In Backlash, Susan Faludi argues that Fatal Attraction -- the gold standard of a certain kind of Hollywood thriller in which a deranged woman invades the life of a happily married couple to reap violent destruction upon their lives -- was not just an anti-feminist film, but was rather crafted with the express purpose of delivering an anti-feminist message. She's probably right, but I loved it anyway, and will likely sit through any domestic intrusion movie (ooh -- great title. Domestic Intrusion, starring Halle Berry and Kiefer Sutherland) so long as there's at least one decent wife-on-murderous-slut catfight in its third act. Yesterday, we wondered what we might expect from the latest addition to the canon: Obsessed. In its honor, then, we premiere our slightly truncated spin on the classic top ten, The Movieline Nine...Crazy White Bitch Edition.
9. The Landlady
1998
"Evil doesn't knock...It has the key!" was the tagline to this 1998 straight-to-Canadian-DVD, Z-movie romp. It boasted Talia Shire in the lead, having the time of her life as an uptight religious conservative with a dirty streak -- she watches a male tenant (Heroes' Jack Coleman) undress through a one-way mirror. Not your classic mistress-goes-psycho scenario, but it's damn fun, and watching her pick off her tenants one by one is effectively unsettling -- especially if you've ever had a creepy building manager. And who hasn't.
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8. Devil in the Flesh
1997
Rose McGowan plays Debbie Strand, placed in foster care with her bible-thumping granny after her mother and mother's boyfriend die in a fire. She soon develops an obsession with an engaged English teacher and bodies start piling up. One of McGowan's more memorable early roles, and one of the most enjoyable depictions of insensitively handled elder abuse from the past 25 years.
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7. Irresistible
2006
One more straight-to-Blockbuster goodie, only this one boasts Susan Sarandon, Sam Neill, and Emily Blunt as the three corners of the classic dutiful wife/philandering husband/possibly psycho-slut love triangle, and with the new spin that everyone thinks wife Sarandon is the one who's psycho. It's hard to believe any of these actors signed on to something so trashy and derivative (instead of boiled bunnies you get cookie jars full of bees), but they did! And we reap the rewards.
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6. The Crush
1993
Alicia Silverstone makes her screen debut as Darian (later dubbed to Adrian when the real girl the screenplay was allegedly based on sued), a 14-year-old girl who becomes obsessed with her parents' guest house tenant, Nick Eliot (Cary Elwes). Notable for several nude scenes on the part of both actors. A classic.
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5. Poison Ivy
1992
Another classic from the genre's early '90s Golden Age, Poison Ivy marked a career turning point for Drew Barrymore. We honestly wondered if we'd ever see her reach the heights she hit playing the teen femme fatale -- and she would, in another botanical triumph, Grey Gardens. It might surprise you that Ivy was acclaimed by The New York Times as a "commercial art film." It spawned three inferior sequels, but make no mistake: this is the one you want.
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4. Swimfan
2002
Transfer student Madison Bell (Erika Christensen) develops a crush on Ben (Jesse Bradford), the school's star competitive swimmer, who is happily attached to a girlfriend. The two get it on in the pool, Ben regrets it, Madison grows obsessed, begins clogging his inbox with sexy e-mails, and things get predictably more menacing from there. Run-of-the-mill shlock, saved perhaps by Christensen's creepazoid performance.
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3. Single White Female
1992
A cultural phenomenon as much as a movie, Single White Female found new life in the psycho-love-triangle premise by pitting the obsession between its two women. You probably know the story: Alison "Allie" Jones (Bridget Fonda) kicks her boyfriend (Steven Weber) out of her Manhattan apartment after finding out he's been cheating on her. She takes in Hedra "Hedy" Carlson (Jennifer Jason Leigh), puppies are bought, hairdos are copied, hard drives are wiped, and screwdrivers are thrusted. Barbet Schroeder knows how to keep things tense, and the screenplay by Don Roos, based on John Lutz's novel, is twice as smart as it should be.
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2. The Hand That Rocks the Cradle
1992
There really exists no purer example of the domestic intruder genre: Mrs. Mott (Rebecca De Mornay) is the pregnant widow of a molesty obstetrician. She miscarries, gets evicted, has a hysterectomy -- basically everything you need to get a good Crazy White Bitch revenge motive going. Six months later, she's going by the alias Peyton Flanders, and is the live-in dream nanny to Claire (Annabella Sciorra), the woman whose accusations against her husband led to his suicide. So many amazing lines and moments, beginning with the one in which Mrs. Mott tells groundskeeper Ernie Hudson, "Don't fuck with me, retard." From the magical world of Disney.
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1. Fatal Attraction
1987
Simply the best of its kind, and also a giant commercial hit -- the second-highest grosser of 1987 -- Attraction hangs on the performance of Glenn Close as mentally unstable corporate cheetah Alex Forrest. There's nothing we could say here that hasn't already been said: just the look on her face sitting next to innocent moppet Ellen on the roller coaster is seared into the memory of anyone who's seen it. Michael Douglas, too, as the philandering Dan, deserves as much credit, his performance encapsulating the darkest recesses of an almost universally identifiable sentiment, "I really shouldn't have f**ked this nutjob."
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