Margaret Lockwood (Barbara) is the wicked lady in question and there is no doubt that she is wicked. She is brilliant and very funny in some scenes. As is highwayman James Mason (Jackson). Lockwood is ruthlessly driven by wealth and excitement and she is brutal when it comes to revenge or getting what she wants.Mason's entry into the film is a cracker as always. In this film, we have him watching dumbfounded from a hill as Lockwood robs a stagecoach on his patch. She's pretty good at it and an alliance is struck. The rest of the cast all do well in their roles – perhaps Patricia Roc (Caroline) is a bit too gentle in her reactions given how Lockwood is treating her.The dialogue is entertaining as is its delivery by all concerned and we get great costumes and settings. Hooray for Gainsborough!

Margaret Lockwood portrays a real 17th century tramp in this 1945 film which really has some amateurish writing when you think of it.Ms. Lockwood steals her cousin's fiancée on the day of the latter's wedding. She does it in faster mode than when Scarlett O'Hara stole Frank Kennedy from Sue Ellen in "Gone With the Wind."Barbara (Lockwood) could never be satisfied with one man. She goes from man to man. The woman has more lust in her life than can ever be imagined. She even cavorts with Michael Rennie on her wedding day.When she loses a brooch to her stuffy sister-in-law, she embarks upon a career of crime as a highway robber to get it back.This is a story of a woman who could not be with a man for a moment. James Mason appears as her new lover and fellow thief.Patricia Roc is sympathetic and overly sweet as Caroline, the cousin who lost her fiancée and stays on in the house. To think, we thought that Olivia De Havilland was such a sap in "Gone With the Wind." Roc even has her beat here.Of course, we can't allow for Barbara to get away with a life of crime as well as murder. She gets better with a gun than Annie Oakley did and kills 2 people along the way. Poor old, Felix Aylmer, she does him in via the poison route. What a fool he plays, quoting from the bible while actually believing that Barbara will reform.The ending is of course that Barbara gets what she deserves so that husband Griffin Jones should be able to go back to Caroline, the woman he should not have ditched to begin with. Imagine, Jones and Rennie were willing to switch women, but this was unknown to Barbara so she plots to put a bullet in Jones but instead, she gets shot by lover Rennie in her disguise as a robber!Come on. The writing here is actually churlish.

Anyone game for a bit of bodice-ripping need look no further than this.Here is a 'lady' who has everything, but is bored stiff. Here is a fem-fatale who is truly fatal. Why; she's rotten to the core. What fun! When not attending to polite social gatherings, she is out on the road committing highway robbery. It's dangerous, daring, dark - and a bigger buzz than sex. Or so it seems to her. On one of these escapades she encounters a true highwayman - played to crooked, courtly perfection by James Mason - and a new dimension of excitement and pleasure is opened to her wastrel life. They are lovers and competitors, and wicked both. There can only be one outcome. Who is the more devious and deadly of the two? Margaret Lockwood was the ideal choice for this wonderful period romp. She oozes with a ruthless sexuality that is guaranteed to get bosoms heaving on either side of the gender divide. And - my - what bosoms there were indeed! Apparently, the whole production had to be re-worked in order to pacify the more tender American sensibilities. Which is rather funny when you think how stuffy we British are always purported to be.When I saw this movie for the first time, though many years after its original release, I was pretty shocked. I am of the last generation that was raised to regard the female as some kind of virtuous paragon, the keeper of society's moral keys. This movie showed her as quite the opposite, and indeed - from a Darwinian standpoint - the more honest representation.Both of the lead characters are as anti-heroic imaginable, with the female being the more ruthless and less susceptible of the two. That's a complete inversion of cultural and cinematic ideals. Released so long ago, it must have been a tremendous head-turner in its day, and no little inspiration to closet feminists.As a character, it's interesting to compare her with the heroine of 'Gone With The Wind'. In Scarlet O'Hara we have an equally ruthless, self-centred female, no less cold-blooded and brutal. She steals, swindles, and lies. See her petulantly beating an exhausted pony to death. And yet she survives and is lauded as a feminist icon, whereas Britain's wicked lady gets what both deserved.Take a look if you get the chance. To see James Mason strike sparks off Margaret Lockwood is worth the price alone. If you can think of a better movie from 1945, I'd like to know what it is.The conflicts of sexual power don't get more artful than this portrayal.

Wicked Lady is quite the racy little melodrama! For its time, I can imagine it was totally scandalous, but quite tame by today's standards. Margaret Lockwood is delicious as the "bad" Barbara Worth, and James Mason is totally sardonic and witty as her bad boy companion. The times when the two of them are together on screen are by far the most wicked fun (except, of course, when Barbara is contriving some plot to bend everyone around her to her silly will). Honestly, you can see the wheels turning in her head. Her performance and character was the prototype for that queen of all heroines, Scarlet O'Hara. At this time the film was made, English ladies were all atwitter about this genre of Rank Organisations films (of which The Wicked Lady might be the best). I suppose during the war, this type of escapism fantasy must have been just the ticket.