Ms. Villain

Name the top five movie villains of all time? No problem, Darth Vader, Hannibal Lector, Gollum, Khan and the Joker, but where are the women? Do you need testosterone to be capable of master villainy? The silver screen has had its fair share of feminine nemeses, antagonists and megalomaniacs with deep-rooted evil desires.

Villainesses are a rare breed but when they appear, it makes women with PMT appear like the Virgin Mary. No amount of chocolate, self-help books or pampering will cure these individuals; the courageous knight in shining armour would rather slay them with his sword. The question we must ask is 'Who's the uber-villainess?' Which of these could chill your blood with, "I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Babycham" or a Norma Bates shower scene?

In over 20,000 movies, how many female villains have made your skin crawl? I am well versed in the world of movies and know I can tackle this question with ease. Criteria eliminating the candidates of evil needed to be intricate, infallible and incredibly insane; you just have to trust my judgement.

Many female anti-heroes are the victim of male actions and are seeking unadulterated revenge - Lorena Bobbitt style. The empowered duo of Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon in Thelma and Louise, Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, Nancy Fowler Archer in Attack of the 50 Foot Woman and Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman in Batman Returns are examples of their inner conflict of good and evil. The only female anti-hero that doesn't fit into an obvious category is maternal Mindy Sterling's Frau Farbissina in the Austin Powers trilogy.

These anti-heroes have enslaved our hearts, but now we want the definitive bitch. We want some real cold-hearted bitchiness, none of that diluted pre-menstrual hormonal rubbish, something like Nurse Mildred Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. She was a character that men and women could both loathe, unlike Demi Moore in Disclosure and Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, which terrified every single man, while Rebecca De Mornay's nanny in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle that sent the shivers down every mother's spine.

Film bitches have serious psychological problems caused by inhaling the acetone in nail varnish. Compare Jennifer Jason Leigh in Single White Female and Nicole Kidman's ambition in To Die For to the psychopathic tendencies of Kathy Bates in Misery and they are left looking like cherubs. Academy Award-winning Rebecca was Hitchcock's best, helped by the mind games that Judith Anderson's Mrs. Danvers inflicts upon poor Joan Fontaine.

The line of human decency and moral adherence has been crossed; we are entering the dark side of the soul. Few of these women have killed, except boiling the occasional innocent pet rabbit. Before we judge the solo queens of evil, we should pay homage to the female accomplices that earned their stripes in a gruesome manner.

Juliette Lewis in Natural Born Killers and Kalifornia does terror-ific work as a sidekick to any enthusiastic serial killer, while Faye Dunaway's portrayal of Bonnie Parker in Bonnie & Clyde had to have inspired Miss Lewis in NBK. Comics have produced many partners in crime, with Uma Thurman (again) in Batman & Robin as Poison Ivy and Superman II's female Kryptonian criminal Ursa.

Ursa and Poison Ivy are technically aliens or mutants from other worlds and are not counted among the truly immoral humans. Likewise, Natasha Henstridge in Species, supermodel Slavitza Jovan's Gozer in Ghost Busters, Carrie's Sissy Spacek and her telekinesis, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos' shape-shifting Mystique from X-Men and The Exorcist's Regan MacNeil are all barred from claiming the crown.

Bond has also served up anti-heroes that become good in the end, such as Honor Blackman's feisty Pussy Galore in Goldfinger and Grace Jones' asexual May Day in A View to a Kill. Bond has had plenty of practice between the legs of women, but he never faced death until Famke Janssen's thighs attempted to crush him in GoldenEye or Rosa Klebb's knife-in-a-shoe attack in From Russia with Love. The World is Not Enough featured the best Bond villain, Sophie Marceau's Elektra King, which made a refreshing change from megalomaniacs stroking white pussies.

It would be intolerable to skip the villains with which we grew up. Our childhood innocence was pulverised and real psychological damage was inflicted. The Wizard of Oz's Wicked Witch of the West was terrifying, but she was the Fairy Godmother compared to Return to Oz's headless Princess Mombi. Disney has much to answer for, with Wicked Queen Grimhilde's apple delivery service (Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs) and Cruella De Vil (101 Dalmations) insanely driving her car directly at the viewer - I shudder even now.

The road to ultimate female villain is winding to an end, as we approach the turning for outright insanity; the moment when a woman becomes a cold-blooded movie killer. The recently released Monster, starring Charlize Theron as Aileen Wuornos, is a great, almost perfect, candidate. It is based on the true story of America's first female serial killer and does not win because of its lack of originality; we want an original villain, although some sympathy should be offered - she was a second generation American with Finnish maternal grandparents.

Lady villains from original screenplays are not that rare. Jeanne Tripplehorn in Basic Instinct, two from Kill Bill (Daryl Hannah and Lucy Liu), Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity, while Madonna in Body of Evidence was just plain evil in her acting. However, each of these characters paid for their crimes with their life, a prison sentence or nudged back into the recording studio. How many 'get away with it'?

Male villains rarely escape punishment before the credits roll, so what chance do the girls have? Maintaining the equality is Catherine Zeta-Jones in Entrapment who escapes but didn't kill anyone, while in Chicago she did kill someone and does get away it, as does her co-star Renée Zellweger. Joan Cusack in Arlington Road rides into the sunset with Tim Robbins and All About Eve's Anne Baxter leaves a trail of emotional destruction in her wake achieving her goal. That leaves only one…

Kathleen Turner in Serial Mom is the 'uber-villain'. She fulfils the credentials and is the ultimate baddy, with the contradiction of being an anti-hero. Not only is she a psychotic serial killer, she is a loving mother who only has her family's best interests at heart. There is no regret or remorse. While at the end of the movie, she is a free woman and, the piece de resistance, she kills a female juror who pronounced her innocent. Can you get any more evil than that? Well, can you?