THE WICKED LADY. (1983) DIRECTED BY MICHAEL WINNER. STARRING FAYE DUNAWAY, DENHOLM ELLIOTT, GLYNIS BARBER, OLIVER TOBIAS, PRUNELLA SCALES, ALAN BATES, JOAN HICKSON, JOHN SAVIDENT, JOHN GIELGUD AND MARINA SIRTIS. REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
This highly entertaining period
melodrama is a re-make of the 1945 film of the same name. Now, I
haven't seen the original movie but I'd be surprised if it was as
boisterously enjoyable as the re-make. It certainly couldn't be
sexier, in my humble opinion...!
THE WICKED LADY is
deliciously bawdy. It has boobs in it, nudity, boobs, sex, nudie
girl-on-girl sexy whipping and boobs again. Soooooo
many boobs. It's set in Jolly Old Englande in the time of the
Restoration, if that was the time when the King (was it
Charles?) and all his courtiers
wore those long elaborate ringleted wigs and the womens' bosoms were
pushed up so high by their corsets that they could have used 'em as a
tray and rested their dinner on 'em.
Faye
Dunaway, who plays a bitch like no other woman can (except
for maybe Joan Collins), is
superb as the titular 'Wicked Lady,' otherwise
known as Lady Barbara Skelton. Remember when Ms. Dunaway portrayed Joan
Crawford in MOMMIE DEAREST? She
was unforgettable, and so like the legendary actress physically that
it was, as they say, uncanny.
Anyway, in
this debauched romp of a film she's strikingly beautiful and sensuous once
more, but she's a hard-headed money-grabber too. You can't really
blame her. I suppose women really had to look out for themselves in
those days. Unless you
were rich or beautiful (or both), you had a hard time of it and your
choices were limited. Prostitution, thieving, starvation or the
gallows, if Charles Dickens and his literary ilk have taught us
anything...!
Barbara
takes the wealthy Denholm Elliott off her sappy cousin Caroline
because she can, but
she soon grows bored with him because he's old and, well, boring.
She resents being buried in Sir
Ralph's mansion in the countryside away from the hustle and bustle of
London. I don't
exactly feel sorry for her troubles. I'd happily put up with a dreary
hubby if he came with a house that resembles Buckingham bleedin'
Palace and coffers groaning with gold coins.
She's fed-up
and disillusioned until a twist of fate sees her turn to highway
robbery (literally) as a means of quenching her boredom and spicing
up her dull life.
She
loves the thrill and excitement of being a female highwayman(!) but,
when she falls in with the notorious and charismatic robber Captain
Jerry Jackson and becomes his 'doxy' as
well as his partner-in-crime, things start becoming complicated.
Lady Skelton
can hardly expect to keep her noble identity a secret forever when
she's holding up coaches and carriages left, right and centre, can
she? And when murder-most-foul comes into the picture and the gallows
beckons, the stakes are suddenly higher than the headstrong Barbara
could ever have imagined they would be. Cue the ominous music...!
This
wonderful movie, which is coming to DVD for the first time on July
4th
2016 courtesy of SECOND SIGHT FILMS, certainly
has an all-star cast. Prunella Scales (Basil Fawlty's
acid-tongued wife Sybil
in hilarious sitcom FAWLTY
TOWERS) is brilliant as the only
woman in the whole film who can out-bitch Barbara, the Queen Bitch.
The fur really flies when these two get together.
Dear
old Joan Hickson from the CARRY ON and
other films is just perfect as Sir Ralph's chief Auntie, Agatha. She
was old even back then, which is kind of sweet. Oliver THE
STUD Tobias (speaking
of Joan Collins!) is cute and
sexy and we see him naked when he rogers DEMPSEY AND
MAKEPEACE, otherwise known as
Glynis Barber, in front of a roaring fire. He certainly has a lovely
backside.
John
Savident, who for years marvellously portrayed Master-Butcher Fred
Elliott (I say, Master-Butcher Fred Elliott...!) in
Britain's longest-running soap opera, CORONATION STREET,
was surely born to play a lewd,
bawdy gourmand-voluptuary-type with a long ringleted wig atop his bonce in a period drama.
John
Gielgud excels too as the pious butler who abhors 'sinning
and skating, skating and sinning' and
looks askance on the serving-girls of the house doing it (sex,
that is!) with the
footmen. He thinks they're no better than a bunch of rutting dogs,
the lot of 'em. He has his work cut out for him with the amoral Lady
Skelton. Is there nothing she wouldn't do to get what she wants...?
The costumes
and interiors are bloody gorgeous. There are some beautiful shots,
too, of the green rolling English countryside that would take your
breath away. My favourite scene, however, would have to be the sexy
nudie boobie girl-on-girl whipping scene, something I probably have
in common with most people who've seen the movie.
It's great
fun to watch, the whipping scene, even if the bloodthirstiness of the
crowd would give you the heebie-jeebies. The scene is apparently
quite notorious and caused a bit of a hoo-ha with the censors way
back when. You can kind of imagine why. Now you're dying to see it,
aren't you? Go on, admit it...!
By the way,
especially for you lovely sci-fi nerds out there, the beauty who's stripped
to the waist and being so cruelly used in public in front of a
ravenous crowd is Marina Sirtis, who went on to play the even more
beautiful counsellor Deanna Troi on popular television series STAR
TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION. Now don't you want to see the movie
even more? Go on, there's no shame in it...!
Anyway, if you're in the mood for a jolly good Ye Olde English period drama complete with corsets, muskets and good old-fashioned hangings, this is the film for you. It's a romp and a half...!
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA
HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
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