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 film noir-veteran 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 California homes where the story (based on James M. Cain) unfolds. It is the tale of corruption in the mythical Bay City, where an ambitious lackey (John Payne) tries to break with his mobster boss and align himself with good government for his own bad reasons. From the rambling mansion where the gang seems to live in blissful male communality, he moves into the ranch-style circle of sisters Fleming and Dahl. Their splendid array of obsessions derives from the tenuous position of the "slightly scarlet" woman (the femme slightly fatale) in a dangerously noir world.