MOVIE OF THE DAY: "WICKED WOMAN" (1953)

Q: When is a film noir not quite a film noir?
A: When's it's Wicked Woman.

Not like it isn't trying. All the ingredients are there: Billie Nash, a bottle blonde from Floozeville USA, buses into a small town and promptly gets a room in a boarding house, which, at $6 a week, is overpriced by six. After landing a job as a waitress in the local gin mill, Billie starts putting the moves on co-owner Matt Bannister. 

Sure, Matt's married, but the ball-and-chain, Dora, is a lush who gets nasty after just looking at the first shot, and only goes downhill from there. Billie wants Matt to sell the joint and run away with her to Acapulco. He's willing, but there's a hitch: Dora's the other owner, and she's never going to sell. 

What's a slut to do? In a real film noir, she'd convince the sap to plug the wife and make it look like a suicide. Instead, Billie passes herself off as Dora and signs her signature on the sales contract. You're supposed to be a femme fatale, not a femme forger!

Dropping the hammer on the little lady isn't the only missing ingredient. The other one is the noir factor itself -- literally. There are no threatening shadows at play, no dark alleys in which to cower. That would require sophisticated technicians with an artistic eye and a director who knew the meaning of the word "atmosphere."

C'mon! At least push the wife's face into the ashtray.

Instead, Wicked Woman is shot like a TV drama, with bright lights and not a night time scene in sight. Oh, there are scenes that take place at night. But they're indoors, and look like it's one o'clock in the afternoon. However, that flat lighting only highlights movie's modest budget, accentuating Wicked Woman's overall sleaziness.

According to Billie's issue of Advanced Astrology, Charlie was born
under the sign of  SICK BASTARD.

And what sleaze it is! Billie's room looks like it hasn't been painted since Roosevelt's first term, while the furniture appears to have been donated by the Collyer brothers. 

But far worse is the lech across the hall, Charlie Borg, a (barely) overgrown leprechaun whose innocent demeanor unsuccessfully masks a bottomless sexual hunger that Billie initially exploits, soon loathes, and ultimately fears. Story of my life!

The familiar character actor Percy Helton -- he looks like he'd be named Percy -- plays Charlie with a cringe-making gusto that belies the usual friendly, shy demeanor in his other roles, making him even more repugnant than he'd be otherwise. Imagine Winnie the Pooh as a potential sex criminal, OK?

Billie learns too late that fat guys in suspenders are the worst.

But that's the effect Billie has on guys, and brother does she work it! Whether it's for the souses at work, the guy who refills the jukebox, or especially her boss, Billie poses, sashays, and purrs as if her life depends on it. 

Actually it does. Possessing no skills other than seduction, Billie relies on the kindness salaciousness of men to get through life. Early on, we learn that Billie just broke up with her fiance, but never know why. My guess is that the guy realized that Billie's good for just one thing. Well, two things. But neither of them is marriage.

Matt's so horny for Billie, he has to grip
two phallic symbols.

Richard Egan and Evelyn Scott play the unhappily-wed Matt and Dora with a low-rent reality that further advances Wicked Woman's sordidness. As I've stated before, and will continue to do until somebody listens to me, there's something far more true to life about B-actors than any A-lister. 

And as for Beverly Michaels as Billie -- she's attractive in a way that would appeal to middle-aged creeps (Michaels herself is only 25 in Wicked Woman). Her minimal overbite, cute with many women, covers her entire upper row of teeth, making her look like she has an orange peel stuck under her lip. She's kind of sexy, I suppose, but in a brittle sort of way, as if boasting of the contempt she has for men and herself. 

Perhaps that's why, in the end, the actors' ordinariness, along with the general lack of violence, makes Wicked Woman more realistic than the A-list classics of the noir genre. Not better, mind you. But closer to life, enough so that it's more uncomfortable to watch than its makers probably intended.

Some viewers might consider that a drawback. Others know better.

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