The Wicked Lady – 1945 | 104 mins | Drama | B&W

Plot Synopsis

The Wicked Lady is a lurid costume drama acted with gusto. Hated by the critics, it became Britain’s top box-office film of 1946, aided no doubt by Margaret Lockwood’s highwaywoman costume and heaving bosum.

Ambitious, self-centred Barbara (Margaret Lockwood), a seventeenth-century adventuress, takes Sir Ralph Skelton (Griffith Jones) away from her friend Caroline (Patricia Roc), but soon becomes bored with his life and takes to highway robbery. She has a passionate affair with highwayman Jerry Jackson (James Mason), who is nearly hanged as a result of her treachery. He escapes, only for Barbara to shoot him. She is badly wounded in return and barely gets back to her room before dying under the eyes of Kit (Michael Rennie), another of Caroline’s beaux, with whom she was really in love.