Wicked Woman *** (1953, Beverly Michaels, Richard Egan, Percy Helton, Evelyn Scott) – Classic Movie Review 12,453

The enjoyably lurid, melodramatic low-budget 1953 American film noir cult movie Wicked Woman stars Beverly Michaels as a waitress who seduces her bar’s handsome married owner (Richard Egan).

The enjoyably lurid, melodramatic low-budget 1953 American film noir cult movie Wicked Woman stars Beverly Michaels, Richard Egan, Percy Helton, and Evelyn Scott. It is directed by Russell Rouse, and written by Rouse and Clarence Greene, and produced by Greene for Edward Small Productions.

Beverly Michaels plays Billie Nash, an attractive blonde drifter, who arrives in town and takes work as a waitress at a bar. She seduces its handsome owner Matt Bannister (Richard Egan), married to alcoholic waitress Dora (Evelyn Scott), who inherited the bar from her father.

Billie schemes for Matt to sell the bar without the wife’s knowledge and for the duplicitous duo then to leave together for Mexico. But then Charlie Borg (Percy Helton), a boarder at Billie’s rooming house, discovers her plans and attempts blackmail.

Partly thanks to Beverly Michaels’s campy performance as Billie Nash, Wicked Woman is good fun. It is Richard Egan’s first leading role, and he makes a good foil for Beverly Michaels.

Around 1952 Michaels met the director and screenwriter Russell Rouse, who cast her in Wicked Woman and later became her second husband in 1955.

Wicked Woman runs 77 minutes.

It was released on December 9, 1953 in the US by United Artists.

Beverly Michaels (December 29, 1927 – June 9, 2007) arrived in Hollywood in 1948 at 21, found modelling work and landed a contract to MGM Studios, making her first screen appearance in East Side, West Side (1949). Her all too short career includes the 1951 film noir Pickup, The Girl on the Bridge (1951), No Holds Barred, the film noir Wicked Woman (1954), the 1955 noir film Crashout, and Hammer Films’ Women without Men (1956).

The cast are Beverly Michaels as Billie Nash, Richard Egan as Matt Bannister, Percy Helton as Charlie Borg, Evelyn Scott as Dora Bannister, Robert Osterloh as Larry Lowry, Frank Ferguson as Bill Porter, and Bernadene Hayes as Mrs Walters.

© Derek Winnert 2023 – Classic Movie Review 12,453

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