Friday, May 26, 2006

Movie review - "The Lady in Red" (1979) ***

A film best remembered today because the screenplay was written by John Sayles during his exploitation phase. Sayles never wrote down to his audience though and despite the boobs and violence this is a terrific taunt little film which tells the saga of Polly Franklin (Pamela Sue Martin), a farm girl turned prostitute turned girlfriend of John Dillinger (Robert Conrad) - she was there the night he was shot. The film builds up to that event - I thought she would be Dillinger's partner in crime or something but she doesn't even know his true identity (which was true) and has given up prostitution by the time he comes along. Their scenes are mostly romantic - of the "I just want to move to California" variety.

Dillinger actually isn't in the film that much - beforehand most of the screen time is devoted to Franklin's various adventures, mostly her having a hard time: being seduced by a newspaper man, going to work in a sweat shop (run by Dick Miller), becoming a ten cents a dancer, going to gaol (where the bitch guard I think was the fat lady in Porkys), turning hooker, then giving it up and becoming a waitress. It's a Roger Corman film for New World but there are superior production values. Most of the skin is seen in the brothel.

Martin is an engaging, feisty lead, very sympathetic. Conrad adds dash and verve as Dillinger, and Louise Fletcher is ideal as the woman who betrays him.
 
The film has a structural flaw - it goes fine until Dillinger's death (the most exciting sequence): but then had a whole other sequence where Hamilton and some friends rob a bank and it all goes wrong; Sayles sets it up as best he can by only using characters we've met before hand, and tying up a whole bunch of lose ends in this bit (eg Christopher Lloyd's vicious mafioso) - but it still seems like an add-on just to get our hero on a crime spree. And when it all goes badly a lot of sympathetic characters get killed, not to mention a whole bunch of innocent people - which leaves a slightly sour after taste. Brisk direction from Lewis Teague.

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