Filmed in deliciously lurid Technicolor, The Unholy Wife is a frustrating noir exercise that should have been much better than it is. The plot is convoluted and unconvincing, but there have been worse plots in better movies; the basic premise is strong enough that, in other hands, Wife might have made it into the upper echelons of noir-dom. Unfortunately, the dialogue isn't strong enough to make up for plot deficiencies, nor are the characters, despite a few nice touches here and there, compelling enough to compensate. What is interesting in the script is the set-up: In traditional noir, Diana Dors would be the femme fatale who tricks Rod Steiger into marriage and his doom. In Wife, it turns out that Steiger has tricked Dors, for it turns out that a "war wound" prevents him from having children and his hidden reason for marrying Dors, who already has a child, was to have a ready-made heir for his business. Seen in this light, Dors' character becomes more sympathetic, and her actions more understandable. Unfortunately, neither writer Jonathan Latimer nor director John Farrow does much with this potentially interesting twist. Nor, for that matter, do Dors and Steiger. Dors looks incredibly fetching, but her performance is only so-so, and Steiger is all over the place, throwing his talent in all directions and seeing if anything sticks. Even with these flaws, there's enough to Wife to make it worth a look, especially if you are a crime thriller aficionado.