Femme Fatale: Cinema's Most Unforgettable Lethal Ladies

by Ursini, James

  Livia (Allison Hayes), the evil witch in Roger Corman’s The Undead, about to decapitate the uncooperative gravedigger (Mel Welles).

  Poster for Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.

  The giantess Nancy (Allison Hayes) lies peacefully in death with her wayward husband Harry finally contained in the prison of her hand, from Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.

  As mentioned, 1958 was the pinnacle year for Hayes’s career. Her low-budget film Attack of the 50 Foot Woman has become a cultural reference point since its release. Its combination of camp humor, wacky science-fiction plot, and perverse sexuality (epitomized by Hayes as the scantily clad giantess destroying a small town in order to capture and punish her unfaithful husband) left its mark on cult cinema. Nancy Archer (Hayes) is a woman wronged. The film opens on her driving erratically through the desert in the midst of an emotional breakdown. As she veers on and off the road, a huge, luminous ball appears in the desert before her, and a gargantuan hand emerges from a spaceship, reaching toward her. Later on, the sheriff and his deputy find Nancy wandering in the desert. As it becomes clear from the dialogue, they think she is drunk and only agree to search for the spaceship she hysterically refers to in order to appease the richest woman in town.

  Nancy Archer is a fascinating character because she represents both the dominant and submissive side of a femme fatale. On one side, she is a wealthy woman used to getting her way. She orders men about, whether it is her devoted servant, the local sheriff and his bumbling deputy, or her philandering husband Harry (William Hudson)—whom she calls a “gigolo” and a “parasite.” No matter the insults, however, Nancy still feeds off his slavish attention, which includes carrying her to bed and sensually removing her stockings. It is very clear to the audience that Nancy’s tragic flaw is her romanticism. She knows about her husband’s affairs, yet takes him back when he comes crawling.

  The effect of the radiation from the ship proves terrifying for Nancy as she begins to grow into a giantess. In order to contain this ever-expanding woman—an objective correlative for containing females in general—the doctors sedate her and chain her. But no man can contain this “nuclear force.” She breaks free of her literal and figurative chains and proceeds to cause havoc in this small desert town. Her immense figure, dressed provocatively in a makeshift bikini, strides through the desert, shaking power lines and ripping up buildings in search of her craven husband, all the while calling his name. When she finally finds him at a bar, she rips the roof off of the establishment and grabs her tiny husband in her huge hand. She then struts back into the desert with her prey. As she reaches the power lines, however, one of the shotgun blasts from the authorities causes a short circuit in the lines, and she is electrified, falling to her death, with the crushed body of Harry in her oversized hand.

  By 1960 Hayes was spending most of her time in television, that new arena of low-budget filmmaking. Often playing femmes fatales on shows like Perry Mason and Tombstone Territory, Hayes did return to the big screen for a few reprises. The most notable is The Hypnotic Eye (1960). At first gaze, Hayes’s character—Justine, the hypnotist’s assistant—seems to be simply that, an assistant to the exotic mentalist Desmond (Jacques Bergerac). But as the film progresses, with its investigation of a series of self-mutilations of beautiful women who have been hypnotized by Desmond, various hints are dropped as to the motivating force in the film. Before Desmond chooses a subject/victim, he looks to Justine who makes a motion to indicate consent. Also in the scenes where Desmond and Justine are alone, he seems very much in her control, hinting that he may even be under hypnotic suggestion. In the final scene, the motivation for Justine’s actions are revealed as she kidnaps Marcia, escapes to the catwalk above the stage, and rips off her latex mask, revealing her hideously scarred countenance.

  Elizabeth Taylor

  —Star Power

  Elizabeth Taylor was a star of the American cinema by the time she was fourteen years old in 1944. However, her dark beauty, her voluptuous figure, her emotional intensity, and her scandalous affairs and marriages made her a worldwide star by the age of twenty-five. Because of this status as international celebrity, Taylor was given more leeway in the roles she chose and so she was able to continue the tradition of the femme fatale in mainstream, commercial movies.

  Taylor first essayed the role of a femme fatale in George Stevens’s award-winning production A Place in the Sun (1951). As Angela Vickers, the object of the protagonist George Eastman’s (Montgomery Clift) obsession, Taylor symbolized for Eastman the American dream. Her sense of entitlement, her sophistication, her almost ethereal yet sensual glamour led to Eastman’s decision to murder his vulgar working-class girlfriend who stood in the way of attaining his goal when she became pregnant. Stevens’s use of luminous close-ups to photograph Angela reinforces her dreamlike nature, especially in the climactic kiss. Although Angela never consciously manipulates or sets out to destroy Eastman, she is in many ways responsible for his descent into the world of crime and punishment.

  In 1957 MGM tried once again to recreate its monumental success with Gone with the Wind in an adaptation of Ross Lockridge, Jr.’s novel of the Civil War era, Raintree County. Taylor was cast as the devious and tormented Southern belle Susanna Drake, while Taylor’s close friend Montgomery Clift portrayed the malleable and idealistic John. Susanna sets her sights on the handsome and easygoing John when she meets him on a trip from her Louisiana mansion to Kentucky. John is swept away by the aggressive actions of Susanna, which include telling him that she is pregnant in order to win him away from his more innocent sweetheart.

  John returns with Susanna to the South but begins to see a change in his wife. She keeps a charred doll as her favorite, a remnant of a fire she survived and as a possible symbol of her mixed racial heritage. Slowly, other information is revealed about her past: her insane mother murdered Susanna’s beloved “Mammy” because she was having an affair with her husband (leaving Susanna and the audience with the hint that Susanna is partially Black). Susanna clings to John even though she despises his abolitionist views. When John joins the Northern Army, he is separated from his wife and child as Susanna refuses to support his decision. He searches for them and eventually brings them back to Indiana, where his wife seeks deeper into madness. John becomes her virtual servant, devoting all his time to her, until her death.

  In 1958, Taylor brought the role of Tennessee Williams’s Maggie, “the Cat,” to the screen in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Maggie is the disruptive life force in this Southern Gothic family, lorded over by the dying Big Daddy (Burl Ives). Maggie has an agenda from the first scenes of the movie: guaranteeing an inheritance for her alcoholic husband Brick (Paul Newman); reigniting the sexual fire between herself and Brick; and displacing Mae Flynn, her sister-in-law, as the matriarch of the family. Maggie is victorious in the final scenes of the play through her ingenuity and intense desire for success. She tells Big Daddy she is pregnant, which is not true but reassures him that he will have an heir through his favorite son Brick. She seduces her husband once again by confessing that she never went through with her plan to have sex with his friend Skip (this may or may not be true). And she defeats Mae Flynn, who is finally silenced by the other members of the family, including her own husband.

  Elizabeth Taylor poses in her silky slip in a shot for the wardrobe department, from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

  Eastman (Montgomery Clift) enjoys his brief time in the sun with the spoiled daughter of the rich (Elizabeth Taylor), from A Place in the Sun.

  Cleopatra (1963) solidified Taylor’s reputation as a femme fatale on screen and off. While playing the historical Egyptian femme fatale, Taylor created a tabloid scandal by initiating an affair, while still married to singer Eddie Fisher, with costar Richard Burton.

  Director/writer Joseph Mankiewicz’s (The Barefoot Contessa) rendering of the legendary queen of Egypt is remarkably well-balanced and sympathetic. The first half of the movie is largely political, dealing with the sexual and politica
l alliance between Julius Caesar and Cleopatra and Caesar’s assassination upon his return to Rome. The second part of the movie is far more romantic as it centers on the tragic figure of Antony (Richard Burton). Now that his friend Caesar is gone, Antony feels free to pursue his own desires, which center partially on political power but more directly on Cleopatra herself.

  Cleopatra (Elizabeth Taylor) in her bath with a replica of her golden barge before her.

  The movie Cleopatra was the most expensive film ever made on its release in 1963 due to attention to detail in costuming and set design, as well as its extended shooting schedule.

  On location in Kentucky, director Edward Dmytryk describes the scene to his costars Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor, from Raintree County.

  Throughout their developing affair, we never doubt the sincerity of Cleopatra’s love for Antony (when she finds out about his arranged marriage to Octavia, she shreds his clothes and their bed linen). However, she is still more of a political animal than her lover, less consumed by passion. She knows that she must inspire Antony through sex and love to fulfill their composite destiny and so she does this with deftness and creativity. After one night in her bed aboard her luxurious barge, Antony cedes all power to her and forms a political alliance with Egypt.

  His break with Rome and his partner in rule, Octavian (Roddy McDowall), leads to war and Antony’s eventual defeat at sea in Greece. To add further pain to his ignominy he leaves his drowning men to sail after Cleopatra’s barge. But the Antony who returns to Cleopatra this time is a different man, broken and bitter. He hides out in a tomb, avoids his queen, and wallows in self-pity.

  The only reconciliation now possible for these star-crossed lovers, who are now pursued by Octavian, is death. As they expire in an orgy of Wagnerian liebestod,

  John (Montgomery Clift) finds himself overwhelmed by the demands and the needs of his conflicted wife (Elizabeth Taylor), from Raintree County.

  In 1966, director Mike Nichols brought Edward Albee’s play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? to the screen, starring Taylor and her husband Richard Burton. As Martha, the frustrated middle-aged wife of the henpecked George, Taylor turns a frustrated professor’s wife into a virago who lashes out at her stifling middle-class existence. She rips her husband to shreds verbally while trying to seduce a young professor who has been invited over with his wife for dinner. She is unrelenting in her assaults; for her efforts, Taylor received her second Oscar.

  Chelo Alonso

  —The Cuban “H-Bomb”

  Before Chelo Alonso became a femme fatale in international adventure films of the late 1950s and early 1960s, she was a lavishly praised dancer who toured in the 1950s throughout Latin America and Europe. She performed at the Folies Bergère in Paris and was tagged the “new Josephine Baker.” In her dance routines, she incorporated the Afro-Cuban rhythms of her native Cuba as well as assimilating Middle Eastern and modern European dance. She was idolized by audiences; even the sober revolutionary Che Guevara begged her to return to Cuba after the revolution in 1960.

  Alonso’s first significant femme fatale role, after a series of minor parts that largely featured her erotic dancing skills, was the period adventure The Road of the Giants, a.k.a. Valley of the Damned (1960). Alonso portrays Stella Von Kruger, a sultry Austrian countess sent to disrupt the work of American engineer Clint Farrell (Don Megowan). Her saloon hall dance, melding Middle Eastern and Latin choreography, is the film’s most memorable moment.

  In Terror of the Red Mask (1960), Alonso plays the fiery gypsy Karima who captivates both animals and men with her dances and whips. In a performance at the castle of the Renaissance tyrant Astolfo (Livio Lorenzon), Karima sweeps around the center stage as she whips and taunts a chained bear into a frenzy. When the bear finally breaks free, a soldier of fortune, Marco (Lex Barker), saves Karima by slaying the animal. Marco’s act of bravery endears him to the gypsy queen, who now considers him her property. When he saves her a second time, after the ardent tyrant tries to kidnap her, she seduces him. But the cavalier rogue will not be possessed.

  Karima does not take rejection well and so conceives a plan of revenge against Marco. After getting rid of her possessive gypsy lover with a poisoned snake (“To see you die makes me happy. . . .You demanded too much!”), she forms an alliance with Astolfo. Marco is arrested and tortured in the dungeon while Karima, covered in blue and red veils, writhes erotically on the floor before the sexually frenzied Astolfo (the elements of sadism in Alonso’s performances are often underlined in her films). In the final battle, the rebel forces of the Red Mask rescue Marco and kill both Astolfo and the gypsy queen.

  In Maciste in the Valley of the Kings, a.k.a. Son of Samson (1960), Alonso—dressed tastefully in beautifully designed Egyptian gowns, Isis headdresses (which associate her with that dark goddess), and wigs of blue and red—plays the evil Persian queen, Smedes, who is married to the doddering Egyptian pharaoh. She dominates the pharaoh, giving herself the prerogative of life and death over her subjects (don’t look for historical accuracy in these sword and sandal epics). When the pharaoh at one point begins to balk at Smedes’s actions, she has him assassinated and marries her stepson after hypnotizing him with an enchanted necklace.

  Chelo Alonso and her fiery gaze.

  Chelo Alonso as Tanya defies all who question her authority or ability, in Queen of the Tartars.

  Queen Smedes (Chelo Alonso) feasts on the flesh of muscleman Maciste (Mark Forest), in Maciste in the Valley of the Kings.

  Into the fray comes the mythical Maciste (Mark Forest), a favorite hero of the Italian cinema. He defends the Egyptians who are enslaved by the queen and consequently brings down her wrath on him—until she sees him, that is. After watching lustfully as Maciste, oiled and pumped up, performs feats of strength, she has him brought to her. Playing to his male vanity, she dances for him and then takes him physically, but not emotionally. When he refuses to obey her wishes, she tells her servants to “feed him to the crocodiles.”

  Queen of the Tartars (1961) features Alonso as an orphaned Tartar, Tanya, raised as a warrior by Igor (Folco Lulli), the king of a Tartar tribe. Dressed in battle dress, which includes a revealing top and horns as epaulettes and headgear, and wielding Alonso’s favorite prop—a whip—Tanya will not abide defiance or defeat. Even the attractive and macho leader of a rival tribe, Malok (Jacques Sernas), cannot sway Tanya. When Malok gets out of line and kisses her, she whips him in retaliation. (Tanya: “You will never succeed in preventing me from getting my own way.”)

  After the death of Igor, Tanya seizes the throne with a lie, telling the tribe that he designated her as his successor. They accept her leadership. Tanya, in the final analysis, turns out to be a better leader than her foster father. She conquers the fabled city, a feat Igor could never achieve, and transitions her people from warlike nomads to an agricultural culture.

  Maciste in the Land of the Cyclops, a.k.a. Atlas Against the Cyclops (the name of the hero of many sword and sandal films was changed to a mythological name more familiar to English-speaking audiences in the English releases of the films), in 1960 allowed Alonso to reprise her role as Queen Smedes in a different context. As Queen Capys, she is the most conflicted and vicious of the femmes fatales Alonso played. Capys is the descendant of The Odyssey’s sorcerer Circe; and, as such, she must take revenge on the descendants of the hero Ulysses who abandoned her and blinded her pet the Cyclops (yes, another outrageous desecration of mythology).

  In the first few scenes with Capys, the filmmakers underline her brutality as well as her frantic sadism. After feeding flesh to a caged vulture, she drives a sword into the belly of a soldier who has failed to bring back the latest in the line of Ulysses: a baby. She then descends to her dungeon where the captive women are kept, among them the mother of the child. She has them whipped for information and then decimates them as a sacrifice to Cybele, her goddess.

  The other side of this bipolar queen becomes clear when she is rescued by Macis
te (Gordon Mitchell) from a falling rock as she prays to Cybele to release her from this vendetta. Immediately attracted to this brawny innocent (when she asks him why he saved her, he tells her sweetly that women are the “essence of life”), she promises she will reward him next time they meet. And meet they do, as Maciste sets out on a quest to rescue the imprisoned mother.

  Capys captures Maciste and sets him up in a luxurious room, much to the dismay of her lovelorn personal guard whom she treats with disdain. Soon Maciste is kneeling beside her as she lies in a hammock and talks of love or feeding her grapes while she watches a performance from her dancers. His naive pronouncements about virtue and love have their effect on her finally; and she helps him rescue the mother and child who have been kidnapped by her henchman. When her guard tries to stab Maciste, Capys throws her body in front of his and takes the deadly blow.

  In 1969 Alonso, like her cohort Bardot, retired from movies and dedicated her time to animal rights.

  Barbara Steele