Wicked Woman

Beverly Michaels rolls in on the bus, finds a cheap room and gets a job pushing booze at Evelyn Scott's bar. She keeps her eyes for the easy touch -- creepy tailor Percy Helton is anxious to mend her clothes for her, and Miss Scott's husband, Richard Egan, is tired of dealing with with a wife who's drinking up all the profits, and anxious to trade her in on a blonde whose waist seems to be about half of her two other ample statistics.

Miss Michaels does everything except chew gum and stick it behind her ear to indicate the sort of woman she is, and is fascinating in a trashy way, just smart enough to know she's dumb, and to also know that men are not going to look at her face when she talks. Quite clearly her performance impressed the co-writer and director of this movie, Russell Rouse. They got married a couple of years later, had a couple of kids, and stayed married until his death.

This is one of those movies that is just a little film but somehow, I can't describe it, it works for me! I love it! I love the black and white, the really dated environment, that blonde hoochie mama, the storyline, etc. etc. Just a fun movie to watch and escape with because it's quite campy. I think the ladies will like it and I never saw that blonde actress before but I thought she played her part well the way she just used the men and had them all drooling over her. She had a great figure too.

I'm not a Richard Egan fan but that's okay, she makes it worth watching!

WICKED WOMAN is an essential "bad girl" B movie of the 1950's. Beverly Michaels was the first blonde to crack this market that decade and while she never reached the public fame and popularity of the slightly later Cleo Moore and Mamie Van Doren, she's one of the genre's major divas even with her tiny filmography. Michaels is at her bad girl best in WICKED WOMAN as Billie Nash, who blows into town with a mysterious past and no references, ending up in a cheap furnished room boarding house. Billie quickly vamps one of her neighbors Percy Helton into sharing his steaks, "loans", and a reference when she applies for a job at a local bar. Owner Evelyn Scott is dubious but agrees to give the girl a break. That first night Michaels meets Scott's hunky, slightly younger husband Richard Egan and all her gratitude toward Scott is forgotten as she quickly sets her trap to seduce Egan - and persuade him to sell the bar (which was Scott's to begin with) out from under Scott without her knowledge and for them to make a getaway to Mexico with the loot.

The cast is sensational for a B movie. Michaels is superb as the tough blonde who can get even tougher when in a foul mood or cornered. Richard Egan, just before his brief stint as a leading man/star in major motion pictures, is excellent as the good husband who can be had; it's a pleasure to see a sexy B movie bad girl have a hunky, sexy leading man which wasn't often the case. (Egan also appears to be the only person in the cast taller than the 5'9" Michaels, who towers over nearly every other costar.)

Evelyn Scott is terrific as well as a bloozy-floozy Myrna Loy-lookalike and there is a sensational featured turn from Percy Hilton, a highly distinct and recognizable character actor of the era who generally played bits on television as a sheepish but lovable nerd; here Percy is still the sheepish imp but able to be just as sleazy and predatory as those who cross his path. This is a truly fascinating look at the clawing and desperation of very-low income 1950's with dumpy, sparsely furnished rooms and one bathroom per floor in the boarding house.

The ending, as another reviewer noted, is a misfire alas and as someone else mentioned, a plot twist one is expecting never develops. Still, WICKED WOMAN is well worth tracking down (it can currently be seen on youtube) for a rare chance to see Beverly Michaels at her "baddest" best.

Seen on TCM in the wee hours, this sordid little noir features the bleached blonde sexpot Beverly Michaels who had been dumped by cheesy Svengali Hugo Haas having switched his attentions to Cleo Moore. Bev makes Marilyn look like a goddess. As she saunters through the dismal sets which include a rancid rooming house, a barful of working-class mediocrities, and generic city streets, swaying her hips with a pokerface, you know this girl has hit bottom and is not likely to go much farther up because all she has is sex for brains. [A late scene shows her with a toothy, gummy grin which may answer the unasked question: why does she so rarely smile?] Down to her last dollar she gets a room, a barmaid job, a slimy admirer across the hall (the weird, weird Percy Helton) and proceeds to seduce the barman (Richard Egan had fallen this far in only a few years?), his bar-owning lush of a wife, and go for the money. The idea is of a continuing cycle of spider trapping fly in her web of deceit and avarice. When the fly is devoured, she moves on to another town. My question: after a few more low-grade films and a couple of TV appearances, what happened to Beverly Michaels? Can't be the same one who shows up 30 years later as a party girl in a British film, can it?

Saw this 7/28/17 on a watchable version via YouTube. Not bad at all, does not try to push the budgetary limits. Rouse has a good script, and he keeps it moving. The leads, Beverly Michaels (a stick-limbed Mamie Van Doren), Richard Egan, Evelyn Scott, and Percy Helton all perform well. Scott, appearing as a boozy version of Rosemary DeCamp, gives a layered, believable performance as the wife of the Egan character. A larger than usual role for the reliably arachnoid Helton. The film hints, mercifully without showing, that Michaels yields to his sexual advances, a unique, unsettling milestone in a long career deserving of a Motion Picture Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement as a Homunculus. OK – maybe "Wicked Woman" does not strictly follow some "noir" rule book." But who cares about categories, other than just "movie"? And this is a pretty good one for the money! Seventy-seven minutes, and hard to find a second wasted.