Movie review - "Lady in Red" (1979) *** (re-watching)

The story of John Dillinger's last girlfriend played by Pamela Sue Martin... that actually only forms a small part of the film which is really a rise and fall type saga of a 30s gal along the lines of the story of movie Jean Harlow or Barbara Stanwyck would appear in during the 1930s. Pamele Sue Martin has the role of a life time - so much acting - and she does very well, she's gorgeous and likeable.

She starts off in a farm, accidentally takes part in a robbery (cameo from Mary Woronov), winds up in prison, gets out to work as a hooker. Act two is Dillinger interlude - Martin becomes passive not knowing he's a crook. Act three she becomes a gangster.

The exploitation elements are kind of undercut by John Sayle's social realism - Martin has sex with some dodgy guy at the start but it's bad, and has sex as a hooker later on to a guy who says "call me daddy" and it's quite blunt and depressing. It's good drama, mind, I'm just explaining my theory of why it didn't do well at the box office... whereas the gals in Big Bad Mama loved having sex and had a good ole time. Martin does have good sex with gangsters played by Robert Forster and Robert Conrad, mind.

A lot of it is really depressing - a black female prostitute is viciously killed by a client (Chris Lloyd).

I'm sure it had a New World low budget but the production values are high.

The story has a made it up as it goes along feel... more like a novel. She's a prostitute... she's in prison ... she's with Dillinger. Sayles felt it was shot too slowly... it's on 93 minutes but maybe it needed to be 80.