mgtbltp WOW! here a an unexpected diamond in the rough, a color Noir that slightly surpasses "Niagara" shot in Superscope, that has got a David Lynch feel to it.This Noir is not listed in Spencer Selby's "Dark City - The Film Noir." Its definitely off the radar. First, the film has a weird juxtaposition of color, light & shadow. Its this Lynchesque look that is sort of indescribable, unless you've seen it, the the set designer, flamingly went overboard, (even in the extremely noirish segments) and filled the screen with a pallet of colors, its like "Seven Brides For Seven Brothers" meets "Blue Velvet, except where Blue Velvet and Niagara used color, the colors were somewhat muted, in this film they basically run riot. The film even recalls somewhat the pallet of Warren Beatty's comic book film "Dick Tracy". Second, Rhonda Fleming and Allene Dahl playing two gorgeous, smoldering, redhead sisters one "good" the other BAD. I say "good" because Fleming is June, obviously the mistress/secretary of the reformer mayoral candidate living quite lavishly in a perfect "Leave It To Beaver" suburbia with kept woman undertones. Dahl plays over the top kid sister Dorothy just of of prison for a kleptomania relapse, she's also a bit of a nymphomaniac but one excusable flaw in the screenplay is that this is not hinted at sooner. It's supposedly a big improvement over Cain's novel where the Dorothy character is almost an afterthought. For the film I can understand that for the fifties the revelation of her tendencies must have been quite extraordinary, but looking back through the prism of time, realistically she should have been shown more open about it, as it is, its hinted at symbolically, i.e. in one scene Dahl flicks a lighter on under the palm of Payne's hand in another she brandishes a spear-gun. There is even a scene with huge phallic banister in the background while the sisters fight over Payne.Regardless both actresses are stunning in their beauty and provide quite a bit of eye candy throughout the film and you wonder how each will upstage the other next. Another plus, their costumes, their body language, and the backdrops provide a living pulp fiction magazine/paperback book cover shot extravaganza.Fleming has a sequence in bed where she is wearing the flimsiest nightgown flashing her ample breasts for at least a full minute. Dahl wins though, there is a sequence where she is laying on a couch hidden by its back where she is using a back scratcher on her spread legs, and probably something else. The camera reverses its angle and we see her spread-eagled on the couch dripping for John Payne but when it turns out to be Ted De Corsia who sees the blatant display show she doesn't bat an eye lash. How did that get past the Hays Code, lol.Third, Payne and De Corsia wonderfully reprise (for me anyway, since I've seen their other outings first) some of their rolls in other Noir films so they bring that cinematic memory factor into their characters, some of De Corsia's lines recall William Conrad's in "The Killers", all in all giving that slipping into a comfortable pair of old shoes feel to the film which adds to the mix making Slightly Scarlet what it is.If this film has one major weakness its the score which is a bit too bland. The DVD (rented from Netflix) has some nice special features, a good commentary by writer and James M. Cain enthusiast Max Collins, a James M. Cain bio, a collection of stills from the film, and trailers from other James M. Cain based films. 9/10

Robert J. Maxwell I rather like the director, Allan Dwan, because he was a no-nonsense guy who was in the movie business from the beginning. Nothing pretentious or arty. Yet this movie sucks. It should open with some guy dressed in rags, tinkling a bell, chanting "B Feature." There's no sign of imagination and the story -- from James M. Cain -- is pedestrian. But then everything is dull, from the score to the photography.Arlene Dahl is the bad girl. We know it at once because the camera cuts from a sign ("Woman's Prison") to Dahl being picked up at the gate by her equally red-haired and devoted sister, Rhonda Fleming. Arlene Dahl and Rhonda Fleming. Two aces.Dahl, without being the least angry, blames Fleming for not having enough money to get her out of jail for theft. Fleming is happy and solicitous. When they reach Fleming's home -- she's a secretary to a mayoral candidate in Bay City -- Dahl heads at once for the booze while the morally upright Fleming refuses a drink in the most polite manner.You ought to see Fleming's house. She's a secretary but she lives in a grand estate that looks like it might have been an apartment set aside for Frank Sinatra in Las Vegas. Every set looks just as opulent and tasteless. It doesn't matter whether it's a rich guy's house or somebody's office. It's as if they changed the shape of the room but just shifted the accouterments from one set to the next. Except for a few minutes the whole movie is shot on a sound stage.Dwan shows no interest in the production. It's all functional and lapses into cliché at every opportunity. If Dahl wants to admire herself in the mirror, she looks into the mirror at an angle, so that she's not really seeing herself, only the camera lens.There's a good guy and a bad guy. One of them (Ted de Corsia) is named Solly Kaspar. The other (Payne) is named Ben Grace. Guess which is the good guy and which is the bad guy.The plot has the ambitious Payne taking over the politically influential gang of de Corsia. There is a conflict. The two red heads are dispensable, and both of them have about as much talent as you'd find in a community college play somewhere in Cranford, New Jersey. It's not just the actresses though; it's the roles as written. Fleming has unbelievable devotion to her unbalanced sister. Yes, the heart has its reasons that the mind will never know, but the reasons are stupid.Watch it if you like, but it's not as carefully done as, say, any early episode of "Law & Order."

John H. Freeman I tried to make this short but there is a lot to be said about this very interesting tail-of-the-cycle noirish yarn. It may seem that I discount this film as nothing more than an conceptual experiment gone awry. The use of color photography is so far misplaced it actually folds back onto the film like some Einsteinien cosmic quilt and provides a surrealism that in some ways compliments the noir attitude. However interesting that may be, it really is about as far as the overly saturated color gets in terms of complimenting the overall film. I have made some effort to find out if Alton actually felt that Slightly Scarlet should have been filmed in color or not and have found nothing readily available that says either way. I'm inclined to fantasize that in pre-production sessions there were gun blazing arguments about how the color would enhance or distract from the effect of the story and I can only imagine that Alton must have been virtually unarmed.My first comment that this is noirish, not film noir, is not solely because of the color but because the film lacks too many of the classical tenets of film noir to be considered anything more than an urban crime drama. Only with respect to the Ben Grace character and his seemingly chameleon ability to go with the flow does it provide the moral ambiguity that is inherent in all films noir. Make no mistake, he is a very nasty fellow. All other character moralities are easily discerned as good-guy bad-guy; that includes Dorothy who is what she is because of a psychological illness and not because of decisive moral indiscretion.There are some terrific noir moments while watching Solly and his henchmen strong-arm their way into city government which leaves no doubt that these guys are gonna burn in hell. But that is not enough for me to toss the accolade of film noir. The narrative, while very watchable and with enough twists to keep interest high, does not allow fate to intervene as it does so fluidly in films like Out of the Past and Double Indemnity. Don't misunderstand, if your looking to watch a film noir and you have seen all the heralded classics, this is not a waste of your time. It is a notable film and deserves far more recognition than it gets. I give it 4 outta 5 stars.Of course a theatrical screening at the Egyptian in Hollywood would be the preferred venue but on DVD we have full control of the color guns on our video sets. Fortunately with the DVD we can have our cake and eat it too. I strongly suggest that you view this film at least twice before you make any decisions about its quality. Watch it in its intended colorscape then watch again in B&W. First in point, it is one of only a handful of films by Alton that is available on DVD in anamorphic wide screen. That alone is important and contributes to the overall luscious appearance of this DVD release. Secondly, after viewing the film in its – yes – very garish color, you can enjoy an almost entirely different film by turning the color off on your set and reviewing simply for the classic Altonesque photography. You will be amazed at the contrast in the overall feeling of the film. Not just because it is B&W but more so because of the mise en scene and deep focus that makes film noir so interesting. So as to film noir or not film noir, that is a consideration I'll leave to individual viewers and their own interpretations. I doubt it will be argued by anyone that the cinematography by Alton - when viewed in B&W - is anything but glorious noir at its zenith and well worth the time spent to view twice.

secragt First, let's be straight: this is a deliriously entertaining, venal and vampy exercise in melodrama. It's a ridiculous movie with a nonsensical script, awesome crazy quilt radioactive light bright technicolor and at times laughably non-motivated behavior. But it's also a tongue-in-cheek anti-noir mini masterpiece crammed with over dramatized scene chewing and pleasingly unintentional laughs. The set designs feature some of the biggest house interiors ever (how does Rhonda Fleming afford that mansion on her secretarial salary??) Arlene Dahl is a deliciously cheesy home run as the sex object du jour and gives Martha "The Big Sleep" Vickers a run for her money in the slutty and criminally irredeemable little sister department. Everyone is working some angle here (particularly John Payne), which is both intriguing and finally just dizzying. Fleming, Dahl, Payne and Kent Taylor take a love triangle and turn it into a quadralateral with little trouble. This isn't the calculated and sleek Double Indemnity James M. Cain, but it sure has the smoulder and desperation of The Postman Always Ring Twice JMC.There's a political campaign thrown in and a big gangster (huffy and puffy Ted De Corsia) subplot for good measure, but this is ultimately a celebration of the campiest aspects of melodrama and what a party they throw! Definitely a date movie and highly entertaining for all the right reasons. If you can see it in the theatre, you may go blind from the glowingly phosphorescent crimson hues. "Slightly" Scarlet my ass!