Strong and Moving!

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

A real curio, this is a most likable technicolor, late noir. Well almost. Based upon one of James M Cain's lesser works, this is unsurprisingly more a mixture of noir and melodrama. From the opening scenes the lush and brilliant colours of John Alton's cinematography, dazzle. The scenes in the baddies' lair are darker and there are some of the familiar dark shadows we rather expect to see in a noir but overall this is a full on shiny bright full colour extravaganza with noir elements. Arlene Dahl plays the kleptomaniac nymphomaniac and plays the part with some style and much overdrive. Difficulties with the censors at the time ensure there is nothing too explicit but nothing can stop young Arlene playing this to the hilt and her scene, legs akimbo on the settee as she attempts to seduce a hood she's never met has to be seen to be believed. Not really a gangster movie or a noir or a romance but something of all these and well worth catching and much easier to enjoy than classify.

With the same title. You might think Slightly Scarlet is about Ben Grace: did he change or not? Then again you might think the movie is about June Lyons: did SHE change or not? SPOILERSIf the movie's about June Lyons, the ending isn't ambiguous, and Ben Grace is a hero in more ways than one. And yes, she changed, and definitely for the better.June's been in what we now lovingly call a co-dependent relationship --with her sister. Crazy Dorothy needs professional help, and June's been trying all her adult life to help her, successful only in being manipulated by Dorothy's psychotic reasoning. June keeps trying to do the impossible: make Dorothy's life better. Dorothy's a prop (a McGuffin, except we know a lot about her) She moves the plot. She's the agent of Ben's meeting and falling in love with June, and the cause of his becoming a hero. She's always at the wrong place at the right time. Dorothy shows us Ben's true attraction to the good sister through his rejection of her, even at her most seductive in a bathing suit. Dorothy claims she and Ben are alike. Ben shows they're not by his attraction to June. Even when Arlene Dahl steals a scene, as she sometimes does, her Dorothy reminds us of June's worries, June's hopes. We see Ben sinking into villainy, except in his relationship to June and Dorothy, which remains consistent and sincere throughout.June's unable to have a relationship with a man because of Dorothy. June, so loyal, so caring, so worried, doesn't have time even for the man she loves, although that man needs her more than Dorothy does. Dorothy, remember, needs a psychiatrist, not a worried sister.And so, as gorgeous June moves closer and closer toward a hideous spinsterhood devoted to the care of semi-conscious Dorothy, events take a turn for the worse AND for the better. Ben undergoes horrible torture to save June and Dorothy. He's still alive at the end, but we don't know certainly that he'll survive. We do know, in that last glance June gives Janson who's patting Dorothy reassuringly, that June's chosen her man over her sister. June smiles back at Janson and Dorothy (and Janson smiles knowingly at June), as June walks away behind the stretcher. There's someone who needs her and can benefit from her care, someone with a legitimate claim on her love and attention, and June follows him. June has been steadfast in her ethics, although her attention was misguided. We know if Ben lives, she'll help him. If he doesn't live, she's freed herself from her bondage to Dorothy.This engrossing film has a lot of action, both physical and psychological. It's easy to watch but not simple. Oooh, that magnetic energy (great direction) between Ben and June. They can barely keep their faces apart in any interaction. Ben tries to be bad, but isn't making it. In the end he succumbs fully to love. A hero because he not only saves the women's lives, but also because he's rescued June from Dorothy. Could there be such a thing as a noir, chick flick? I think so.

James M. Cain's first Hollywood fusillade went off in the mid-1940s, with Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce and The Postman Always Rings Twice, all adapted from his books, helping to set the tone and the parameters for the noir cycle just getting up steam. In the mid-50s, he had a second wind, with Serenade and, from Love's Lovely Counterfeit, Allen Dwan's Slightly Scarlet. While not one of Cain's better works or one of the better movies made from them, it has its ample fascinations. Legendary noir director of photography John Alton works in color here, and startlingly enlivens his customary dark trapezoids with bursts of lime green, flame orange and orchid. (The rare films noirs done in color seem even more decadent: see Leave Her to Heaven and Desert Fury). John Payne reprises his solid, sullen self as a fence-straddling minor mobster who sees his chance to take control of the machine in a mid-sized midwestern city. His twin carrot-topped temptations are sisters Rhonda Fleming, as the mayor's gal Friday, and Arlene Dahl, who has just been released from prison -- she's a loony, man-devouring klepto (and Dahl does her proud. There's even a scene when Fleming finds the message "Goodbye Sister" scrawled in lipstick on her bedroom mirror). Too bad there was a lot of (unnecessary) rewriting of Cain's story; the ending is sourly ambiguous. But this is late noir in garish overdrive, and movies aren't much more fun than that.

Two red-headed sisters, wild colors everywhere (?), no nonsense gangster pol lets himself be dragged around by the manic nympho sister (he dates the busty mature book-on-her-head walkin' sister). Camp, would do well restaged by a drag group (if it hasn't been already) except that I don't think too many people know the original. Arlene DAHL was never like this! No filmic nympho is quite as fruity as she. It's a rare sister vs. sister pre Baby Jane. It's a scream-with-laughter surprise of a film -- please watch it with a bunch of friends. It has been shown on AMC; don't know if it's on tape.