures might have found wanting. (Even viewers with a high tolerance for poor backscreen projection may wince at anything on horseback.) Perhaps, like that funny story that’s lost its effect, you had to have been there.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Mason book-ended this film with the last & best of his early brooding brute roles in THE SEVENTH VEIL/’47, and then went on to his breakthru role in director Carol Reed’s ODD MAN OUT/’47. (Avoid Michael Winner’s 1983 WICKED remake for drek-meisters Golan-Globus, a notable embarrassment for Faye Dunaway.)

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