Wicked as They Come

“What happened to you, Kathy? Who cut your heart out?” Kathy Allen (Arlene Dahl) is a working-class girl plotting to use her physical beauty to secure a life of privilege for herself in Ken Hughes’s Wicked as They Come, a standard “ruthless woman” film that follows Kathy’s sexual triumphs, manipulations, and manslaughters until she lands on the precipice of execution. Having grown up living with her creepy stepfather on the wrong side of the tracks, Kathy enters a local beauty pageant and seduces the head of it into choosing her for first place, which entitles her to a trip to Europe, where she begins racking up devious accomplishments. Men seem to be rendered stupid by Kathy’s irresistible charms: photographer Larry Buckham (Michael Goodliffe) lets her go wild on his credit accounts just before she abandons him; married Stephen Collins (Herbert Marshall) hires her on as secretary “with benefits” until she demands he divorce his wife; millionaire John Dowling (Ralph Truman) is tricked into marrying her and will pay the greatest price of all. Director Hughes seems to be telling us, however, that these men are not really victims, that they’re just as culpable as Kathy (“You tried to buy me?” she angrily asks one duped man early in the film). This, of course, is why we are naturally drawn to Tim O’Bannion (Philip Carey), who meets Kathy on her flight to London and keeps tabs on her conquests overseas; despite his desire to be with Kathy, O’Bannion is onto her ploys from the get go, indeed teasing her about them throughout the film. In the end, he may be the only one who can save her life.