Sony PicturesIf you know Hall and Oates, then you know that man-eaters will only come out at night, that they are lean and hungry and that if you don't watch out, they will chew you up. Let us now nod to the naughty women who make loving dangerous at the movies. I've only nailed nine, so who's missing? You tell me in the Comments section. Meow.
1. Neve Campbell in Wild Things: Campbell's an equal-opportunity rapscallion. She can handle the boy (Matt Dillon) and the girl (Denise Richards), even if she has to handle them at the same time. Neve's kooky character can play dead. She can play in the pool. She can drive the boat while poisoning you, which is pretty impressive. Campbell oozes manipulative force in every scene.
2. Anne Bancroft in The Graduate: When a woman craves a little something raw and young and sans clothes, she usually represses this urge and turns to daytime television, needlepoint or tennis. Not Mrs. Robinson. She inspired a generation of women by actually going for it, trapping young Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman) in her clutches so she could get her kicks.
3. Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction: Best of all are the deeply twisted man-eaters, the ones who are frighteningly convincing that they could pass a personality profile with flying colors, flirt like they invented the art of flirting and then turn on you—slitting the wrists, blood all over the white dress, black eyeliner smeared and, yes, boiling bunnies. Close and her curly hair are the ultimate symbol of '80s greed and lust, and Michael Douglas makes for excellent man prey.
4. Nicole Kidman in To Die For: No matter how many mistakes Kidman makes, she will always have Gus Van Sant's To Die For, a film that showcases her talents for seduction and sickness like no other. Suzanne Stone Maretto (Kidman) wants her doting husband (Matt Dillon) gone, and she can't do it herself. She woos a young stud (Joaquin Phoenix) to do her dirty work and maintains this placid demeanor, as if she really believes that murder is on par with, say, mowing the lawn. Oh, and did we mention the dancing? Now we did.
5. Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct: Catherine Tramell is your average novelist. You know, she dates a little and then murders her boy-toys when she is bored of them. This movie made Stone into a legend and helped Michael Douglas bring his own sexy back, and back again. (Nice butt!) But it's the Sharon Stone show through and through. Cold-blooded in hot clothes and foregoing panties before it was Young Hollywood chic, she was the classiest, sexiest femme fatale of her day.
6. Elizabeth Banks and Leslie Mann in The 40-Year-Old Virgin: Because sex isn't always so sexy, we have to celebrate the sluts. Steve Carell's road to happiness and sexual maturity is, lucky for us, paved with drunkettes. Banks is like a dozen episodes of Girls Gone Wild bottled up in one bubbly babe. And any character who is won over by a guy trying to evoke David Caruso in Jade deserves props. Also, I don't know anyone who doesn't laugh out loud when Leslie Mann's drunken-driving clubber loses her drinks—and lunch—before she even gets a kiss.
7. Catherine O'Hara in Best in Show: You think Christopher Guest's comedies aren't about sex? Wrong. In one of the movie's peak subplots, Eugene Levy is perpetually dazzled by his aptly named wife Cookie's (O'Hara) conquests. Everywhere they go there's another fellow who has taken a bite and feels free to talk about it. She is the ultimate happy, horny housewife, reminding us that floozies have hearts. They're just located below the belt.
8. Bijou Phillips in Bully: Bijou just doesn't get enough credit in this town. In Bully, she is frighteningly convincing as a teen mother who can barely get through a sentence without using the word "c--k." We see her with one guy after another, but the vulnerability she brings when things don't go her way is spine-tingling. The body is an instrument, and Bijou knows how to play it.
9. Christina Ricci in Black Snake Moan: If there were a book called How to Act with Your Body, Ricci would be on the cover. As Rae, she pounces around like a cat on horny goat weed, working her denim cutoffs as if it pains her to be clothed. Her performance of looseness goes miles deeper than most, thanks in large part to the way her body language changes as the movie progresses and an old man (Samuel L. Jackson) takes her under his chains.
10. You Tell Me! Who's missing? Let loose in the Comments section.