Who's Your Favorite Movie Villainess, And Why?

Catherine Trammell basic instinct. Pause button.

So many. How about Phyllis Dietrichson?

Nurse Ratched, I loved to hate her.

Mrs Danvers

Daryl Hannah’s Elle Driver from Kill Bill.

Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman

Some purported villainesses are simply misunderstood .

I read somewhere that Hope wore a strap-on during rehearsals of 'Caged' to amp up her butch persona.

Based on her performance in the movie, I would say that was a smart move.

Amateurs!

Ellen is right up there r7

Bond films have some great ones.

Lottie Lenya as the diabolical butch lesbian with poison tipped retractable dagger footwear ranks very high for me.

Kathleen Turner resurrected the femme fatale in Body Heat.

Don't forget Irma Bundt r11

Veda Pierce and Eve Harrington

Grace Jones as May Day in A View to a Kill.

She could have fit into the zeitgeist for any Bond movie, but her looks for the mid-eighties were ideal.

Billie Whitelaw in The Omen.

Hope Emerson was 6 foot two and built like a truck driver.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’s chief antagonist, Jade Fox, played by Cheng Pei Pei, who died about a year ago.

She’s cunning and plays the long game. Another one with strong Sapphic energy. She isn’t redeemed in the end, but she goes out making herself understood. Great character in a superb film.

Miriam Deering in Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte.

The Evil Queen from the animated 1937 version of Snow White.

Genuinely scary but also inspirational to many little gaylings spellbound by her haughty, imposing glamour.

Are we not including animated movies?

Mrs Iselin in The Manchurian Candidate

Glenn Close as The Marquise de Merteuil in Dangerous Liaisons

Ruth Gordon in “Rosemary’s Baby” - such la-de-da villainy is very fun to watch.

Good one r23

Joanna Barnes in the original Parent Trap.

Calculating golddigger extraordinaire! With her mother along for the ride as a mentor!

[quote]Joanna Barnes in the original Parent Trap.

She was just GHASTLY!

Baroness Von Schraeder

Christine Redfern in "Evil Under the Sun"

Kate, EAST OF EDEN

Harriet Craig

Crystal Allen

Has anyone seen Manji? It is completely bananas, with its lead character Mitsuko holding court amidst the accelerating madness, which she herself generates. She’s like a nihilistic chaos agent in the realms of love and sex. No one is immune!

I wish this movie could be part of a DL viewing party.

Frau Blücher

Lena Olin in Romeo Is Bleeding. So sexy, evil and happy.

Mrs. Ellen Berent Harlan

She only loved too much

The Wicked Witch of the West, of course!

Took us long enough r38.

Say what you will about Monique, she went balls to the wall in Precious. Equal parts horrifying and pitiful.

Wretched, grasping, monstrous, yet somehow fully human and believable.

Suzanne Stone

Linda Fiorentino In The Last Seduction.

I was just about to say that, r42. I said the lady from Romeo Is Bleeding but Linda is even better. World-class scheming bitch.

Good one again r40.

Shelley Winters' character in A PATCH OF BLUE is like an earlier white version. Both horrid mothers.

44 responses in and nobody has mentioned our Fay as Joan Crawford in "Mommie Dearest"?

??????????

^ You bitches are slipping!

L E G E N D

A little ambition never hurt anyone.

Unless you’ve got a handful of beads to scatter on the stage.

Lena Olin is great at playing the bad guy R43. She was fantastic on Alias as a Russian spy.

And Baby Jane Hudson deserves honorable mention.

The Wicked Witch of the West

Nancy Downs (the craft)

Ursula

Alex Forest

Mallory (Natural Born Killers)

Julia (Hellraiser)

Jennifer (Jennifer's Body)

Annie Wilkes.

Also, Catherine, Basic Instinct

Lisa, Girl Interrupted

Peyton in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle!

I was rooting for her to dispatch that whole awful yuppie family, particularly the kid.

Joan Crawford

Thread closed.

R30, Jo Van Fleet is great in as Kate in East of Eden. In her big scene with James Dean he fights her with every mannerism that he has, but she mops the floor with him.

Yet another lesbian entry, Mercedes McCambridge clad in leather and swaggering about as the degenerate lead of some kind of Mexican biker gang holding poor Janet Leigh prisoner in Orson Welles’ A Touch of Evil.

Cynthia Nixon in SATC2

Abu Dhabi Doo!

Almost 60 replies and no Rhoda Penmark?

Your bitches ARE slipping.

Jane Greer in Out of the Past

Sigourney Weaver in Working Girl. She’s captivating and charming, but also duplicitous and quick to steal credit.

Weaver is an underrated comic actress. Watch her lumber around in a leg cast frantically trying to save her own name. I miss whenever she’s not on the screen.

Eleanor Shaw Iselin as played by Angela Lansbury.

R55 Jane Seymour was better.

More Shelley Winters - as Man Barker in Bloody Mama. She’s captivating raises her sons to be bandits and then drowns one of their girlfriends in the bathtub when she gets to be too much trouble.

Matty Walker

“Get away from her, you bitch!”

Joan Collins as Nellifer in "Land Of the Pharaohs".

Angela Lansbury was incredible in the Manchurian Candidate, but I’ll always wonder what Lucille Ball might’ve done in the role. Sinatra really advocated for her, but Frankenheimer knew what he had with Lansbury, so no Lucy.

Gary would’ve talked her out of it anyway.

Neve Campbell as Suzie in Wild Things.

Laurence Olivier as Szell in Marathon Man

Kathryn Loder as Miss Katherine Wall In 1974’s Foxy Brown

Joan Bennett as Kitty in Scarlet Street

Yes, Nurse Ratched. She taught me a life lesson.

I just bought pair of sunglasses exactly like Gene’s in LHTH.

Beverly Sutphin

Nicole Kidman in To Die For.

Louise Fletcher played three villains - Nurse Ratched, Kai Winn, and Agnes Carpenter.

Kathryn Merteuil in "Cruel Intentions"

Theresa Russell in Black Widow. That dirty old man curator should have known better.

R78 Theresa was stunning in that film.

Seriously, until the moment she threatens to tell Billy Bibbit’s parents about his overnight visitor, I never thought Nurse Ratched (movie version only) was all that bad. She has a group of volatile patients in the wardroom and it makes sense she wants to keep pretty tight control. The therapy session, about two thirds of the way through, that McMurphy takes over quickly descends into chaos with tears and shouting. She allows a vote on the ball game and if the vote was lopsided, apparently would have allowed it—and sneaking women and alcohol into the hospital late at night was in fact wrong. What if Billy had been unable to perform and attempted suicide because of that—though admittedly when he comes out of the room that is clearly not the case. I have always found the movie enjoyable and beautifully acted—but also kind of glib.

G

For reasons that are well known to her

M

Click click click

The list would be endless if this was about daytime television.

Cruella de Vil in 101 Dalmatians -- especially as portrayed by Glenn Close.

Gladys Cooper as Charlotte Vale's disapproving and controlling mother in Now Voyager. Cooper was a great beauty when she was young. You'd never know it the way they've got her up.

[quote]Harriet Craig

[quote]Crystal Allen

Doesn't Eva from Queen Bee top them both in terms of cruelty and wickedness? Christina said Joan hated playing the character because it was so close to her real-life persona.

Veda Pierce had a very slapable face.

Datalounge, I’m not going to be IGNORED!

Miriam Knight

The original Prom Night offers one of the slasher genre’s great mean girl hot bitches by way of Anne-Marie Martin as the cruel, vindictive Wendy.

She’s not the killer, but she’s unquestionably a villain, and the actress really sells it, but by the time it’s her turn up against the murderer, the audience is actually rooting for her. She’s just magnetic and hyper-determined in that shimmery sequined red dress as she’s pursued relentlessly through the high school in the dark.

Mine are Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman and Kathleen Turner as Matty walker.

Honorable mentions to Jean Simmons as Diane Tremay in Angel Face and, of course, Mrs Lovett.

Regina George, alpha mean girl.

Twenty years and counting. Still referenced regularly, sometimes by people not yet born when the film came out.

Stanwyck’s best-known femme fatale is from Double Indemnity, but she’s just as good in the title role of The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers. The film starts with her story as a sympathetic adolescent, and then as the story progresses, we gradually lose more and more sympathy. She’s been dealt a bad hand, but what she does to reach her ambitions - money, position, love and sex - becomes increasingly hard to excuse or forgive. She’s both compelling and rotten (almost) to the core.

And her wardrobe is fabulous.

R87 is probably a common waitress!

There is only 1 real DL answer which is Ursa.

She was a badass lesbo who is still considered fashionable today and gave multiple headaches to Stupidman.

The great Lotte Lenya as Rosa Klebb in "From Russia with Love."

Why? It's Lotte Lenya, I love the film, and cruelty and cold-bloodedness are just beneath the surface in her performance.

Hold my beer.

DL fave Connie Ford in "A Summer Place."

The Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz.

Dawn Davenport in Female Trouble

Debbie.

Claire Trevor as Helen Trent in Born to Kill (opposite sexy Lawrence Tierney). She wanted it ALL and didn't care who she fucked over to get it.

Whoever that Frida Kahlo bitch with the tight braids was in the new Superman.

Man I wanted her dead

Barbara from Notes On A Scandal