10 Iconically Sinister Women Movie Characters

Whether as femme fatales preying upon noir losers and suckers, supernatural vixens bent on consuming innocent prey, or conniving tyrants driven to achieve their ends at all costs, women have always proven fantastic villains.

Melding wicked cunning, sexual magnetism, and hard-hearted cruelty to form chilling visions of malice and iniquity, they remain every bit as formidable and frightening as their male counterparts. We present here the ten most intimidating, unsettling, and out-and-out terrifying women in cinema history.

Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher), One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, 1975

A domineering maternal figure driven to control and punish in equal measure, Louise Fletcher’s Nurse Ratched remains the most memorable part of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Disciplining via doping, enfeebling through lobotomy treatments, and generally making life a living hell for Jack Nicholson’s McMurphy and his band of merry wackos, Ratched was a role that earned Fletcher an Oscar win for Best Actress, and continues to give nightmares to anyone considering an extended stay in a mental health facility

Evelyn Draper (Jessica Walter), Play Misty for Me, 1971

Long before she was tossing caustic bon mots at her family in Arrested Development, Jessica Walter was scaring the bejeesus out of American men as the obsessive fan of Clint Eastwood’s radio DJ in Play Misty for Me. A woman who just can’t take no for an answer, Walter’s beauty beds Eastwood’s stud and then doesn’t take his ensuing rejection lightly — which is to say, she goes knife-wielding crazy.

Alex Forrest (Glenn Close), Fatal Attraction, 1987

Adrian Lyne’s Fatal Attraction is one of the lasting ’80s thrillers, and one of two films on this list in which Michael Douglas is hounded by a devious murderess. In this case, that would be Glenn Close’s Alex Forrest, whose anger over being callously discarded by her lover (Douglas) in favor of his wife climaxes, in one of thriller cinema’s most shocking moments, with a bunny and a boiling pot of water.

Joan Crawford (Faye Dunaway), Mommie Dearest, 1981

If Ratched was a surrogate maternal figure of unnerving dimensions, she’s still the second scariest mom on this list thanks to Faye Dunaway’s unforgettable turn as legendary actress Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest, a film whose title became synonymous with motherly monstrousness, and whose most memorable scene made ranting about wire hangers the go-to means of upsetting a child.

Catherine Trammel (Sharon Stone), Basic Instinct, 1992

The part that made Sharon Stone a household name, as well as one of the signature sex symbols of the ’90s, Catherine Trammel — driven to play homicidal head games with Michael Douglas’s detective — is the erotic engine that powers Verhoeven’s Basic Instinct. Be it by uncrossing her legs, seductively dancing with other women, or gripping an ice pick, Stone’s black widow is the type of psycho who’s irresistible to men, even at their own peril.

Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates), Misery, 1990

The role that nabbed Kathy Bates her sole Oscar (for Best Actress), Misery‘s Annie Wilkes is the embodiment of stalker-esque craziness. A super-fan who finds herself in the enviable position of aiding her idol, novelist Paul Sheldon (James Caan), Bates’s seemingly cheery Wilkes turns out to be a raging lunatic intent on never letting go of her new houseguest — even if that means crippling him with a few solid blows to the leg with a sledgehammer.

Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson), Rebecca, 1940

The housekeeper from hell, Mrs. Danvers attempts to break up her employer’s (Laurence Olivier) new marriage because she remains devoted to the man’s prior, deceased wife in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic Rebecca. A force of manipulative nastiness determined to drive the new wife (Joan Fontaine) to madness, Anderson’s Mrs. Danvers nabbed the actress a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination, and still stands as one of Hitchcock’s most famous villains.

Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyk), Double Indemnity, 1941

Film noir is littered with femme fatales whose seductive craftiness ensnares men in inescapable traps, yet none is quite as tempting as Barbara Stanwyk’s Phyllis Dietrichson in Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity. Convincing Fred MacMurray’s Walter Neff to off her husband so the two can collect a hefty life insurance payout and then run away together, Stanwyk’s beauty is all lethal loveliness and acidic charm, a scheming predator whose only true love is for herself.

Asami (Eihi Shiina), Audition, 1999

A young girl whose pretty exterior masks deeply rooted insanity, Eihi Shiina’s Asami reveals herself to be an angel of death at the end of the Japanese Audition — a not-unreasonable response to the fact that she’s been lured into a fake film audition in order to help widower Shigeharu (Ryo Ishibashi) find a new wife. Her revenge, carried out in a climax of ocular-piercing torture, is a thing of genuine horror that truly makes you want to close your eyes.

Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton), The Wizard of Oz, 1939