Not to be confused with the cheesy song from the 80's by crooner Chris De Burgh or the Gene Wilder movie from the same decade- that would be The Woman in Red- the infinitely better than either of those action/melodrama The Lady in Red (aka Guns, Sin and Bathtub Gin) is one of many films produced by the legendary Roger Corman over the decades.
Released in 1979, then re-released the following year under the above alternate title, the movie wasn't a success in theaters by any name, but it ran in perpetuity throughout the 80's on pay cable, along with many of Corman's other efforts. I distinctly remember it as one of those movies my dad loved but said I was "too young" to watch, which, of course, only meant I went out of my way to see it anyway.
Back then, it didn't take much, really. Though parental controls were already a thing, only my father used them, and I lived with my mother, for whom technology has always been a challenge. She also wasn't very attentive when it came to what I was watching at any given time, so checking out something like this was simply a waiting game.
I just bided my time until it was scheduled to come on when she wasn't there or was asleep for the night, and watched whatever I wanted. Typically, it was horror films after a certain point, but HBO/Cinemax (aka what me and my friends and many others besides affectionately dubbed "Skinemax") conveniently listed ratings and the reasons for them in the guide that came every month.
Each were listed in code: "V" for violence, "N" for nudity, and "SC" for sexual content. If they tacked on a "G" in front of the first two, it meant "graphic," and an additional "S" on the latter, which meant "strong," it made those films instant must-sees, especially for horn-dog young boys.
This was also the time of VHS-recording, so those of us with pay-cable access would often tape such films to watch at our own leisure and to share with others at a later date, if the film was especially good. Remember, this was pre-internet, so such things weren't easy to come by back then.
Beyond movies, you might be lucky enough to sneak a peek at someone's father's skin mags (i.e. Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler, etc.), but I don't think I saw an actual porn until I was in high school. But I saw a hell of a lot of trashy movies, thanks to pay cable.
We're talking the Emmanuelle (or however it was spelled, depending on the distributor) series, the Happy Hooker movies, and loads of other soft-core flicks that were HBO and Skinemax's bread-and-butter during the 80's and 90's- and still are, to some degree, especially in the case of the latter.
The Lady in Red was one of the better-made examples of the sweeping period piece that just so happened to be chockablock with nudity, sex and violence. This sort of thing was producer Roger Corman's go-to source of income at the time, along with equally trashy horror, comedy and action flicks. The guy never met a sub-genre he couldn't sex up or add a healthy dose of the good old ultra-violence to.
I watched so much of this kind of stuff as a kid, a lot of it blurs together, so I had practically forgotten this one until I re-watched it recently. It's funny how what was once strictly a prurient interest can become both a nostalgic one and surprisingly not-bad example of a movie way better than perhaps it even needed to be.
Of course, it helps if the screenwriter is as talented as author and eventual director himself, John Sayles. A novelist-turned-screenwriter, Sayles first took a stab at scripting with the Corman cult classic Piranha, a Jaws knock-off that even Spielberg himself liked.
Spielberg would go on to hire that film's director, Joe Dante, to helm a film he executive-produced, Gremlins, which was a massive hit, and Sayles himself to write an early draft of a movie then-called Night Skies- which would later morph into the even bigger hit, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.
In addition, Sayles would go on to work for Corman on multiple occasions, including another fun Creature Feature, Alligator- also from director Lewis Teague, who helmed this film- and the Star Wars rip-off Battle Beyond the Stars. He also scripted Dante's excellent, underrated The Howling, which was somewhat eclipsed by the fantastic An American Werewolf in London at the time, but is well-worth a look.
Sayles would continue to write these low-budget films throughout the 80's, in part to help finance his own writer/director efforts, which include Return of the Secaucus 7 (somewhat ironically itself ripped-off by the later hit, The Big Chill- what goes around comes around, I guess), the excellent Baby, It's You, Eight Men Out, City of Hope, Passion Fish, Lone Star (another great one), Men with Guns, Sunshine State, Silver City and plenty more where that came from, including co-writing the recent TV adaption of The Alienist.
Perhaps needless to say, especially if you're familiar with any of the films above, Sayles' writing is a cut above most films of the type he was doing on the side, like The Lady in Red. As such, the films themselves are much better than this sort of thing tended to be under most circumstances.
Of course, one can't help but wonder what might have been, given that Sayles' original script was a much-more ambitious 130 pages, and the end result clocks in at just over 90 minutes. But for what it is, the movie is pretty great, if a bit overstuffed, plot-wise. You'll see what I mean soon enough.
The film revolves around Polly Franklin (Pamela Sue Martin), an aspiring dancer/actress who lives on a farm, helping her father maintain it while dreaming of stardom. We first meet her doing a charming song-and-dance routine to "Forty-Second Street" in a barn. Later, she goes to town to run some errands when Polly is abducted by some bank robbers (including Mary Woronov, who you can read more about here) and used as a human shield against the cops pursuing them.
Little does she know it, but the encounter will forever change her life- and not necessarily for the better, at least in the short term. After the gangsters literally drop her off on the side of the road, she gives her account to the police, then is approached by a reporter, who promises to make her the focus of an article on the incident, and takes her back to his hotel and deflowers her in the process.
Perhaps needless to say, the article never really materializes, at least not how he pitched it. When she returns home late that night, her ultra-religious father accuses her of being a whore- technically true, I suppose, but soon to become a reality later on. After he beats her, she runs away, getting a job in the city as a seamstress.
Unfortunately, her boss there is just as bad, a sleazebag with a reputation for sexually harassing his female staff and working them to the bone. He's played by perennial Corman favorite, Dick Miller. Her tenure there ends in tragedy and a little bit of rebellion, as the women rise up and protest their evil boss when he goes too far with his actions against one of the girls.
Polly ends up getting fired in the process, and gets another job doing a dime-a-dance gig at a local nightclub. The other girls there suggest she offer a little bit something "extra" to her clients as a way to make a quick buck, but after hemming and hawing, she gets busted her first time out by an undercover cop and thrown in jail for solicitation!
There, she runs afoul of dastardly warden Tiny Alice, who decidedly does not live up to her name, as played by exploitation favorite Nancy Parsons, best-known for the cult hit series Porky's and Motel Hell. Alice is a racist, anti-Semitic, all-around awful human being that beats and abuses her charges at every turn.
When she sets her sights on Polly's Jewish friend, the ailing Rose (Laruie Heineman, Save the Tiger and Spotlight), Polly agrees to do whatever it takes to get Alice to lay off. That turns out to be prostitution at a local whorehouse, where poor Polly's cut is next-to-nothing after Alice, the cops, the local Mob "protection" and the whorehouse Madam, Anna Sage (Louise Fletcher, aka Nurse Ratched, of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest fame), take their own off the top.
Keep in mind all this happens over the course of about the first thirty minutes of the movie! Now you can see what I mean by over-stuffed. Fortunately, after the whorehouse section, which also ends in tragedy, the film finally slows down a bit to catch its breath.
Finally free and clear, Polly gets a job working as a waitress for Sage, who buys a diner with her stashed cash after the bordello thing goes belly-up and the place is shut down. While there, Polly meets a dapper young man who bears a striking resemblance to a certain gangster: the infamous John Dillinger. Probably because it is indeed him.
Played with just the right amount of understated swagger by TV star Robert Conrad (The Wild Wild West, Black Sheep Squadron), Dillinger is suave, sweet and just a little on the weird side. Polly never has a chance. Alas, Sage recognizes him for who he really is, which eventually leads to that fateful day at the movies, which you probably know about, and if not, you can probably guess. Yep, tragedy ensues yet again.
With the local gangsters blaming Polly for what happens and cops also hot on her trail, Polly decides to take matters into her own hands once and for all, and concocts a scheme to rob a bank and get out of town once and for all. Will it succeed, or will it also end in tragedy? I'll let you see for yourself.
As you might have realized by now, there's rarely a dull moment in The Lady in Red. One can't help but wonder what might have happened if Sayles was allowed to realize his full vision for the film, as I suspect it would have been much more luxuriously paced and given the material at hand more room to breathe a bit. As it stands, it's tremendously entertaining, if a bit rushed at times, especially in the first half.
A lot of that is down to the game, excellent cast, and the relatively assured direction by Lewis Teague, who made his motion picture debut with the exploitation flick Dirty O'Neil, before hopping on the Corman train for this and Alligator.
A moderately successful career followed, highlighted by films like Fighting Back, the Stephen King adaptations Cujo and Cat's Eye; the Romancing the Stone sequel, The Jewel of the Nile; Navy Seals and lots of TV work from the 90's onward.
In the leading role is none other than former teen idol Pamela Sue Martin, best-known for playing Nancy Drew in the 70's TV series The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries and Fallon on the original 80's-era Dynasty.
She got her start appearing in high-profile roles as a teenager in To Find a Man, The Poseidon Adventure, Our Time (co-starring then-future Hardy Boy Parker Stevenson), Buster & Billie and the well-received TV-movie The Girls of Huntington House, which also featured a young Sissy Spacek.
Her big break came in 1977 with the Nancy Drew role. However, when the show- which used to alternate each week between Hardy Boys-centric stories and Nancy Drew-centric ones- opted to combine forces, resulting in a largely diminished role for the actress, she left the gig altogether about mid-way through the second season.
She was replaced by actress Janet Louise Johnson. The show folded after limping through one last third season, which dropped the Nancy Drew character altogether and only ran for ten episodes before being cancelled. Whoops!
Sadly, it would prove to be a self-defeating move on Martin's part, which she would later repeat with Dynasty. It's easy to see why she would have taken the role in this film next, in spite of all the raciness- it was the perfect opportunity to both shed her goody-two-shoes image at the time, and tackle a multi-layered, tour de force performance in a wild-and-woolly period piece. (She also posed naked for Playboy for good measure.)
Martin knocks it out of the park in The Lady in Red- she should have been a contender. It's not easy to maintain an air of innocence in a role which requires one to go from a farm girl to a prostitute, but Martin manages it nicely. You never feel anything less than sympathy for her character, no matter what depths she sinks to.
Alas, the movie tanked- twice, in fact, as I mentioned at the top of the article- so it was back to TV for Martin, where she landed the plum gig on Dynasty soon enough. Oddly, she left the role after the fourth season, even though the show kept going, eventually replacing her with another actress (again), soap star Emma Samms. It would end up running a whopping nine seasons, so Martin might have ended up kicking herself for leaving such a solid gig.
Unfortunately for her, further success eluded Martin, as her career soon fizzled after that, due to a host of poorly picked movies, such as Torchlight, Flicks, A Cry in the Wild (which wasn't bad) and the dubiously-named Soupernatural. Martin did fare slightly better on TV, appearing in the TV-movies Strong Medicine, Bay Coven (a fave of mine as a kid), Sky Trackers and episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, That 70's Show and The L Word.
In addition to the other actors I mentioned, the film also features brief-but-memorable appearances from Christopher Lloyd (also of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, but most famous for the Back to the Future trilogy) as the murderous gangster Frognose and Robert Forster (Medium Cool, Jackie Brown) as the more likable one, Turk, who does Polly a solid later on in the film.
I also dug the character, Eddie, played by a young Glenn Withrow, who would go on to appear in the 80's favorites The Hollywood Knights, The Outsiders, Rumble Fish, The Cotton Club, Peggy Sue Got Married (director Francis Ford Coppola was obviously a fan!), Beverly Hills Cop II, Dudes, Nightflyers and It Takes Two.
He left the business in the early 90's to become a producer and director himself, forming his own production company with his wife, actress Hallie Todd, with whom he also taught acting classes on the side. Withrow wrote, produced and directed the films The Mooring and The Last Champion with her as well.
It's also worth mentioning that the film has an early score by none other than James Horner, in one of his first big breaks. Shortly thereafter, on the strength of his work on another Corman/Sayles flick, Battle Beyond the Stars, he was offered the sweet gig of composing the score for the classic Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
This led him to a string of box office successes, including the award-nominated scores for such classics as Aliens, Field of Dreams, Apollo 13, Braveheart, A Beautiful Mind, Avatar and the Oscar-winning Titanic. You also have him to thank- or blame- for that "My Heart Will Go On" song from Celine Dion, but I'll forgive him since he also wrote "Somewhere Out There" from An American Tale.
The Lady in Red is the epitome of one of those movies you'd catch on the fly on cable or on VHS and enjoy but almost immediately forget about- at least until it was released on DVD or Blu-Ray, at which point you realize how much you loved it all over again. Thanks to home video and more recently, online streaming, there are a lot of such movies ripe for rediscovery.
I highly recommend outright buying it on DVD or Blu-Ray, especially if you collect these kinds of movies and dig on Corman's (or Sayles') stuff. Every cult movie fan has their favorite Corman era- mine is definitely his 70's-early 80's period, aka the New World Pictures era, which is the stuff I grew up on, and this film is a near-perfect example of what made those films work like gangbusters, with boobs, bullets and booze in all their glory.
By all means, check this one out ASAP!
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