In the fifties RKO decided to see what could be done by putting color where the noir used to be in a series of low budget films directed by Allan Dwan and photographed by John Alton, with art direction by Van Nest Polglase. Slightly Scarlet is told in a wash of oranges and blues, and every shade of almost-red imaginable; it's a colorist's delight, from the dye jobs of the two leads, Rhonda Fleming and Arlene Dahl, to the contrasting hues of the interiors of three (count them) California homes where the story unfolds. It is the tale of corruption in the mythical Bay City, where an ambitious lacky (John Payne) tries to break with his mobster boss (Ted de Corsia) and align himself with good government for his own bad reasons. From his all-male world (where the gang seems to live in blissful communality in a rambling mansion), he moves into the ranch-style circle of two sisters with a set of mutual miseries meant to confound Freud himself. Dahl, as the little sister with sticky fingers and a passion for anything in pants, being the "sick" one has all the good lines ("I like the material" she says to the suits), and all the good moves (hiding behind banisters, all eyes; seen from behind couches, all legs and arms). Fleming has more of a handicap trying to take care of business in sexy dresses and shawls and unsensible shoes, bravely delivering lines like "Can't you see she's sick?" In a flat script peppered with one-liners, "You're not crooked and you're not straight" is just one insult hurled at Payne (the "genius") by his underworld overlord ("the gutless wonder"), and it fits all around in a film in which there are no good guys to speak of--only slightly scarlet women and matching men.