Cute, frail Pamela Sue Martin gained family-friendly fame in the 70's with the hit TV show: The Nancy drew Mysteries. When they merged her show with the Hardy Boys she felt her role was too diminished so she left the series early to leave mega-TV-producer, Glen Larson, a casting hole to fill to complete the series. Never a good idea to bite the hand that feeds you, but you know how Hollywood egos can get. So in 1979 she landed a role as the lead in this little piece of smut-o-rama: The Lady In Red, one can only assume to shake-off the little-bo-peep persona from Nancy Drew, in similar fashion to how Britney, Miley, Christina , et al, did to get more adult roles or pursue more edgier entertainment styles. This film puts Pam thru the ringers: she grows up a poor farm girl, but even then we catch a glimpse of her sociopathic tendencies as she hurls freshly laid eggs onto the mother hens that just laid them (eek!), casually abets Bonnie & Clyde in an armed robbery then gets tossed from a moving car' no big deal. Then painfully loses her virginity; yet no big deal. Of course she learns quickly, if not from her abusive father, that nearly all men are horny misogynists violent pigs, but hey this Hollywood, so its acceptable, just as it is to drop the "N" word often. She then goes on the be an abused sweat-shop worker, a violent inmate, a high priced call girl, and a gangster's GF (Dillinger) near the end of the film. In between are multiple scenes of violence, torture humiliation, murder, rape, sex, and nudity; some full-frontal (with the help of real-life porn stars, notably Kitten Nativitad), nearly unnecessary and totally self-aware. To say the film jumps around a lot would be an insult to kangaroos. It's poorly directed, staged, and edited. Casting snagged several good actors but the script borders on being childish. I had no idea what the real point of the film was, nor how I was to feel about our protagonist. The overall look, from start-to-finish, is that of a low-budget TV series, for it had no theatrical appearance at all. Had it not contained the overt "adult elements", it nearly could have been a TV mini series, with time to explore and explain characters ( and history) more clearly. Oh, well, it got Pam her role as Fallon on Dynasty for the next 4-years. After that, she fell off the map.
Review of The Lady in Red
