Metacritic reviews

Lady is a surprisingly powerful gangster flick about a mystery woman whose public-enemy path briefly overlapped with John Dillinger’s in the ’30s. It’s just one of many Bonnie and Clyde knockoffs Corman cranked out at the time, but there’s real artistry alongside the violence and nudity in this one.

Director Teague revels in the regular motifs of guns, money, fast cars and bizarre death, grafts on a layer of social comment lately absent in exploiters, and still slams through it all with an anarchic humour sometimes worthy of Sam Fuller.

Sayles' script is an intelligent look at a woman's struggle in 1930s society, and it conveys the proper mood for the character and the times. Teague's direction manages to capture the era on a shoestring budget, and the performances he gets from his cast are solid.

The 1979 crime melodrama boasts a literate John Sayles screenplay and breezy direction by Lewis Teague. Robert Conrad and Robert Forster epitomize the enduring '30s tough-guy mystique in supporting roles. [09 Jan 1992, p.6C]

Layered with great performances and an interesting story, The Lady in Red is a good, if somewhat dull exploitative play-by-play of the events that lead to Dillinger's death.

Lewis Teague, a former second-unit director, guides his large cast reasonably well through John Sayles’ craftsmanlike script.