Did you ever think of Fatal Attraction as a serious study of the tragic, largely avoidable mental collapse of an otherwise intelligent, high-functioning woman, probably a survivor of child abuse and possibly affected by bipolar disorder, and a scathing condemnation of society’s failure to help her? No, you didn’t, because that is not the film that audiences saw in 1987. Instead, they saw a violent backlash against feminism, and a bloody reassertion of the patriarchal hegemony facilitated by the agency of a female foot soldier in the form of the yuppie protagonist husband’s homemaker wife, and with it the establishment of what Wesley Morris in the Boston Globe astutely summarised as a “ridiculous, misogynist cycle” of popular thriller movies based on what Phillipa Gates, in her book Detecting Men, refers to as the “fatal femme” concept. More crassly, these films were based around the idea that an otherwise reasonable woman can inexplicably morph into a dangerous, deranged “bitch from hell” whose madness can be cured only by her own bloody death. I'd now like to revisit the “bitch from hell” genre, and ask where did it come from, and why?
Arguably, American film thriller genre cycles develop in reaction to specific social changes: the emergence of film noir in the 1940s is widely seen as a direct response to post-war disillusionment and uncertainty; the political and other thrillers of the 1970s, which so often involved unpunished deception by trusted authority figures, are often seen as a reaction to the Watergate scandals. I’m not exactly sure what the 1980s slasher genre was a reaction to, but I suspect it was something to do with repudiating yuppie and/or emerging youth culture, while the serial killer films of the 1990s seem to have something to say about the violent assertion of individuality in an increasingly ‘politically correct’ public sphere. Using this method of interpreting thriller film cycles as reactions to social developments, we can plainly see this deeply misogynistic “from hell” cycle of films from 1987 to the early 1990s was an overt cinematic backlash to feminism. Arguably, this cycle continues at ever more disturbing and accelerated levels today with the current cycle of masochistic “torture porn” horror films.
Arguably, American film thriller genre cycles develop in reaction to specific social changes: the emergence of film noir in the 1940s is widely seen as a direct response to post-war disillusionment and uncertainty; the political and other thrillers of the 1970s, which so often involved unpunished deception by trusted authority figures, are often seen as a reaction to the Watergate scandals. I’m not exactly sure what the 1980s slasher genre was a reaction to, but I suspect it was something to do with repudiating yuppie and/or emerging youth culture, while the serial killer films of the 1990s seem to have something to say about the violent assertion of individuality in an increasingly ‘politically correct’ public sphere. Using this method of interpreting thriller film cycles as reactions to social developments, we can plainly see this deeply misogynistic “from hell” cycle of films from 1987 to the early 1990s was an overt cinematic backlash to feminism. Arguably, this cycle continues at ever more disturbing and accelerated levels today with the current cycle of masochistic “torture porn” horror films.
What is it about an angry and insane woman on the rampage that movie producers (and audiences) in the late 80s and early 90s loved so much? The harbinger was Glenn Close boiling bunnies and wielding huge kitchen knives psychotically in Fatal Attraction after Michael Douglas ended their affair, while in 1992 Rebecca de Mornay stealing husbands and children and murdering nosy friends in booby-trapped glasshouses in The Hand That Rocked The Cradle and Lara Flynn Boyle may have lost her performance bonus when she pushed boss Faye Dunaway to her death in The Temp. These women were as ferocious as they were lonely, frequently and significantly attacking other women as well.
A bitch from hell is a woman (the one night stand from hell, the nanny from hell, the secretary from hell) whose, usually quite justifiably based, anger boils into a consuming and psychotic rage, compelling her to worm her way into the lives of those who have hurt or deprived her, before setting out to destroy them, initially via psychological warfare but inevitably resorting to bloodshed. The rampage will always end in her own gruesome death.
The genesis of the angry (and therefore inherently dangerous) woman seems to me traceable to the scorned woman parts played by Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford in 1940s and ‘50s women’s pictures. When these women got mad, men suffered, and they often died. The cunning seductresses of 1950s films noir were also lethal, with Jane Greer, Marie Windsor and Ann Savage seducing men and manipulating them into killing for them, before double crossing them. They were bad girls, and they enjoyed being bad girls. These women could perhaps be read as feminist warriors, battling against the patriarchy.
Beginning with What Ever Happened to Baby Jane (1962), however, the backlash to such powerful cinematic females began. A series of films emerged over the 1960s starring former glamour queens in often degrading roles as crazy women. These characters, driven by insanity rather than by passion (as in the women’s pictures) or greed (as in the films noir), were in my mind the prototypes for the backlash bitch from hell movies: Bette Davis tortured Joan Crawford in Baby Jane, Crawford decapitated her philandering husband in Strait-Jacket (1964), Davis decapitated her lover and was then driven mad by cousin Olivia de Havilland in Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1965), Tallulah Bankhead imprisoned Stefanie Powers in the attic in Fanatic (1965), Geraldine Page killed her housekeepers in Whatever Happened to Aunt Alice (1969), and Shelley Winters was driven to madness and rabbit-slaughtering (a pre-cursor to Glenn Close’s antics in Fatal Attraction) in What’s The Matter with Helen? (1971). What was the underlying message – that a post-menopausal woman must as a consequence have lost her marbles, her sexuality and the essence of her very femininity, thus making her stark raving dangerous? From here it could only be a slippery slide from the glamorous 1940s femmes fatale to the 1980s bitch form hell. The inherent misogyny in this shift from bad girl to mad girl is not overtly apparent at first, but it is certainly detectable. The sexuality and cunning of the bad girls has been neutralized because the women are no longer creatures of power, nor are they intellectually equal or superior to their men. Instead, they are just crazy. Sexless, lacking in intelligence, and mad, they are threats to men (and each other) not because they are cunning, but because they are bonkers.
Demented aged movie stars degrading themselves and attempting to kill each other is one thing, but take a seemingly normal youngish woman, make her go crazy and set her loose, and you have the recipe for the modern bitch from hell film. The cycle commenced in 1971 with Play Misty For Me, Clint Eastwood’s directorial debut in which homicidal obsessed fan Jessica Walter terrorizes late night radio disc jockey Eastwood. The message was clear: when a woman with a legitimate problem (in this case, loneliness) goes balmy she will irrevocably turn violent.
The potential of the genre was not truly tapped for another 16 years with the immensely successful 1987 thriller Fatal Attraction. Glenn Close seduces married Michael Douglas into a one night stand, then terrorizes him and his family as his rejection of her drives her to bunny-boiling insanity. Finally, she is shot dead by Douglas’s loyal wife Anne Archer in a ridiculously over-the-top finale.
Fatal Attraction was a very talked about film in 1987. Arriving as it did at the height of the AIDS scare, the film was considered topical as a woman refuses to be discarded after a one night stand. But what is it that the film is actually telling us? That casual sex can be dangerous for men? That a woman who gets angry for a quite justified reason will, as a logical progression of that anger, turn psychotic? That single career women are more than just a figurative threat to masculinity but can also pose a physical threat? That single career women are crazy, in comparison to glamorous stay-at-home mothers? That stay-at-home mothers and single career women are inherent enemies who must battle it out to the death? Read any way (and every way, as this is perhaps the most frequently analysed film of the 1980s!) it is an incredibly misogynist and patronising message – even if smart career woman Close does feel angry, why would she be so unbalanced that her anger would naturally develop into menacing fury? Is she not an adult who can work her way through her emotions sensibly? The answer is no, and we must accept this premise in order to understand the bitch from hell genre. If a woman gets angry, she will very likely go mad and seek to destroy. That is the underlying message of the bitch from hell films.
