The Wicked Lady (1945)

A bride to be (Patricia Roc) invites her scheming and treacherous best friend (Margaret Lockwood, THE LADY VANISHES) to be her bridesmaid. Instead, the friend steals the nobleman groom (Griffith Jones) for her own husband. Bored with married life in the country, she enters a secret life of thievery, adultery and even murder. Never has a movie been so aptly named. Not even Stanwyck's calculating femme fatale in DOUBLE INDEMNITY was as evil. British audiences of the day lapped this costume melodrama up making it one of the biggest box office hits of its year. Lockwood's toxic minx may have the conscience of a cobra but at least she's exciting and in the end, I found myself having more sympathy for her than her dull and sanctimonious husband and the prissy faithful friend. This being the 1940s, of course, she has to pay for her sins in the end but she (and the audience) had a whale of a time till then. James Mason is the heroine's dashing highwayman lover who feels the wrath of her vengeance and Michael Rennie pops up as the man who undoes her. Written and directed by Leslie Arliss. With Enid Stamp Taylor, Martita Hunt, Jean Kent and Felix Aylmer. Loosely and ineffectively remade in 1983 by Michael Winner.