Meet Christabel Caine (Joan Fontaine). She seems harmless enough as she comes to stay with Donna while she attends a business school. Christabel will be taking over Donna’s job with a publisher (Christabel’s uncle) after Donna (Joan Leslie) marries the filthy rich Curtis Carey (Zachary Scott) – he doesn’t flaunt his wealth, rather everyone else flaunts it for him. Donna’s artist friend Gabriel (Mel Ferrer), or Gobby as everyone calls him, takes an interest in Christabel and offers to paint her portrait, hoping to make a few bucks by selling the portrait to her family. Christabel also meets Donna’s friend, the writer Nick Bradley (Robert Ryan), a world traveler with a new novel about to be published.

Christabel is immediately taken with the lives of the elite, and begins an affair with Nick. But money is more her thing, so she sets her sights on Curtis, setting him up to question his relationship with Donna, then driving the wedge between them, driving her away, and marrying him in the process. Except she’s still not quite done with Nick, and this being part of the Warner Archive Collection Film Noir series, things will not end happily for everyone.

Born To Be Bad is one of those movies that is a product of an era when women could be portrayed as deceptive and cunning, stealing husband after husband, and getting away with murder. Men, on the other hand, always had to have some sort of comeuppance according to the Hayes Code that was in place at the time, long before the MPAA rating system went into effect.

Christabel Caine is one of those women. Christabel’s not as bad as Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) in Double Indemnity … or maybe she’s even worse because she’s able to toy with the men around her while still portraying that air of innocence that drags them into her trap. Joan Fontaine, who was so good as the put-upon Mrs. DeWinter in Hitchcock’s Rebecca ten years earlier, puts her fresh-faced beauty to good use as the maneater here, even if she does seem just a tad too old to be playing such an ingenue (at 33, she looks a good ten years older), and for being such an innocent, she really knows how to work people to get what she wants. As bad to the bone as Christabel is, Fontaine makes the film extremely entertaining even though you’re almost hoping she gets hers by the time the credits roll.

The Warner Archive Collection presentation of Born To Be Bad includes a very nice print with only some moderate scratches here and there. Nothing to be alarmed about though. The black and white image is pretty sharp, and looked terrific upconverted to a 1080p image from the DVD. The audio is also nice and sharp and free from any major hissing or popping. I mentioned that you’d expect Christabel to get some kind of punishment by the end of the film, and I found it surprising that she doesn’t. However, in a rare piece of bonus material for an Archive Collection release, the folks at Warner Brothers have combed the vaults and turned up an alternate ending that’s never been seen until now. This ending helps make sense of the final moment of the film, and expands on Christabel’s fate in a rather surprising way. If you enjoyed the movie, this ending only adds more to that enjoyment.

In addition to the alternate ending, the DVD includes the film’s original theatrical trailer. Fans of the classic noir films from the 1940s and 1950s that feature bad girls using their female charms to get what they want will definitely want to add this film to their collection.

This review is based on the DVD provided to CliqueClack by the Warner Archive Collection, available exclusively through WBShop.com.