female villains we love to hate
If you’re not all that familiar with the story of The Golden Compass, you may not know that the character Nicole Kidman plays, Mrs. Coulter, is the villain of the piece. Female bad guys -- alas that “bad girls” does not have the same connotation of treachery and vileness -- are few and far between, but perhaps its their rarity that makes them so memorable when they do turn up. Here are some of my favorites:
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• Kidman’s own Suzanne Stone in To Die For (1995): Her small-town girl takes ambition to extreme lengths in the pursuit of fame and fortune. Alternate title: Be Careful Who You Sleep With. [buy at Amazon]
• Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada (2006): She whispers all her evil, forcing you to lean in to listen to here even when your inclination is to run as far away as possible. [read my review] [buy at Amazon]
• Margaret Hamilton’s Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz (1939): She’ll get us, we little pretties, and our little dogs, too. Oh, her beautiful wickedness... [read my review] [buy at Amazon]
• the Alien queen in Aliens (1986): That bit where Ripley and Newt are running, running, running away and suddenly find themselves smack in the middle of the bitch’s egg nest? I have nightmares like that. [buy at Amazon]
• Louise Fletcher’s Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975): The character’s name instantly became synonymous with creepy, scary, evil in female uniform. Not many villians, guy or gal, can claim such an honor. [read my review] [buy at Amazon]
• Lucille La Verne’s Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937): The ur evil stepmother, she’s so powerful that she still haunts our collective subconscious 70 years later. read my review] [buy at Amazon]
• Kathy Bates’ Annie Wilkes in Misery (1990): Her refusal to use even the mildest swear words would be pretty funny if it weren’t matched by an equal and opposite proclivity for some of the most cruel nastiness film has ever seen. (Interesting, too, that she’s another nurse, preying men when they’re most vulnerable.) [read my review] [buy at Amazon]
• Judith Anderson’s Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca (1940): Creepy housekeeper! And creepily overprotective of her master. Makes you wonder who’s really in charge in that house. [read my review] [buy at Amazon]
• Faye Dunaway’s Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest: She ruined the reputation of wire hangers, and what did they ever do to her? [buy at Amazon]
(Technorati tags: female movie villains)
comments
posted by Clayj (December 6, 2007 11:33 AM)
She's not a grownup in the movie, but Patty McCormack's performance as Rhoda Penmark in The Bad Seed (1956) was pretty damn chilling.
And as long as you're including crazies and not just mean women, what about Glenn Close's Alex Forrest from Fatal Attraction?
posted by bitchen frizzy (December 6, 2007 12:05 PM)
Bette Davis as Jane Hudson in "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" immediately comes to mind for me.
posted by bossy joe (December 6, 2007 12:47 PM)
Linda Fiorentino in The Last Seduction is my fave...haven't seen it in at least ten years, but it still sticks in my head.
posted by Kate (December 6, 2007 12:52 PM)
I realize she's not the #1 baddie, more of a helpmeet to the big bad, but the nanny in "The Omen" comes to my mind! That starched white collar, perfectly straight part, and thin little smile....yikes.
posted by misterb (December 6, 2007 2:02 PM)
You can't leave out Cruella deVille. Maybe not a great movie, but a great villain!
I'm not convinced that Meryl Streep was a villain. Maybe it's just my own corporate background, but Meryl did such an excellent job of conveying the real human in the character that she didn't feel evil to me; just demanding. Of course, incredibly demanding may seem evil if that's your boss.
Kidman was pretty good in Malice, too.
posted by Johnny (December 6, 2007 4:30 PM)
Natasha Henstridge in Species, I remember feeling mixed
about this movie. She was hot, but yet she kills you after the sex. I think shes somebody I'd take my chances with regardless to the possibilities death by alien tentacle strangulation. I always thought maybe, just maybe I could convince her not to kill me.
posted by amanohyo (December 7, 2007 6:38 AM)
She might stand out because the movie itself is not so great, but the only Disney villain with a genuinely cool character design is Maleficent (played by Eleanor Audley). Every time I watched the movie as a child, I was hoping that she would kill that bland Prince and make a meal of Sleeping Beauty.
posted by amanohyo (December 7, 2007 6:53 AM)
Nausicaa's Kushana was memorable for me as well. She's about as badass as a princess can get.
posted by JT (December 7, 2007 10:21 AM)
More recently, I would add Imelda Staunton as Dolores Umbridge in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I didn't actually read a hard copy of the book, I listened to the audiobook.. and Stephen Fry would start Dolores' sentences with a soft *ahem* *ahem* that gave me chills. I think Imelda Staunton captured that perfectly.
posted by MaryAnn (December 7, 2007 6:47 PM)
I never said this list was exhaustive. :->
Yes, Staunton in *Order of the Phoenix* is awesome, and that one's almost on DVD...
I freakin' *hate* that movie...
posted by misterb (December 9, 2007 10:05 PM)
When I look at this list, it seems that an inordinate number of classic Walt Disney films had an evil female villain. We didn't even mention "Snow White"! Since most of us (and even many of our parents) grew up on Disney, what do you think the effect of all these evil women was on our tender psyches? Did Walt have an agenda? http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/12/19/051219fa_fact1
this was the closest thing I could Google to an answer.
posted by bitchen frizzy (December 10, 2007 10:07 AM)
Walt's agenda was to bring classic fairy tales and children's stories to the big screen.
He didn't create the characters in those stories.
posted by Mark (December 11, 2007 5:34 PM)
Servalan, from Blake's 7.
posted by MBI (December 11, 2007 5:52 PM)
God, I love Nicole Kidman in "To Die For." She's so good at communicating superficiality, and that's not an insult, many great actors are incapable of it.
posted by MaryAnn (December 12, 2007 1:00 PM)
Servalan, absolutely. Unfortunately, B7 is not available on DVD in the States.
Mark: You're not my cousin Mark from the UK, are you? You sound exactly like him...
posted by Mark (December 12, 2007 2:37 PM)
You can order region-2 DVDs from Amazon UK; shipping is only about £3 to the US. Then all you need is a region-free player, or you can watch them on a computer with region-free player software (that's how I watch the Spaced and Mighty Boosh DVDs I ordered a few months ago).
The B7 20-disk giganto-boxed set (all four seasons) is just shy of £78, which with the current exchange rate is ... well, still pretty expensive. But if you already have what you need to play UK DVDs, don't let the fact that they aren't for sale here stop you from buying them.
I have neither the honor of being related to you nor the pleasure of living in the UK. I'm just a longtime reader of the site.
posted by MaryAnn (December 12, 2007 9:29 PM)
Obviously, you haven't been reading the many postings in which I've covered my newfound romance with my region-free DVD player and Amazon UK. *B7* was one of the first things I ordered from England -- I fell in love with it as a teenager when it aired on PBS here, and I'm considering writing a "Totally Geeky Guide to B7.*