Slightly Scarlet (1956)
Slightly Scarlet (1956), directed by Allan Dwan.
I had never heard of this until I saw it recommended in one of those Citadel Press picture-books: Douglas Brode's Lost Films of the Fifties. By "lost" he means not well known, but not cult either.
It's a minor film that I don't think anyone would claim is important, but it has features worthy of consideration. If we could get a decent restoration it might become better known:
Two beautiful women, redheads playing sisters and actually looking like it for once...
Rhonda Fleming was never an A-list star, but she was talented and I always enjoy seeing her. Last seen in Out of the Past (1947), Inferno (1953) and Fritz Lang's While the City Sleeps (1956).
Arlene Dahl is even less well known to me; I remember her only from Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959). Here she has the challenging, risky part of the klepto-nympho bad sister.
Allan Dwan has an amazing 406 directing credits in the IMDB, the earliest in 1911. Why don't I know him? His motto: "If you get your head up above the mob, they try to knock it off. If you stay down, you last forever."
John Alton is famous for his black-and-white film noir photography but he did color too, and here he combines the two crafts, bringing Technicolor to the menacing, shadowy crime settings.
Ted de Corsia fanclub! Always one of the best tough guys. I can't remember the last time I saw him in color.
Adapted from a James M. Cain novel: Love's Lovely Counterfeit (said by fans to be one of his lesser works).
In the book Brode claims that the Code required the sisters to have separate beds (is that true?) and that we are to imagine a more lesbian relationship, with further complications introduced by leading man John Payne.
The VCI DVD is very poor quality and it crops the Superscope 2.0 image to 1.77. A quality restoration would be very welcome.
It does have a good commentary track by a knowledgeable fan.
