My all-time favorite bitch remains She’s Ayesha, a spectacularly malevolent girly who is happy to murder lovers, execute slaves en masse and ponce around in public wearing an over-feathered ceremonial outfit that makes her look like a mad chicken queen.
Fucking ace, and I once had a girlfriend just like her.
Still, much as I never tire of watching Ayesha cunt-block rivals or make grown men tremble, I do have a fondness for some other less than saintly women. Here are four ladies you definitely don’t wanna take home to meet the folks.
Diane Franklin in The Last American Virgin (1982)
Now I’m never gonna try to argue this all-over-the-place sex comedy is high art, but it’s brave, unconventional, fitfully funny and manages to capture teen heartbreak very well.
Gary (Lawrence Monoson) first sees Karen (Franklin) in his local ice-cream parlor. He can only gawp as she waits for him to speak. It’s beyond him, but she isn’t dismissive, perhaps knowing his eyes are boring into her back as she leaves.
“She’s fine, isn’t she?” the guy behind the counter says.
And it’s true. Despite her frizzy hair and caterpillar eyebrows, Karen is a honey. Not only that but she’s got a fresh, wholesome appeal. She’s also happy. Worse, she seems sweet.
There’s no way this girl is a bitch.
Gary discovers she’s the new girl in town, quickly employing the time-honored trick of letting down her bike tire to enable a chat. It works and he gives her a lift to school.
Everything’s on track.
But when he goes to a party he finds his flash, good-looking best mate Rick (Steve Antin) dancing with her. Given Gary’s already fallen hard, the sight of them kissing is a total kick in the balls. He’s also certain Rick doesn’t give a shit about her. He just wants to whip her panties off before moving onto the next pretty piece of ass.
Virgin’s first hour is goofy T & A nonsense, complemented by variable acting, an attempt to drown crabs, and an impromptu mass dick-measuring contest that would be out of place in a gay sex comedy.
But on the home straight (and this involves major spoilers) it switches gears amazingly effectively. Rick gets his way with Karen, leading to a desolate shot of Gary smoking alone in the ice-cream parlor where he first lost his heart to her.
Karen then falls pregnant, but Rick angrily doesn’t want anything more to do with her because, you know, he’s a scared little boy.
It’s Gary’s big chance. Damsel in distress and all that. On goes the shining armor. He sells stuff to pay for the $250 abortion, brings her gifts in hospital, and even arranges for her to recuperate in his dead granny’s apartment.
Karen begins to pick up the pieces of her shattered world. “I want you to know I really appreciate everything you’ve done for me,” she tells Gary. “You’ve been a true friend.”
Summoning all his courage, he tells her he loves her. They kiss and embrace.
It’s finally on.
There’s no way this girl is a bitch.
Ecstatic, he buys her an inscribed gold locket for her upcoming birthday party, only to walk in and (in a great sledgehammer moment) find her blissfully kissing Rick while James Ingram croons on the soundtrack I did my best, but I guess my best wasn’t good enough.
Karen offers no explanation. Doesn’t even say a word as he picks up his heart and leaves.
Why?
Because she’s a bitch.
Nancy Allen in Carrie (1976)
Karen didn’t reveal her true colors until the final thirty seconds of Virgin, but it’s a hell of a lot simpler in Carrie.
Chris Hargensen (Allen) is the ultimate high school bitch, a scheming, psyche-splintering cunt with a Barbie doll face who immediately does something spectacularly nasty and then double downs on it.
Talk about no remorse.
From the opening shots of a volleyball match in which she petulantly throws the ball back, her character’s spiteful weakness is never in question. Moments later (after Carrie has displayed her usual gawkiness by losing the final point) Chris storms up to her and spits in her face: “You eat shit!”
Now I believe a movie’s impact has a lot to do with stuff such as the age you first saw it, the circumstances and the emotional baggage you happen to be lugging around. Carrie remains my favorite horror flick, partly because I watched it in 1983 at a video party with a group of older teenage boys, its infamous locker room sequence leading to a light bulb flickering on inside my head that began to insist: I like girls.
However, even putting aside my twelve-year-old self’s nascent horniness, I still feel De Palma’s steamy, dreamlike snapshot of frolicking naked girls remains a startling achievement. No teen sex comedy can get anywhere near capturing its fascinating nirvana. Here we have happy girls combing their long hair or wrapping soft white towels around their lithe bodies. Their playful antics result in gently bouncing breasts, smiles and laughter, all accompanied by Pino Donaggio’s lush score. It’s a picture of beautiful camaraderie, a time of innocent fun before the reverie slips so brilliantly into horror.
And the gum-chewing Chris, of course, is right at its turbulent center.
She’s the first to pick up a tampon and throw it at the panicking Carrie, that trademark sneer showing off her beautiful teeth. Even after a teacher intervenes and there’s plenty of time to understand how distressed Carrie really is, Chris carries on tittering and mocking.
From here, things only get worse. Detention in the rightfully aggrieved gym teacher’s PE class results in Chris trying to quit after just forty minutes of physical jerks. And I think we can all agree that the gunshot-like slap delivered to her unsuspecting face is a very sweet sound indeed. Has anyone ever deserved a belt round the chops more?
Not that it makes a jot of difference to Chris’s ability to reflect on the ‘really shitty thing’ she did. She just keeps piling up her flaws. She’s lazy, insolent, sulky, unrepentant, entitled, self-centered and fucking spineless, even having the audacity to call the teacher a bitch.
But, of course, none of that prevents her from using her feminine wiles to get what she wants. Look at the way she twirls the redneck Billy Nolan (John Travolta) around her finger by using the intoxicating whiff of pussy. Indeed, Billy is so helpless to resist that sometimes he appears drunk in his hapless dealings with her. Even physically dominating her only succeeds for a few seconds before she sucks his fingers and he’s lost again. Christ, you’d think it’d be tricky to say “I hate Carrie White” with a cock in your mouth, but Chris manages it with aplomb. The repulsive scenes between Allen and Travolta are so deliriously toxic and so obviously leading toward domestic abuse and abortions that they’re a joy to behold.
Allen injects such malicious life into the bloody horrible proceedings that it doesn’t matter her one-note character is incapable of saying, let alone doing anything nice.
It’s amazing she never tips over into parody, perhaps the hallmark of a truly great performance.
Louise Fletcher in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)
Randle McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) might be a ‘goddamn marvel of modern science’ but he’s no match for the dry-snatched Nurse Ratched (Fletcher). He arrives at her mental institution dancing and kissing but ends up on his back vanquished beneath a pillow.
Part of his problem is continually underestimating her. Early on, he mock-shivers in fright at the mention of her name. After all, what’s there to be scared of? She’s just a plain, humorless woman on the verge of middle age when he’s a freethinking, brawling rebel.
Still, he does sense she’s a bit fishy.
“She ain’t honest,” he tells a doctor. “She’s something of a cunt… She likes a rigged game, you know what I mean?”
Yes, mate, we know what you mean.
Take how she runs her group therapy sessions. She sits there like a patient spider in the center of a well-starched web. Her makeup-free face is oddly mask-like and as pale as death. There’s a noticeable lack of adjectives in her speech, draining it of color and warmth. This calculating cow is never stumped for an answer, even if it’s the most transparent, placatory bullshit. Polite and business-like, she rarely raises her voice, but there’s something eerie about that implacable stare. When a bored McMurphy loudly flicks his playing cards she says nothing, but you can tell the interruption has been noted.
What the hell is she thinking during these dismally unproductive meetings? Or are they merely a cover to pry and calmly probe for weak spots?
Whatever the case, those under her ‘care’ have long learned to tread carefully, wary of the implicit threat in her carefully worded utterances. When McMurphy objects to a proffered medicine, Ratched is quick to ensure he follows the soul-deadening routine like the seventeen other ‘gentlemen’ on the ward. “If Mister McMurphy doesn’t want to take his medicine orally,” she says to a fellow nurse as he listens, “I’m sure we can arrange for him to have it taken some other way.”
As you can see, no one does passive-aggressiveness better.
But why?
Why has she grown into such a monstrously twisted control freak?
Well, one of the many great things about Cuckoo’s Nest is how Fletcher’s superbly understated, legendary performance is so open to interpretation. All we can do is guess at the reasons behind her obsessive, sadistically petty nature. Perhaps it has something to do with her life outside the institution’s white walls in that she doesn’t have one. There’s sure as hell never any mention of hobbies, day trips, a man, family, pets or anything. It’s easy to imagine her returning home to a spotlessly clean, austere apartment, a non-ringing phone and a celibate bed. That only leaves work and the formidably icy control she exerts over her bunch of sad misfits.
But I strongly suspect it’s the way she does her job that provides the counterbalance to an otherwise empty life. No, it’s a bit more than that. This is how she bloody well gets her jollies. She loves exercising power over the weak and vulnerable while hiding her pathological sickness behind her profession’s respectable disguise. That’s why McMurphy is such a threat. Parties, fishing trips, booze, sexual contact and fun of any kind represent a loss of control and so McMurphy must be extinguished.
But first he has to be made to suffer.
This is a calculating woman who won’t back down, compromise or allow anyone to get one over on her. After McMurphy continues to be disruptive, a top-level meeting is held to decide whether to move him on.
Ratched, of course, speaks up for the status quo. “I’d like to keep him on the ward,” she says through her permanently pursed lips. “I think we can help him.” Her observation sounds supportive, but like almost everything she says, it has a double meaning.
The bitch is rigging the game again.
Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct (1992)
Karen, Chris and Nurse Ratched are all believable bitches.
Catherine Tramell…?
Much less so.
In fact, she’s a cartoonish super-bitch, a terrifyingly confident composite of lust, guile, brains and malice.
Cunningness and cunnilingus, if you like.
So what’s left to say about Basic Instinct, an oversexed potboiler in which the only surprise is there is no surprise? Well, it does serve as a good reminder of the average Joe’s immature relationship with art. You’d think after dealing with centuries of controversy-causing books, paintings, movies and all the rest that we’d be finally able to take things in our stride and understand art is just made-up shit.
Nope.
Back in the day Basic Instinct created a placard-waving uproar, its yawn-inducing protestors incensed by the depiction of Catherine’s murderous, bisexual nature.
Should all killers be heterosexual then? Must we only have positive portrayals of gays?
The thing is, though, freedom of expression gives us the right to offend. It’s the cornerstone of a healthy, robust society and a crucial first step in allowing art to flourish. Art shouldn’t be used to demand gays be strung up from the nearest lamppost but neither should it bend over backward to please them. Believe it or not, gays are not sacred cows anymore than little bald mouthy Welshmen.
Unfortunately, too many gays, lefties, gay lefties and well-intentioned average Joes have developed such stringent demands when it comes to art that things border on the downright ridiculous. For fuck’s sake, art is not supposed to function as PR.
Plus, the great joke here is you can bet your bottom dollar that Basic Instinct’s director Paul Verhoeven and writer Joe Eszterhas had zero interest in saying anything bad about bisexuality: they just wanted to titillate.
What’s more, I get amazed that people still can’t tell the difference between real life and fiction, particularly as there’s a chasm between the two. Surely only a fool walks away from Basic Instinct convinced (or even remotely open to the suggestion) that your run-of-the-mill bisexual is an ice pick-wielding maniac? Am I in the minority in doing my best to derive my opinions from real life events and my own experiences, not overheated drivel like this monster hit?
Portray gays however you like in the movies. Send whatever message you want. Same for macho, cocaine-snorting, rapist detectives who also happen to be killers. Or card-carrying Republicans, bulimic ballerinas, pedophilic plumbers and satanic orphans. It makes no difference because I know none of what I’m watching is real.
And the next bisexual I bump into? I’ll put aside whatever negativity I’ve seen in flicks like this one and judge him or her on his or her merits.
While wearing a stab-proof vest, obviously.
Anyhow, back to Stone. It’s little wonder she jumped on board, given she got to play ‘a once in a lifetime, top of the line loony tune.’ Highly educated, rich and impossible to intimidate, she strides through the whole shebang in sparkling form. It’s marvelous to watch her changing hues that can go from playful and goading to insightful and plain bloody dangerous in the same scene. And all backed up by that sensational body. She’s also fond of a dramatic, faintly contemptuous pause (often accompanied by an inhalation of cigarette smoke) before delivering such wonderfully snide dialogue as “What are you going to do? Charge me with smoking?”
In short, this is a quintessential Strong Female Role, even if it’s devoid of anything approaching plausibility.
Right from her introduction at her luxurious beachside house she’s happy to lock horns with any man, clearly regarding them as little more than cock-shaped putty in her manicured hands. Two cops gently questioning her about the gory murder of a lover the night before is certainly nothing to get her designer knickers in a twist about, even if she were the last person to be seen with him. Asked how long they dated, she replies: “I wasn’t dating him. I was fucking him.”
Yeah, she’s a forthright lass, all right.
Amazingly, instead of declaring an open and shut case, the browbeaten detectives ignore her lack of an alibi and limply wander off. Tramell’s also a bestselling novelist who has written about tying a man up and stabbing him to death with an ice pick. The men (with their silly little brains) struggle to process this latest clue. Is it coincidence, a double bluff or an attempt at an alibi?
Thankfully, they don’t rule her out and arrest the nearest simpleminded black man instead. Otherwise we would never have gotten the notorious interrogation scene in which she declines an attorney because she has ‘nothing to hide’.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, includes her shaven snatch.
The way she intimidates a roomful of cops by lounging in a chair and uncrossing her perfect pins is nothing short of iconic filmmaking, the blackly comic, way over the top rock on which Stone leapt to superstardom. She’s a game-playing femme fatale par excellence and it’s hard to think of any woman who could have so convincingly portrayed the ‘fuck of the century.’
You might remember I called Basic Instinct drivel, but please don’t go thinking I have a low opinion of it. It is drivel, but it’s also a deliriously mad, turbo-charged, must-see two hours with one of the most dynamic, eye-catching performances of the 1990s. Like Hannibal, it’s ludicrous from start to finish, but sometimes that’s exactly what you want.
Just don’t be bland. Don’t be safe. Don’t be scared of causing offense.
Oh God, I wish Hollywood was still making fearless movies like this.