27 Top Movie Bad Girls

Lord, how I love those movie bad girls. In the old days, these vixens often came clad in an elegant dress with perfectly-coiffed hair. In modern cinema, they’re just as likely to feature ripped muscles, lots of leather, and a big-ass gun. But regardless of what size or shape they come in, I’ve always had a weakness for the dangerous ladies of cinema.

Jennifer’s Body hit theaters this weekend, and it’s shaping up to be a classic bad girl movie. Megan Fox plays the title character, a popular girl who gets possessed by a demon and goes bat-shit crazy on her school’s male population. I don’t know ‘bout you, but that qualifies as “bad girl” behavior in my book.

So I sez to myself, “Self, why not get off your duff and put together a list of some of your favorite big-screen bitches?” So that’s what I’ve done. Below, you’ll find a list of my 27 Top Movie Bad Girls. I’m especially proud of this list, as I was able to complete it entirely without stopping to masturbate. When you see the dark and deadly ladies who made the cut, you’ll understand why that was such an accomplishment.

Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone) from Basic Instinct – A bisexual crime novelist with a thing for icepicks, Catherine Tramell uncrossed her legs right into the annals of movie history. When she wasn’t lezzing out with female lover, Roxy, she was getting all hot and heavy with Michael Douglas, king of the women-are-fucking-crazy movies. During the interrogation scene, you’ll need a cigarette yourself as Stone sucks on a cancer stick and exposes her stuff to the world. Heck, even Wayne Knight (Newman!) was leaning in to get a better look.

Gwen Dulaine (Mamie Van Doren) from High School Confidential! – When a man who married his real-life 13-year-old cousin (Jerry Lee Lewis) plays the title song from the back of a flatbed truck, you can guess that the rest of the film is gonna be filled with plenty of aberrant behavior. Gwen Dulaine epitomizes this attitude, doing everything in her power to seduce her undercover cop nephew. Whether she’s rolling around seductively on her bed, giving him a not-as-innocent-as-it-should-be kiss, or sporting one of those crazy bullet bras from the ‘50s, Van Doren is pure lust in a very tightly-wrapped package.

Xenia Onatopp (Famke Janssen) from Goldeneye – Crazy Russians are always popular movie villains, and the perfectly-named Xenia Onatopp broke the mold as a gun-wielding psycho who likes to kill men by getting them between her lethal thighs (did I just write “lethal thighs”?). Played with absolute relish by Famke Janssen, this ultimate bad girl gives our favorite British spy fits. She ultimately goes the way of all James Bond villains, but she make one helluva impression before she struts off to that big villain’s lair in the sky.

Nikita (Anne Parillaud) from La Femme Nikita – A former junkie and cop killer, Nikita has her death faked by the French government and gets put to work as a reluctant assassin. She becomes a bit more sympathetic when she’s off the junk, but her employers make it clear that they now own her body and soul. While she looks for a way out, she continues her assignments, proving that the French can make even cold-blooded murder seem sexy.

Ivy (Drew Barrymore) from Poison Ivy – Jailbait is like kryptonite for middle-aged men, and this has never been more true than in the case of Ivy. After moving it with the Cooper family, she promptly seduces the husband and then murders his wife. That only leaves the plain-Jane daughter to get to the bottom of things, and the resulting catfight is one for the books. Watch for a young Leonardo DiCaprio in the role of “Guy.”

Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner) from Body Heat – Nobody ever steamed up the screen like Matty Walker. With a killer bod and a sexy-yet-husky voice, she had no problem twisting a shady lawyer (John Hurt) around her little finger. She gets him to murder her husband, inherits the entire shebang, and then leaks information which leaves her horndog helper behind bars. Walker embodies the spirit of the femme fatales of old, just with lots more nudity.

Jessica Rabbit (voice of Kathleen Turner) from Who Framed Roger Rabbit – Kathleen Turner lands on the list again, this time as the voice of the impossibly proportioned cartoon character known as Jessica Rabbit. Married to a comical cartoon rabbit named Roger, she’s one of the prime suspects when people start showing up dead. As she famously purrs to the private dick played by Bob Hoskins, “I’m not bad. I’m just drawn that way.”

Varla (Tura Satana) from Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! – While she and her go-go dancing pals are out drag racing, Varla comes across a young couple. With her bad girl reputation in question, Varla kills the boyfriend with her bare hands, then proceeds to beat and drug the girlfriend and toss her into the trunk. And that’s just for starters, as the evil wench later decides to rob a wheelchair-bound old man and his simpleminded son. When exploitation master Russ Meyer dreams up a bad girl, he certainly doesn’t pull any punches.

Gail (Rosario Dawson) from Sin City – A six-foot dominatrix who wears an outfit made of metal, leather and fishnet stockings, Gail is one of the top bad girls in Old Town, the part of Sin City controlled by the prostitutes. She gets a kick out of violence, and this is adequately demonstrated when we see her fire off an Uzi with a look of pure satisfaction. Ex-lover Dwight (Clive Owen) refers to her as “my valkyrie,” and that’s about as appropriate a comparison as any.

SIL (Natasha Henstridge) from Species – There’s always a catch when it comes to beautiful women. In the case of SIL, the catch comes when she morphs from a sexy blonde into a horrific alien and kills your ass. Sure, it’s just instinct on her part, but that sort of lethally-horny behavior more than qualifies her for a spot at our bad girl table.

Coffy (Pam Grier) from Coffy – When her sister gets all messed up on smack, the nurse known as Coffy decides to punish those responsible. In true bad girl fashion, she does the work herself, not needing to crawl to some sweaty man for assistance. Using a combination of guns and her feminine “assets,” she dispatches pimps, crooked cops, and mobsters with lethal efficiency. Sporting a bitchin’ 70’s afro and a head-turning rack, this Coffy will definitely keep you up all night.

Mallory Knox (Juliette Lewis) from Natural Born Killers – Abused by her father in more ways than one, little Mallory hooks up with Mickey Knox and goes on a multi-state killing spree. While her love for Mickey is absolute, anyone else who gets in her way is screwed. Mallory is a bad girl through and through, but in the paranoid hands of director Oliver Stone, she becomes a monstrous version of the American dream gone horribly wrong.

Janine Lustoffen (Janine Lindemulder) from Bad Girls: Lockdown – Her name is Janine Lustofften. Get it? Lust Often? Anyways, porn star Janine Lindemulder stretches her acting range and her vagina in this tale of a woman sent away to prison. Sure, it’s a porno, but it’s also entitled Bad Girls, so I pretty much have to include it on the list. Janine was in her I-don’t-do-guys phase back then, so that leaves even more time for her to get know fellow inmates Debi Diamond and Asia Carrera. Porn imitates life, as Janine was sentenced to six months in real-life prison in 2008 for tax evasion. Somehow, I’m guessing her cellmates looked nothing like Asia Carrera.

Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) from Double Indemnity – Oh, what a treacherous dame! Phyllis starts out as the nurse to a wealthy man, but she later gets a promotion to the bedroom after murdering his wife. She then takes out the famous double indemnity policy and has her shiny new hubby disposed of, while at the same time getting nasty with the young boyfriend of her step-daughter. And to top it all off, she’s manipulating an insurance agent into helping her get away with the whole thing. It almost works, too, but she finally gets the film noir justice that’s been coming to her.

Camero (America Olivo) from Bitch Slap – First of all, Camero’s muscles make her a whole different breed of bad girl. Add some super-sized guns, a bad attitude towards men, and her fondness for “gash bashing,” and you’ve got one of the baddest ladies to ever be caught on film. And when she’s not throwing people into trunks to find the location of hidden diamonds, she also likes to run some drugs on the side. She’d be a complete lowlife if America Olivo didn’t make her so damn hot.

Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer) from Batman Returns – If Christopher Walken threw you off a building, you’d be pissed. Of course, you’d probably also be dead. But not Selina Kyle. No, after being revived by a group of cats, she promptly returns home, makes herself a patchwork leather bondage outfit (complete with whip), and gets to work on ridding Gotham of Batman. Sure, she’s a little misguided, but what whip-wielding former secretary isn’t? At least she wasn’t teaching inner-city kids to read fruity poetry.

Bridget Gregory (Linda Fiorentino) from The Last Seduction – Of all the women on this list, perhaps none are as comfortable with using their sexuality to get what they want as Bridget Gregory. This leads to a tangled web filled with murder, intrigue, and plenty of rough sex. She escapes the clutches of a detective by repeatedly questioning the size of his penis, murders her drug-dealing husband, and uses a small-town boy’s brief marriage to a transsexual as grist for her mill. It’s a seedy world she lives in, but the sultry Bridget seems right at home.

Brigid O’Shaughnessy (Mary Astor) from The Maltese Falcon – Bad girls love aliases, and this murderous tramp has more than her share. She also has a fondness for money, as demonstrated by her willingness to do anything to help out the ruthless treasure hunter known as The Fat Man (Sydney Greenstreet). While she initially manipulates Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) into aiding her cause, the worldly detective eventually makes her pay with the line, “Yes, angel, I’m gonna send you over.” Another film noir girl gone bad.

Sylvia (Monica Bellucci) from Brotherhood of the Wolf – When our hero first wanders into a French brothel, he’s immediately taken aback by the seductive curves of the Italian mystery woman known only as Sylvia. But there’s more to the busty beauty than meets the eye: she’s a spy sent by the Vatican to eliminate an insane priest. And after helping the protagonist fake his own death, she demonstrates her lethal abilities by slitting a fellow bad girl’s throat with some kind of crazy bladed fan. And don’t miss one of the greatest transition shots in movie history, as Sylvia’s milky-white breasts suddenly transform into a pair of snow-covered mountains.

Ginger McKenna (Sharon Stone) from Casino – Ms. Stone makes the list again, this time as a Vegas hustler with good looks and bad morals. We first see Ginger cozying up to gamblers and relieving them of their money, some of which she sends to her old pimp boyfriend, Lester Diamond (the delightfully sleazy James Woods). But her scumbag meter really kicks into the red after marrying the smitten Ace Rothstein (Bobby De Niro). When she’s not fleecing him for everything he’s got, she’s happy to jump into bed with every man in town, including Ace’s old friend–and total psycho–Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci). She later ties her own daughter to a bed, tries to have Ace murdered, and then rolls around on a bank floor in a shameless display of naked greed. Without a doubt, one of the most unredeemable bad girls in movie history.

Baby Firefly (Sheri Moon Zombie) from The Devil’s Rejects/House of 1000 Corpses – Baby likes to sport one of those folded-up cowboy hats and jeans which hang low enough to expose her crack. While that’s hardly good girl behavior, her slutty fashion sense is only the tip of the iceberg. You see, Baby also has a thing for murdering total strangers, and she’s real handy with knives. Whether she’s throwing them into the chest cavity of a Three’s Company alum or stabbing her victim to death in a lonesome field, this white trash horror icon is one bad mamma-jamma.

Mrs. Eleanor Iselin (Angela Lansbury) from The Manchurian Candidate – I always hated Murder, She Wrote, and that’s the first thing I think of when I see Angela Lansbury. Then I recall her role in The Manchurian Candidate, and I almost entirely forget about the former. With a brainwashed son and a deck full of playing cards, Mrs. Iselin is way worse than a bad girl…she’s a dirty commie.

Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman) from Pulp Fiction – Nice girls don’t snort their nose full of cocaine and bang the hired help, but Mia Wallace does. And when she doesn’t have a giant needle sticking out of her chest, she also does some pretty mean dancing. And the true test of her cinematic badness? She can make geometric objects appear out of the blue. Now that’s bad.

Pearl (Lucy Liu) from Payback – Back when she was billed as Lucy Alexis Liu, the actress from Charlie’s Angels played a kinky dominatrix in bed with the Chinese Triad. Girls into bondage and submission are always bad, and Ms. Liu more than proved it by trying to crush Mel Gibson’s nuts under her spiked heel. We also get to see more flesh than we’re accustomed to from the slightly cross-eyed actress, as Pearl prefers fishnet stockings and form-fitting leather. She won’t love you long time (couldn’t resist), but she will beat your ass silly and leave you begging for more.

Violet Kimura (Honoka) from The Machine Girl – When it comes to Asian goodness, I couldn’t include Lucy Liu and not Honoka’s portrayal of Violet Kimura. The wife of a Yakuza boss, Violet enjoys beating cute little Japanese maids to death for the slightest infraction, as well as watching while her clumsy chef is forced to eat his own fingers like sushi. But the kicker comes when she unveils the ultimate movie bad girl weapon: a drill bra which tears apart the flesh of anyone who falls into her grasp. Damn, I love Asian women!

Gogo Yubari (Chiaki Kuriyama) from Kill Bill: Vol. 1 – In order to complete the Asian bad girl trifecta, I present the psychotic stylings of Gogo Yubari. Dressed up in the sexy Japanese schoolgirl look that us American guys love so much, Gogo serves as the personal bodyguard for a powerful crime boss (Lucy Liu, coincidentally). And when she’s not disemboweling guys at bars for hitting on her, she’s wielding a crazy weapon known as a meteor hammer. Her role isn’t a big one, but I guarantee you’ll remember her.

Elsa Bannister (Rita Hayworth) from The Lady from Shanghai – After duping a sailor into signing a fake murder confession, Elsa really does kill someone, making the poor sap’s conviction an open-and-shut case. Hayworth is stunning as always, her short, blonde hair in complete contrast to the voluminous style from Gilda. Whether she’s scheming against her naïve new beau or duping her crippled husband, Elsa is a woman who, in her own words, has surrendered to “badness.” It’s almost a pity she has to die in that famous Hall of Mirrors shootout.

So there you have it: the 27 top movie bad girls. If you enjoyed reading this ode to dangerous women, here are a few more items you might want to check out:

• 10 Movie Roles Megan Fox Should’ve Played
• Movies with Tough Chicks
• 12 Good Movies Featuring the Cast of Lost
• Good Racing Movies
• Film Noir Movies List

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