The Lady in Red

1979's THE LADY IN RED was apparently one of the few movies from schlockmeister Roger Corman's New World Pictures that was not a huge success.   Was it the title? Chris DeBurgh's treacly song hadn't even been recorded yet! The usual package of sex and violence, this time framed during the era of gangster John Dillinger, failed to turn the heads of drive-in goers who sought, get this, to actually watch a movie at the drive-in.  So Corman retitled the movie and re-released it a year later:

It fared little better.  Maybe it had too much competition on the grindhouse circuit.   Should it have opened earlier in the 1970s?  THE LADY IN RED for me was a cable curiosity in the early '80s, one in which I never invested.  This is despite the lead role being played by my Nancy Drew Mysteries crush, Pamela Sue Martin.  I did have the hots for her.  Somehow, the enticement of seeing her sans clothes wasn't enough to distract me from MTV.  I would've likely enjoyed this picture, with its blazing tommy gun battles and attractive women of varying ages, sizes, and races.  How did it play for a late forty-something who'd seen more than his share of lurid, low budget exploitation?

Just fair.  Director Lewis Teague does some nice work here and there, but mostly it's static and uninspired.  His cast is good: Louise Fletcher as a Romanian immigrant who becomes a house madam, Robert Forster as a hitman, Christopher Lloyd as a brutal gangster, Robert Hogan as a sleazy reporter.  Robert Conrad is top billed but only has a few scenes as Dillinger; he's quite appealing and puts a nice spin on the charming criminal caricature.  Miss Martin is mostly adequate, by turns appropriately naive and tough as Polly Franklin - a country girl who becomes a big city moll and eventual bank robber, with lots of dues paying along the way.  John Sayles' socially observant script follows the paces of sweat shop jobs, prison, and whore houses as Polly transforms.  She and just about every character are sketched with more dimension than you usually see in movies like this.  I would include the obligatory appearances of Corman regulars Dick Miller and Mary Woronov.

Teague does a resonable job (considering budget constraints) of evoking 1930s Chicago, but the movie suffers from ragged cinematography and a generally unclean feeling.  Probably the way Polly's life would've really felt, so I guess that's something.