Film Noir - The really, really bad dames who were the stars of these movies.

I just watched BtbB...loved it

The Carol Burnett parody was called "Raised To Be Rotten".

It’s tough to beat the standard set by the appropriately namesd Ann Savage in “Detour”.

J'adore Marie Windsor.

Jane Greer as Kathie Moffatt in Out Of The Pat (1947). Not overtly a femme fatale until the second half, but incredibly cold blooded.

Barbara Stanwyck as Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity (1944).

*Out Of The Past

Gene Tierney in Leave Her to Heaven

Jean Gillie in Decoy

Jean Gillie in "Decoy", the most obscure femme fatale ever!

(SPOILERS) I love some of the short, pithy lines they give them.

Jane Greer in Out of the Past says something like "I had to kill him, YOU wouldn't"

Faith Domergue in Where Danger Lives, as she dies next to a chain link fence: "Nobody pities me - nobody!"

from The Unsuspected:

Ted North: "You must be Miss Moynihan."

Constance Bennett: "I am, but must I be? "

Every time Gloria Grahame died in a movie, I expected her to have a vision of being a happy homemaker with loving husband and children, tears running down her eyes as she realized what she never went after and petrified of what would come in the afterlife.

Jean Simmons in Angel Face

Gaby Rogers sets the world on fire in KISS ME DEADLY (1955)

R12 she was one crazy bitch.

I always call the mink coats and hats that Joan and Bette wear at the end of their noir films their "hunting gear" because they are always packing a rod in those tiny purses.

Bette in "Deception".

Joan Bennett in Scarlet Street

Damn!

Lime demented queen spent a lot of time on that!

R3 beat me to it. Another vote for Ann Savage in Detour; that moment when she jolts awake suddenly @ 3:30...

[quote] Where did you leave his body? Where did you leave the owner of this car? Yer not foolin' anyone.

Claire Trevor in "Murder, My Sweet" & "Born to Kill."

Love Claire Trevor. She always played a world weary woman, not exactly bad, not exactly good. She kinda reminds me of Judy Davis.

Gloria Graham in Fritz Lang's The Big Heat (1953)

R20 She was a good dame, though.

Jane Greer in Out of the Past and Stanwyck in Double Indemnity have already been mentioned. I’d add Claire Trevor in Born to Kill.

I just noticed someone has already mentioned Trevor in Born to Kill.

Barbara Stanwyck in DOUBLE INDEMNITY

Marie Windsor in THE NARROW MARGIN

Ava Gardner in THE KILLERS

Peggy Cummins in GUN CRAZY

Stanwyck also "rotten to the core" in THE FILE ON THELMA JORDON (49) and THE STRANGE LOVE OF MARTHA IVERS (46).

R24 Peggy Cummins in Gun Crazy is another name I should have included in my list. As Annie Laurie Starr, Cummins gives a performance that is sublimely psychopathic. Cummins is really mesmerizing in this role, and I think it is her greatest performance. The spirit of Gun Crazy was ripped off by Bonnie and Clyde, but Faye Dunaway couldn’t hold a candle to Peggy Cummins.

Peggy Cummins was in a great horror film with Dana Andrews, Curse (Night) of the Demon.

Barbara Stanwyck in Thelma Jordon- “I’d like to say I didn’t intend to kill her. But when you have a gun, you always intend to if you have to.”

R27 The Peggy Cummins in Curse of the Demon is so prissy and proper that she bears no resemblance to her earlier self.

Yvonne De Carlo in Criss Cross. I don’t know why she didn’t star in more good films after that one. She was sexy and beautiful in the role, similar to Ava Gardner and Rita Hayworth in their film noir roles.

Another Barbara Stanwyck quote as Thelma Jordan:

"Maybe I am just a dame and didn't know it."

At her AFI award ceremony, Walter Matthau singled out this line as a crack towards wooden leading man Wendell Corey.

Another vote for Jean Simmons in Angel Face. You can’t get deadlier than that.

[quote] Yvonne De Carlo in Criss Cross.

This is the film that Tony Curtis has his first cameo in.

When he came back from making it, he was being driven around NYC in a black limo to show all his friends he had made it, and when the limo passed Walter Matthau (who then had been in the Actor's Studio with Curtis, and was not a star yet in his own right), Curtis (by his own admission) rolled the window down and shouted out, "Hey Walter--I fucked Yvonne de Carlo!"

Lana Turner in "The Postman Always Rings Twice."

Susan Hayward - "Smash-Up, the Story of a Woman"

Hayward has always been one of my favorites (but I think the constant references on this site to Helen Lawson are worn out).

Claire Trevor in Born to Kill

Helen Lawson - "Born to Aggravate"

Beverly Michaels is a hoot in Wicked Woman

R34, Susan Hayward is not a femme fatale in Smash-Up. You could could say she’s bad news, but far more in a melodramatic vein than film noir.

Another vote for Stanwyck in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers.

Kathleen Turner in Body Heat. Fucking glorious.

Catherine Deneuve in "Mississippi Mermaid" of the inscrutable, mysterious type. Faye Dunaway as Milady de Winter in "The Three Musketeers" Linda Fiorentino in "The Last Seduction" Kathleen Turner in "Serial Mom"

Those are indeed two great performances in "The Three Musketeers" and "Serial Mom," but neither of those films qualify as film noir.

Serial Mom, everyone’s favorite film noir.

Audrey Totter in Tension (1949).

Crawford in Queen Bee.

Before she became the most prominent female filmmaker in Hollywood, Ida Lupino played a femme fatale in They Drive by Night (1940) and stole the movie.

[quote]I wonder what I see in you anyway. You're crude, you're uneducated, you've never had a pair of pants with a crease...

[quote]Beverly Michaels is a hoot in Wicked Woman

She had nothing on Dorothy Michaels in "Southwest General."

Helen Walker in "Impact."

Also Anna May Wong in that same film.

Helen Walker in Nightmare Alley (1947)

R49 she was great in that film. It should have led to a better film career,

I think technically it’s a neo noir as it’s not black and white and was in fact 3D, Rhonda Fleming in Inferno. She’s stunning in this Technicolor film. She was indeed the queen of Technicolor for a reason. The character is something - abandons her husband in the middle of a desert to get rich with her boyfriend and later trying to abandon him too. A real double crossing creamy dish.

Also jan sterling in ace in the hole deserves a mention.

R52 Yes! Great movie and relevant today regarding tragedy today, the media's (and public's) response to it. Jan Sterling stole every scene she was in with Kirk Douglas.

Audrey Totter in Tension

R51 Virginia Mayo plays a similar role in White Heat, where she double-crosses everyone, but if memory serves, manages to be one of the few survivors.

[quote] At her AFI award ceremony, Walter Matthau singled out this line as a crack towards wooden leading man Wendell Corey.

I was there. A night to remember.

Marilyn Monroe in Niagara (1953). Mary Astor in The Maltese Falcon (1941).

Eva Green in Sin City: A Dame to Kill For.

She’s really superb in this. Menace in every syllable and footstep.

Vici Raaf as Cameo Kincaid in the very low budget "Squad Car" (1960). Watched this tonight. She is sinsational!

Lizabeth Scott in "Pitfall," where she steals Dick Powell away from that nice Jane Wyatt.

Cleo Moore in The Other Woman (1954).

R56 What line?

Is this noir? Jack Webb and Richard Boone are the most!

[quote] Film Noir - The really, really bad dames

What do you mean by "bad"?

This might sound like a stupid question, but was Lauren Bacall ever a true femme fatale? She was in some of the greatest Noir movies ever made - but it occurred to me that her character always is absolved of actual wrong-doing if I recall correctly.

A later exception is Murder on the orient Express, but although I love the film and her performance in it, I don't consider that noir (unless the haunting opening scene makes it so).

I'll add Joan Bennett in "Woman in the Window" to previously mentioned Joan Bennett in "Scarlet Street."

I love Joan's noirs.

Mary Astor in [italic]the Maltese Falcon[/italic] - Sweet, lovely serial murderer. I love this movie.

R65 Bacall was usually the nice girl, actually (Dark Passage, Key Largo) - sometimes on the sophisticated side (The Big Sleep, Written On The Wind), or once in a while (To Have And Have Not, her first film) the slightly tarnished young dame who's really a kice kid. I haven't seen all her movies but I would say she was a femme fatale of sorts (though really just highly neurotic) in Young Man With A Horn - not a noir - and in Harper, with Paul Newman, she played a cold bitch, in a supporting role.