SLIGHTLY SCARLET

The ruthless and uncouth Solly Caspar, the crime boss of Bay City (a fictional town near San Francisco), wishes to defeat a campaign by multimillionaire mayoral reform candidate Frank Jansen. Caspar tasks crooked ex-cop Ben Grace with uncovering dirt on Jansen. Ben follows Jansen's secretary and girlfriend June Lyons to a women's prison to photograph her collecting her sex-starved kleptomaniac sister Dorothy, a multiple ex-con.

Ben is attracted to June and withholds the incriminating evidence from Caspar. He instead gives June an audiotape recording that proves that Caspar killed a crusading newspaper owner who had supported Jansen. Caspar is forced to flee to Mexico. Ben seduces June, steals her from Jansen and, without June's or Caspar's knowledge, takes command of Caspar’s rackets. However, Ben faces resistance from Caspar’s gang, city hall and the police.

Dorothy, who had been attracted to Ben from the start, continues her play for him. She accompanies him to Caspar's former beach house, where there is a safe containing $160,000. Despite Dorothy's advances, Ben remains uninterested. She accidentally fires a spear gun at his head, narrowly missing. After searching the house, Ben is forced to leave without finding the money. To exact revenge for Ben’s rejection, Dorothy tells June that the beach-house trip was a romantic escapade. June confronts Ben, who responds by assuring her that he only wants her.

Dorothy is arrested for stealing a pearl necklace, and June pleads with Ben to intervene on Dorothy's behalf. He persuades his former boss, a former lieutenant who owes him a favor, to release Dorothy and purge her record. Jansen, who still loves June, insists that Dorothy must return to jail.

Caspar returns from Mexico seeking revenge on Ben. At the beach house, Caspar finds a drunken and provocative Dorothy alone, and she attempts to seduce him. When Caspar boastfully scatters the money from the vault on the floor and offers some to Dorothy, she tries to steal even more. Caspar invites her to return to Mexico with him. June arrives, seeking to rescue Dorothy, but Caspar points his gun at her and throws her down on the terrace, where she lands on the spear gun and shoots him with it before firing his own revolver at him twice.

Ben arrives and pleads with June to flee with him and the money, but she refuses. Caspar, still alive after being shot by June, shoots Ben and wounds him. When Caspar’s gang arrives, Ben, June and Dorothy are trapped in a bedroom, but Ben phones the police and calls for a full squad to be dispatched to the house. Caspar's gang tells Ben that if he will leave the bedroom, the women will be spared. Ben emerges and taunts Caspar, who shoots him several times.

The police arrive and arrest Caspar and his gang. Badly wounded, Ben is placed on a stretcher. June speaks to him tenderly before he is placed in an ambulance. Dorothy emerges from the bedroom, seemingly penitent.

A final confrontation at a beach house sees June shoot Caspar with a spear gun, Ben is wounded, and Caspar and his gang are arrested. Ben is taken away in an ambulance while June and Dorothy face an uncertain future.

The ending underscores the cost of navigating loyalty, corruption, and desire in a city where everyone is compromised. June’s decisive action against Caspar is both an act of survival and a break from the cycle of manipulation. Ben’s fate—wounded but alive—reflects the ambiguity of moral choices in the noir world, while Dorothy’s apparent penitence leaves open the question of whether true change is possible for any of them.