"Bad girl movies" are a subcategory of film noir labeled by latter-day movie buffs to describe the dark films of the 1940s and 1950s starring beautiful women on the wrong side of the spirit and/or the letter of the law. The movie posters to these films usually featured sexy artwork of the lady in question, posed seductively, and these images today in original posters and reproductions are as collected today, as are the films themselves are on VHS and DVD.
Among the classic "bad girl" performances are:
Others in the "bad girl" category include: Gloria Grahame, Angela Lansbury, Dorothy Malone, Beverly Michaels, Jane Randolph, Audrey Totter, Claire Trevor, Marie Windsor and Shelley Winters.
Perhaps the ultimate bad girl movies are women in prison films with the women in question behind bars; the majority of these films were made well after the classical film noir period and include one of the more socially-conscious films of the genre, Why Must I Die?
She's not a bad girl she's just a sad girl
Please don't blame her for what she's done to me
I know it doesn't look too good for her and I suppose she's done the things you say
And I guess it's true I tried more than I should for her
But it's not her fault that she turned out that way
She's not a bad girl...
[ guitar - steel ]
Once she was the kind of girl you'd have her be
But I was foolish then and didn't care
The first of us to ever slip around was me
And to place the blame on her just isn't fair
She's not a bad girl...
Please don't blame her for what she's done to me