Slightly Scarlet is directed by Allan Dwan and adapted to screenplay by Robert Blees from the novel Love's Lovely Counterfeit written by James M. Cain. It stars John Payne, Rhonda Fleming, Arlene Dahl, Kent Taylor and Ted de Corsa. A Technicolor/SuperScope production, music is scored by Louis Forbes and cinematography by John Alton.

June Lyons (Fleming) is "secretary" to anti-crime campaigner Frank Jansen (Taylor),so with Jansen in the running for mayor, mob boss Solly Caspar (Corsa) looks for a way to smear Jansen. The chance arises by way of June's sister, Dorothy (Dahl),a Kleptomaniac just released from prison. So Caspar puts his main man on the case, Ben Grace (Payne),but bossing Grace around and then putting him in the middle of two fire- cracker sisters could prove detrimental to all.

The story is altered from Cain's source and in truth what reads like a tricky plot, actually isn't all that it can be. Yet it's a feverish Technicolor noir, proof positive that in the right photographic/director hands, noir can thrive away from the monochrome.

It plays out its tale in a whirl of simmering passions and wonderfully lurid suggestions, sparkled by eye scorching photography and a deliriously devilish production design. Psychological smarts are in the mix, with no easy answers put forward to character's outcomes, while in true noir fashion all principal characters are hard to like or are intriguingly flawed.

John Alton is the key hand here, he brings rich colours to the fore whilst ensuring that light and shadow techniques are not compromised. Macho conversations are spun out in darkened rooms, the colour black prominent, foreboding like, while the home of the two flame haired sisters is adorned with purposely garish blues, reds, oranges and greens.

Clothes are important to the sexuality pulsing in the piece. The girls dressed up in a number of fetching (colourful obviously) ensembles, with wide V necked sweaters, figure hugging skirts, bullet bras, leopard skin bikini and see-thru nighties! While a couple of phallic symbols form part of the art design just in case you need reminding that sex is a big issue here.

Suggestive scenes are within, usually involving Dorothy who mixes Kleptomania with an obvious kink for Nymphomania. Watch how she strokes a pillow in the background as her sister engages Ben in heated conversation, how she looks as she holds a Harpoon Spear Gun in her hands (in that leopard skin bikini),or a quite delicious sequence on a couch, legs akimbo and a back scratcher used to tantalising effect. Wow!

It has flaws for sure, mind. The Kleptomania/Nymphomania angle is not fully explored (ineviatbly for the period),Corsa barely convinces as the head villain, Forbes is not sure how to score it! And there are missed opportunities unbound as regards triangles involving Ben, June and Frank and also Ben, June and Dorothy. But this is still a delightful Technicolor noir, lush, lurid and deftly sordid. 8/10

A tale of two redheaded sisters. Good Sister Rhonda Fleming who is the secretary/girlfriend of reform Mayoral candidate Kent Taylor. Bad sister is Arlene Dahl who's a combination nymphomaniac/kleptomaniac who has a yen for everything in trousers.

The girls' performances are good, but wasted in this muddled mess of a noir film. Muddled mostly by the ill defined role that John Payne has. He's a wheeler dealer publicity agent who works the fringes of both sides of the law.

Gangster Ted DeCorsia slaps Payne around and humiliates him at the beginning of the film. Payne decides to get some vengeance more out of pique than anything else. Pique is not a motive to get the viewer interested in Payne's manoeuvrings. John Payne has played unsympathetic parts and played them well. But in Slightly Scarlet you just don't develop any rooting interest in him even though Ted DeCorsia is one nasty villain.

The girls are good, especially Dahl. Probably one of the most amoral women put on screen, very much like Martha Vickers in The Big Sleep.

Too bad a really great group of players didn't get a better story.

The garish pastel colors in this mostly unexciting political crime expose overtake all of the melodrama of the two red-headed sisters (Rhonda Fleming and Arlene Dahl) of differing personalities to make for a dull confection. The writer of "Double Indemnity", "Mildred Pierce" and "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (James Cain) wasn't as well represented on the screen here, and even with a promise of some delicious female bitchery, it is never delivered fully intact. We're supposed to believe that kleptomaniac Arlene Dahl is in her early 20's here, as a cop who follows her to sister Rhonda Fleming's house describes her to be from a description he got from a salesgirl who identified Dahl as the thief of some valuable pearls. She's already recently out of prison for similar crimes, and while it is obvious that she is mentally ill, she is never made to be an interesting psychotic case.

Poor Rhonda Fleming, too; Her character is so one-dimensionally goody two-shoes that you forget about her Maureen O'Hara like looks which in earlier films had her delightfully hot-tempered and feisty. Most of her scenes have her fretting over younger sister Dahl and bemoaning the circumstances which got Arlene in trouble in the first place. Today, we'd just call her an enabler, but here, she just seems stupidly naive and used. John Payne is the ruthless politician whom Fleming works for and Dahl sets out to seduce. The only really exciting scene comes when Dahl and Payne are obviously heading for a rendezvous when a hit man all of a sudden corners them in Payne's enormous ocean hilltopped "cottage" after Dahl has pulled the trigger "accidently" on a fishing spear she found on his wall.

The other real problem with the film is that it never sets its mood or where it wants to lay the conflict, with Dahl's "bad" sister (who is honestly just boring) or the political mayhem caused by Payne, his cohorts and many rivals. This makes the film sag throughout, and in spite of the colorful layout, it never really meets up with the melodramatic mood promised by its over-the-top musical score. This leads it to be one of the weaker "bad girl" movies made throughout the 50's, where at least a camp element would make it somewhat entertaining.