The Wicked Lady | 1983
- Locations |
- Warwickshire;
- Hertfordshire;
- South Yorkshire;
- London
- DIRECTOR |
- Michael Winner
Back in 1945, The Wicked Lady caused quite a stir, what with Margaret Lockwood’s aristocratic Lady Skelton stealing husbands, poisoning aged retainers and moonlighting as a highway robber. Her recklessly plunging necklines meant scenes having to be reshot for the delicate sensibilities of the USA.
The Eighties remake, further sexed up with bare breasts and whip fights, just has to be the work of Michael Winner.
‘Maryiot Cells’, home of Lady Skelton (now embodied by Faye Dunaway) is now a conflation of two houses: the turretted and gabled home of Lord Northampton, Compton Wynyates in Warwickshire, an ancient house rebuilt in the 16th century (previously seen as the estate in Disney’s 1977 comedy Candleshoe, with a young Jodie Foster) and in Death on the Nile; and the Elizabethan mansion, North Mymms Park, Tollgate Road, a private house between Colney Heath and Welham Green in Hertfordshire. The park is occasionally open to the public.
The ‘Tyburn’ hanging scenes used the moors outside Sheffield in South Yorkshire.
The ‘Duke’s Theatre’, where Lady Skelton meets Charles II, is the Painted Hall of the Old Royal Naval College, King William Walk, London SE10 (rail: Greenwich), seen in many other films, including The Madness of King George.
