Nurse Ratched, My Hero: 4 Female Movie Villains I Love
Earlier this month at PJ Lifestyle, Chris Queen asked, “What drives the Disney villain fascination?” — specifically, those female Disney villains who are popular enough to merit an all-new, rebooted merchandise line.
Clearly, moms forced to indulge their daughters’ “princess” phases are eager to add an “edgy” treat for themselves to their Disney Store shopping carts.
I doubt they ponder the Miltonian “glamor of evil” implications behind their purchases, unless they hang out at the Disney forums Queen perused.
Women are supposed to be nice, nurturing, and harmless. But those types of women don’t make memorable movie characters, unless they’re memorable for being annoying. (Can you imagine Gone With The Wind with Melanie as the main character?)
Fortunately, I have a rather masculine personality type, and have no qualms about revealing my affection for particular female cinematic villains, even the most loathsome.
What do my favorite film femme fatales have in common?
Defensive walls constructed over the course of decades, starting in childhood — and not built according to code, so they’re starting to crumble. A horror of human frailty. Epic vanity. Hermetical self-containment.
Oh, and in one case, wicked karate skills…
An excellent list, but I would add Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Iselin in Manchurian Candidate. Mrs. Iselin is about the most totally evil female villain in pictures.
Anyone who has known someone is actually mentally ill sees nurse Ratched not as a villain, but someone who’s daily responsibility is dealing with people who are incapable of reasoned thinking.
Any of Woody Allen’s characters have a smarmy creepiness that stays with me long after the film is over. All I have to do is hear his voice and my skin crawls and I want to leave the room. David Letterman has the same affect on me.
Nurse Ratched a villain? I always respected her as being someone who was just trying to do her difficult job. This movie and the book preceding it are two of the reasons why we have today so many mental patients running around loose when they should be in hospital. Some of them even murder people.
Agreed with Lansbury,Ashley Judd played a real nasty in Real Life
I read Cuckoo before I saw the film, and before I realised what I was meant to think about it. I still have no idea how a sane person could see Nurse Ratched as a villain.
I would agree with what you are saying, the one exception being her role in the demise of Billy. In the book, it’s clear that the problem with Billy stems from his mother who is best friends with Nurse Ratched. It seems as if Billy is being held in the asylum at the behest of his mother who wants to keep him in a dependent, child like state. As a healing professional, it was her duty to confront the mother and say, “You’re a huge part of Billy’s problem. He’ll never get better in here, because the very fact that you want him confined here is the problem”
Indeed, MacMurphy was a far better tonic for Billy problems which basically was that he was psychologically castrated by his mother. A more disciplined MacMurphy type could have healed Billy. Unfortunately the actual MacMurph led Billy into a horribly uncompromising situation, which Nurse Ratched used to restore order in an asylum gone amok — which led to Billy’s death
I always argued that Ratched and MacMurphy are equally responsible for Billy’s death. RP didn’t think everything through: namely that over consumption of alcohol can cause you to pass out; that authorities might overreact to the sight of a lunatic asylum in shambles; that leaving young Billy with his @ss flapping in the breeze might not be a good idea. And of course, Nurse Ratched allowed rage and anger at MacMurphy cloud her judgment ans she used Billy partly to get even
And yet Ratched makes every list of Great Movie Villains, male or female.
It’s like James Dean’s character in East of Eden. We hear throughout the film that Cal is “bad”, and the pre-production publicity says the same stuff.
He seems to me like a very young man with lots of pent up energy and resentment, whose brain may not be fully formed yet
But bad?
People just parrot what they hear. It is so very tiresome!
I agree that Angela Landsbury was exceptional in one of my all time favorite’s, The Manchurian Candidate. However, I’ve never watched the film and _sympathized_ with her, which was really the theme of this particular article. That’s all.
Davis had the guts to do unflattering roles before most actresses in Hollywood would go near them.
She chaulked up quite a number of those characters in Hollywood’s golden years.
Nice tip of the hat to Bette Davis. When you are talking about an actress with RANGE you have to put Bette at the top of the list. “Beyond the Forest” (1949)is regularly drubbed by critics (actually it’s highly watchable) but Davis had no problems playing the mean, ambitious and trampy Rosa Moline. She really went all-in to create a memorably vile character.
The audience has to suspend it’s belief a bit to buy Bette as Fannie Skeffington, the most beautiful and alluring woman in New York. Yet somehow she pulls it off (aided by a superb supporting case.) “Mr. Skeffington” was just on TCM last week and I had forgotten what a superb performance Ms. Davis puts out. Well, to coin a phrase, they don’t make em’ like that anymore.
Wow, that top pic of Louise Fletcher is… wow.
And I would change that TG comment. Not that you don’t have a point, but you should make the fetishists crack conditional. You can’t prove it.
And by “have a point,” I mean I think parts of the current TG outlook are either broken or coercive. I think many current solutions are going to be debunked, and new methods found.
But let us remember, it is Ratched who keeps McMurphy in the ward, and she delivers a horrible blow to Billy Bibbitt in the climax.
Not merely hard to prove, it’s easily disproved. And she shouldn’t just change the comment, it’s casually vile; for her own sake she should apologize for it and retract it. I’ve got to wonder now if she has to conceal a snicker on viewing a harelip, and if she’d wet herself laughing on catching sight of an example of Treacher-Collins Syndrome.
If castration was what TG was about, then that’s all they’d have done. Way more to it than that. We know intuitively and from examples such as David Reimer’s, that gender identity and and the desire for a specific gender role socially have nothing to do with how you are raised, or what you see between your legs. He was a young man in the ’60′s who as in infant, on the advice of the “experts” of the day, was surgically made as female as possible and then raised as such after an accident in circumcision left him as a newborn, unable to function as a male. A surgically created case of gender dysphoria.
The crackpot theory was, nature has little or nothing to do with gender roles, and nurture determines whether you are happily male or female in society, and in the bedroom. Very liberal stuff Mrs. Shaidle’s endorsing here.
Of course that didn’t work, how could it? Gender is between the ears, and you’re born with whatever you’ve got.
If you end up with some of the structural patterns common to one gender between your ears, and a differing one everywhere else, you’ve got gender dysphoria. People who have an XY karotype and have the testosterone receptor mutaton for CAIS, are born looking uncomplicatedly like girls, are raised uncomlicatedly as girls, and have a slightly slow but clearly female puberty–except they never menstruate. Eventually, they hear the news they don’t have ovaries or a womb, they’ve got testicles and will never have the babies they want. They ain’t happy about it, why would they be?
I suppose Mrs. Shaidle also thinks that Trig Palin is a side splitting opportunity to be nasty.
Ha, ha, ha.
What? No mention of Tuesday Weld’s character in Pretty Poison?
McMurphy chose to go to the ward to get out of jail for raping a 15 year old, so…
And yes, I should’ve picked Tuesday Weld if just for looks and getting to hang out with Anthony Perkins who is so dreamy despite the gay thing.
For me, the female villains were always appealing because of their self-control. Many of them often played things close to the chest, keeping up an icy facade of implacability even while they secretly plotted to get things done. Modern people (like the women of the Huffington Post) always seem to make such a big deal out of everything, wailing and throwing temper tantrums and flouncing, that it gives me a headache. But Nurse Ratched is self-contained, unflappable, and all the more powerful for it.
I occasionally find myself quoting Gene Kelley: “Dignity, always dignity.” It’s one of those virtues that’s out of style these days; if you want it, you have to look to the designated bad guys.
Excellent analysis – all very true!!
I’d nominate Kathleen Turner in “Body Heat.” She was so hot she might have been able manipulate the local archbishop into kicking out all cathedral’s stained glass windows!
Also in “The Man with Two Brains”, Turner is over the top evil.
When her first husband, an obviously older rich man she married for his money says, “Why do you do these things?”, she responds, “Because I love to see those veins in your temple throb!”. Now THAT is evil personified!
I tried responding to your article indirectly in response to your comment to my comment here, but it never appeared. Anyway, here’s what I wrote:
With respect to Nurse Ratched, that sounds like another movie I will have to watch with a fresh perspective.
In my younger days, I was certainly sympathetic to the idea of de-institutionalization of the mentally ill because I could appreciate how the category of mental illness could be misused by the powerful to marginalize those with unpopular ideas. In adulthood, though, I recognize de-institutionalization as a well-intentioned policy with many negative, unanticipated side effects.
What’s interesting is that today even leftists know it didn’t work as planned, but they try to place the blame elsewhere, or deny their part in making the mess. A few years ago at a dinner with several leftist-activist types, one of them who was concerned about homelessness tried to blame all of the de-institutionalization on Reagan; I had to point out that it started long before Reagan was president and it was spearheaded by activists and ACLU-types. She could only respond, “well, no one expected there to be de-institutionalization without a comprehensive system of community mental health clinics.” Yeah, right.
Yeesh, your dinner companion could be pretty villainous herself if she was given the right amount of power and money.
It’s been a while and I was overseas when it happened, but I thought de-instutionalization began in California when the Democrat controlled legislature there passed some law releasing them, with the promise to fund the outpatient care and clinics.
Never happened.
As a kid I loved Louise Fletcher’s role in the 86′ flick, ‘Invader from Mars’.
I’d have to add Famke Janssen as Xenia Onatopp in Goldeneye (1995). She is one of the few movie villainesses who is clearly “invested” in being a villainess.
She steals high-tech hardware, sabotages military projects, and kills people both up-close and personal and by mass-murder methods, both for personal profit and because she enjoys it.
To this extent, she is actually a very honest individual. She is also unlikely to have had an abused background, like other 007 villainesses; Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman) in Goldfinger (1964), for instance.
Anyone foolish enough to try to “abuse” dear Xenia, even in childhood, probably didn’t survive the attempt.
For a male equivalent of Onatopp, look at Hickey (Christopher Walken) in Walter Hill’s Last Man Standing (1996), starring Bruce Willis. Never mind Unosuke (Tatsuya Nakadai) in Kurosawa’s original Yojimbo (1961).
Onatopp or Hickey, either one, unarmed, would eat him for breakfast.
cheers
eon
Your shrink is probably planning a novel based on your therapy.
Ditto on the smarmy feelings and the reaction to Woody Allen,
hard guy to like but I do, but still not unlike finger nails on a black board
I am shamelessly recycling “disturbed castration fetishist” (or, as I prefer to call it, “doing a Fareed Zakaria”.)
What? No Caged Heat?
Nice group of gals but nobody here has mentioned Peggy Cummins absolutely unhinged Annie Laurie Starr in “Gun Crazy” (1950). John Dall is a decent enough fellow until he meets Ms. Starr then it’s off we go on a passion-fueld Bonnie-and-Clyde cross-country shoot-em-up except that Annie Laurie is a far more interesting bad-girl than Faye Dunaway.
Also why no shout-out to Barbara Stanwyck’s Phyllis Dietrichson in “Double Indemnity?” She set the standard for bad-girl noir. Hot on her heels is Jane Greer’s Kathy Moffat in “Out of the Past” who cooly kills and/or betrays everyone in sight. Going back to Barbara Stanwyck we have her creepily over-the-top performance in “The Strange Love of Martha Ivers” where Barb is not only a killer but a psychotically manipulative shrew to boot. (Does Mary Astor’s Bridgit O’Shaunessy in “The Maltest Falcon” count as a villain? She should.)
I agree with those who say that Angela Lansbury’s maniacal mom from “The Manchurian Candidate” definitely should be on this list. I have alwasy had trouble classifying Nurse Ratched as a villain. She is a tough woman doing her best in an impossible situation. And be honest – Who here hasn’t wanted to give Jack Nicholson a lobotomy at some point in their lives?
…Or hold a pillow over his head until he stops smirking.
Odd that you should mention “Double Indemnity” and “Out of the Past”. I recently watched both those movies for the first time. Great films.
You lucky duck! I’ve seen both movies hundreds of time and they still resonate. It’s great experiencing classic storytelling for the first time.
Nurse Ratched was one of a long line of60′s/70′s movie characters where the “the man” (in this case a women) is seen as either the villian or at best a moral equivalent to the movie’s antagonist. Robert Redford’s Brubacker, Pacino’s Dog Day Afternoon, Paul Newman’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Warren Beatty’s Bonnie and Clyde. All paved the wave to epidemic of crime in the late 70′s.
I’m particularly find of Nurse Deisel from High Anxiety. If you’re going to dominate over whimpy men, doing with style and out any apologies.
Since I’m anonymous I’ll admit I IDOLIZED Nurse Ratched and always wanted to possess her ability to handle horrifyingly crazy situations without losing her composure. Even when she lost control of a situation she never lost control of herself.
My job is tech support, by the way, and Nurse Ratched is still my hero. Her ability to control a situation and wield authority guide me as I take control of my customers’ lives for the brief moments those lives intersect catastrophically with my company’s technologies and the customer goes flying over the cuckoo’s nest.
Mister Ratched: “I need you to press the ‘Start’ button now.”
Cuckoo Customer: “The Start button? MY ACCOUNTS ARE GONE! WHAT THE HELL? WHAT KIND OF CRAP IS THIS?”
Mister Ratched: “Mister McMurphy, if you want to see where your missing accounts went you’ll need to press the ‘Start’ button.”
Cuckoo Customer: “DAMN YOU! I HATE COMPUTERS! Umm, okay, I pressed the ‘Start’ button. Now what?”
Mister Ratched: “Excellent, Mr. McMurphy. Now click on Control Panel. It will be on the right-hand side of the Start Menu.”
Cuckoo Customer: “Ok. Now what?”
Ratched wins again!
(Yeah I’m a guy, but Hannibal Lecter is the only male role-model with a similar talent, so I hope you’ll forgive my choosing Louise Ratched instead. Even the Dog Whisperer couldn’t do tech support …)
How about Barbara Steele as a dark haired lady featured by Fellini,Hammer and American International?
Steele only actually played a “true” villain once, in El Maschera del Demonio (The Mask of Satan), better known in the English-speaking world as Black Sunday (1960), directed by Mario Bava. (Not to be confused with the 1977 terrorist attack film directed by John Frankenheimer, starring Robert Shaw, and based on a novel by Thomas Harris.)
Asa Vajda, the evil witch she played there, was definitely a villain, but the rest of her roles were more along the lines of either innocent victims or vengeance-seeking ex-victims.
cheers
eon
How about Jane Seymour in the TV miniseries version of “East of Eden”?
No, No, Angela Lansbury in Dear Heart, and The World of Henry Orient, please!!! She scared me silly!
I always shudder when I see a rerun of the bad seed.She is one mean little girl.
Linda Fiorentino in The Last Seduction….don’t often see a woman frame her “boyfriend” for the murder of her husband(which she did) by arranging her own rape by said boyfriend with 911 listening in…
Mia Farrow in Death on the Nile deserves at least an honorable mention. Totally cold-blooded multiple killer, and a mighty good shooter under pressure.
Also agree with Elizabeth (#21). Anyone who disagrees gets no fruit cup.
I was mix up Nurse Ratched with Nurse Diesel in High Anxiety and I thought her name wast Ratchet.