Rent The Wicked Lady (1945)

Only Wicked? - The Wicked Lady review by Steve

Well, a bit more than wicked. Margaret Lockwood, as the arriviste aristocrat turned highway robber, kills in cold blood as well as offing rivals on the turnpike. Including James Mason as a thigh slapping bandit who becomes her accomplice for a while in crime and in the boudoir. This was the most successful film at the box office as Britain came out of war.

It's probably the definitive Gainsborough melodrama, set during the infamously lawless Restoration period. Most of it had to be reshot for the US market, and not only because of the ostentatiously low cut gowns. This broke the Hays code in every direction, with adultery and crime committed for pleasure and without repentance.

It was a huge personal success for Lockwood who as well as the mayhem gets to deliver some venomous dialogue. James Mason is reliably lusty as a villainous sidekick . If Griffith Jones and Patricia Roc are anodyne back up as the moralistic good guys, well that's their role and besides most of Roc's support is in her costume.

Shame there wasn't a better director, because although this is a lot of fun, the pacing is a little slow. But it is incredibly salacious. The period is recreated well, though much of it in the studio and on back projection. The cross-dressing heroine gives the film transgressive cult status, though the fetishism is muted. It's a bawdy romp and welcome escapism after WWII.