Color It Black : In ‘Scarlet Street,’ a mild-mannered artist finds his life painted into a corner.

Kitty March [about to paint her toenails]: “Well, I was going to do this myself, but uh . . . [hands Christopher Cross the nail polish]. Paint me, Chris! . . . They’ll be masterpieces.”

In “Scarlet Street” (1945)--screening tonight in Chapman University’s Film Noir series--meek, henpecked Christopher Cross (Edward G. Robinson), a middle-aged cashier and amateur painter, rescues Kitty March (Joan Bennett) from her abusive boyfriend Johnny Prince (Dan Duryea) one rainy night.

Johnny secretly colludes with Kitty, while Chris, who pretends to be a wealthy artist, sets up a love nest with money from Mrs. Cross (Rosalind Ivan). Johnny sells Chris’ paintings under Kitty’s name, plunging the former cashier into a world of crime and deception.

Fritz Lang’s film noir chestnut was a remake of a 1931 French film, “La Chienne,” co-written by master director Jean Renoir and Georges de la Fouchardiere, author of a novel by the same title, in which an unhappily married bank clerk falls into the clutches of a prostitute and her scheming pimp.

Someone gets away with murder in “Scarlet Street,” an apparent breach of the Production Code.

When the city of Atlanta tried to ban the film, code administrator Joseph Breen wrote in an affidavit that his administration believed “the murderer was adequately punished by a higher power, working through his own conscience, which drove him to become a social outcast and hopeless derelict.”

Bob Bassett, dean of the School of Film and Television at Chapman, will introduce the film, part of a class in film noir.

Running time: 1 hour, 43 minutes. Black-and-white (this is not the colorized version). Unrated.

* Argyros Forum, Room 208. Chapman University, 333 N. Glassell St., Orange. Tonight at 8 p.m. Free. (714) 997-6765.

A Waters Satire

“Pecker,” opening Friday at the Edwards South Coast Village 3 in Santa Ana and the Art in Long Beach, is the 13th film by cult writer-director John (“Pink Flamingos”) Waters.

An 18-year-old Baltimore sandwich shop worker (Edward Furlong) spends his free time taking out-of-focus photos of his eccentric family and friends. When Pecker--a childhood nickname--is “discovered” by a New York art dealer (Lili Taylor) and catapulted into art-world stardom, his formerly low-key lifestyle becomes a nightmare.

Christina Ricci plays Shelley, Pecker’s loyal girlfriend, who runs a fanatically orderly Laundromat and can’t believe the press views her good-natured pinup poses as pornography.

Other characters include Pecker’s mom (Mary Kay Place), who dispenses fashion tips to the homeless at her thrift shop, and grandmother (Jean Schertler), whose experience with a talking statue of Mary becomes fodder for a jeering article in a national art magazine.

Pecker’s fame also gets older sister Tina (Martha Plimpton) fired from her job hiring male go-go dancers for a gay club and brings 6-year-old Little Chrissy’s eating disorder to the attention of outraged child welfare agencies.

Waters is familiar with the gallery world, as a collector of contemporary art and an exhibiting artist in his own right. (His still photographs contain sequenced images from motion picture frames.) The cast includes Waters’ artist friends Cindy Sherman and Greg Gorman.

“I’m satirizing something I know and love,” he says. “In a way, I’m satirizing myself.”

“Pecker” was shot entirely in Hampden, an inner-city Baltimore neighborhood where Pecker’s house, his mother’s Bargain Hut store and the bar and club in the film are all literally within a few blocks of one another. New York gallery and restaurant scenes were re-created in a Baltimore office building and a sound stage.

“I joke that ‘Pecker’ is my satire of a Woody Allen movie,” Waters says. “I’m trying to portray two worlds that I know: blue-collar Baltimore and the New York art world, and the curtain of irony that separates the two.”

In the September issue of Mirabella magazine, Karen Durbin calls the film “Waters’ sweetest, raunchiest comedy since ‘Hairspray,’ and maybe his funniest ever.”

Running time: 1 hour, 27 minutes. MPAA rating: R. Times guidelines: Nudity; suggestive dancing; crude sexual innuendo; Roman Catholicism spoofed; strong profanity; sexual situations.

* Edwards South Coast Village 3, 1561 W. Sunflower Ave. (714) 540-0594. Art Theater, 4th Street at Cherry Avenue, Long Beach. (562) 438-5435.

The ‘It’ Movie

Back at Chapman, the Monday night science fiction series continues with “It Came From Outer Space” (1953). Written by Ray Bradbury, directed by Jack Arnold, this 3-D classic is about friendly aliens who crash-land on Earth and assume the identities of local people in order to quietly make repairs on their spaceship. With Richard Carlson, Barbara Rush, Charles Drake, Russell Johnson, Joe Sawyer and Kathleen Hughes.

Special glasses for the 3-D effects will be distributed at the door.

Running time: 1 hour, 21 minutes. Unrated.

* Argyros Forum, Room 208, Chapman University, 333 N. Glassell St., Orange. Monday at 7 p.m. Free. (714) 997-6625.