The camera slowly pans across a dark, silhouetted urban landscape. The music is sparse and ominous. There is a sense of the unknown, a shiver down the spine, as the camera stops and isolates a single window in the side of an apartment building. The occupant pulls down the blind and suddenly the audience is rescued from that outer darkness and saved by the warm inner glow, the serenity and security of a typical white, urban, middle-class American family home - the New York apartment of lawyer, Dan Gallagher (Michael Douglas), his wife, Beth (Anne Archer), and their child, Ellen (Ellen Hamilton Latzen). Beth is busily tidying up, calling instructions to the child, while father Dan with pen and paper in hand and wearing headphones, reclines on a couch, presumably working. Ellen sits on another couch watching the television with the dog in her lap. It is a comfortable scene - a comfortable, patriarchal scene. But all is not what it seems. As ominous as the opening shot of this film may have been, awaiting this little microcosm of patriarchal mirth is a horror that would one day be recognised by criminologists as a syndrome named after this cinematic milestone - “fatal attraction” syndrome, in which, according to Babener (1992, p. 1), women, unsuccessful in love or domesticity, resort to “hounding, stalking and attacking” those men who would deny them that success. There is certainly, however, little doubt of the success of Fatal Attraction, released in 1987, just as the United States began to “awaken from its Reaganite reverie” (Boozer 1999). It was a time, perhaps, when the right-wing conservative ideals of home, hearth and family needed a stab in the arm. Rather than blame Reaganomics for any social malaise, it was considered more appropriate, by the movie industry at least, to lay the blame in the lap of feminism. This cinematic backlash gave birth to a new genre, the female psychopath, the ‘bitch from hell’, with a spate of films featuring the killer femme fatale, including Basic Instinct, (1992), Single White Female (1992), The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992) and To Die For (1995) - and Fatal Attraction was the mother of them all. Hollywood had expanded its catalogue of monsters to include the monstrous feminine, defined “primarily”, as Creed (1993, p. 151) contends, “in relation to her sexuality, specifically the abject nature of her maternal and reproductive functions”. Straying from the path of patriarchal righteousness would not be tolerated if Hollywood had any say in it - and Hollywood is a powerful force framing contemporary culture as fervently as it frames the mise-en-scene of its products (Graham 2002, p. 1). Fatal Attraction, as Williamson (Bromley & Hewitt 1992, p. 18) claims, was “a milestone of [that] intolerance”, and those films which followed it, its spawn, were just more, sharply-pointed white palings that would serve as the picket-fence needed by middle-class America, not only to keep people out, but also to keep them in. A reading of a selection of these films, namely, Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, reveals the accuracy of Creed’s contention concerning the abjectification of the feminine.

Creed, in her text, The monstrous-feminine (1993, p. 151), argues that this Hollywood-constructed stereotype, which includes the ‘witch’, the ‘female vampire’, the ‘woman possessed’ and the femme castratrice, reinforces “the phallocentric notion that female sexuality is abject”; that it “defies”, as Kilker (2006) suggests, “boundaries of separation from the self … it beckons to us and ends up engulfing us”. The abject is all things abhorrent to puritanical sensibilities. It is all those things which ‘nice’ people do not talk about. It is across the border, the boundaries, of politeness. It is signified, as Kilker (2006) suggests, by “blood, vomit, feces, pus, mucus”, ‘snot’, ‘shit’, menstrual blood and semen. It is, oddly enough, those facets of normal bodily function which ‘normal’ bodies, it would seem, do not possess, or rather, would choose to deny. The woman, as menstrator, as lactator, as possessor of the womb, as vessel for seminal fluid and ultimately, origin of the ‘waters’ that break and the ‘after-birth’ that ensues, is the penultimate representation of the abject. Give this abject being an attitude, then one has the epitome of horror - or so says Hollywood. And there may well be no greater horror, to a patriarch at least, than a woman scorned. For that woman, Hollywood would have us believe, is a woman with a wilful, evil disposition, who will not subside till her wilfulness has had its way. But wilful, or even wicked, women were not new to Hollywood. Mules (2000, p. 111) points out that Hollywood, in the tradition of melodrama, “has always portrayed women as threatening and excessive to patriarchy”. Those women, such as the femme fatale or the ‘wilful woman’ of the 1930s and 1940s threatened the patriarchy by taking advantage of the heterosexual male’s desire (Mules 2000, p. 112). The psychopathic woman, the ‘bitch’, will certainly take advantage of a man’s lust, indeed, she will feed on it. But she will also attack other women and their children. The psychopathic woman is out to get the whole family - and for this, she must pay dearly; for this, she must die, and if possible, die again, as does Alex Forrest (Glenn Close), the family-famished psychopath in Fatal Attraction. Though Alex is successful in her career as an editor for a book publisher, she is not successful as a woman. She does not have a husband. She does not have a child. At the age of 36, she is an incomplete woman. When the audience first sees Alex, at a ‘champagne and sushi’ book launch, she has the appearance of a medusa with a head of wild hair and a look, according to Dan Gallagher’s associate, not to die for, but to kill. Yet it is not Alex who initiates the hunt; it is Dan, the ‘good’ husband, who pursues the prey and relishes the catch. Dan, the seemingly quiet, supposedly satisfied, family man, is really a sexual pariah, dissatisfied with his own dominion. With his wife and child away for the weekend to find a new home in the country, Dan seizes the opportunity for some extra-marital sex with Alex. When he has sated his lust, he casts Alex aside like a used tissue. But Alex is not happy about this:

Dan:		Jesus Christ, I mean, be reasonable.
Alex:		Be reasonable? (laughs) What? Thank you, goodbye, don’t call me, I’ll call you?
Dan:		Look, you knew about me, all right? I didn’t hide anything. I thought it was understood.
Alex:		What was understood?
Dan:		The opportunity was there and we took it. C’mon now, we are adults, aren’t we?
Alex:		What’s that supposed to mean?
Dan:		I thought we could have a good time.
Alex:		No you didn’t. You thought you’d have a good time. You didn’t stop for a second to think about me.
Dan:		That’s crazy. You know the rules, Alex.
Alex:		What rule?

Surely Alex, you know the rule – the rule of a patriarchal ideology – the rule of the family. But Alex is “crazy”. Now she becomes the hunter, pursuing Dan with a psychotic fervour. After a number of ‘nuisance’ phone calls, Dan agrees to meet her:

Dan:		This has got to stop…It is over. There is nothing between us.
Alex:		You mean you’ve had your fun. Now you just want a quiet life.

He suggests she needs to see a psychiatrist. He tells her he has “a whole relationship” which does not include her. She tells him she is pregnant.

Dan: How do you know it’s mine?

So now Alex is not only crazy, a breaker of the rules, she is also promiscuous. Dan is not interested in the fact that he is complicit in the pregnancy. He claims he is not responsible, that it is her choice. She should have used contraception and failing that, abort. Dan threatens to kill her if she says anything to his wife. But Alex’s intention is not to tell Beth, but rather, to kill her so that she can then replace her as Dan’s wife and mother of his children. This saga ends in a literal blood-bath with Alex, and unborn child, shot by Beth after a knife-slashing battle between the three of them in the bathroom of the new country manse. The final shot of the film is of a family portrait – Dan, Beth and Ellen – the happy family reunited again and, presumably, stronger because of it all. Although Dan had instigated the affair; had threatened to kill Alex – and had almost done so nearly strangling her in a fight, Dan comes out the hero, receiving a handshake from the local police officer. It seems he is not even taken away for questioning. The evil had been dealt with, and that evil was Alex, a bitch from hell who had used her sexuality in an attempt to break up a family.

Basic Instinct, described by Dirks (n.d.) as “a suspenseful, cat-and-mouse erotic thriller with psychosexual overtones”, is a somewhat different ‘bitch from hell’ film, though its similarities to Fatal Attraction are undeniable, including the casting of Michael Douglas as, once again, the ‘innocent’ male lured by the sexuality of the evil woman. Douglas plays Nick Curran, a rogue police detective under investigation for killing bystanders in a shoot-out. There is no wholesome family in this text and family is certainly not what the femme psychotic, Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone) is after. Catherine is, quite simply, a serial killer luring her victims with sex. The opening ‘titles’ sequence, once again backed by eerie and mysterious music, is a shot of bodies in sexual motion, reflected and broken-up into sharp, triangular shapes. This then dissolves into a ceiling-mirror providing an upside-down reflection of two people engaged in sex. The camera then pans down to the couple, male and female, revealing the woman on top, in charge of the act. She ties the man’s hands to the bed-head with a scarf. Then, just as the man is reaching sexual climax, the woman stabs him several times with an ice-pick, penetrating the penetrant with a lethal phallus. The ice-pick is a recurring motif in the film, being used not just as a weapon, but also, oddly enough, as an ice-pick. Whenever it is used, it is used with force, stabbing, thrusting, penetrating its target, whether that be a block of ice or human flesh. Catherine does not just break ice with her ice-pick. She does not merely kill with her ice-pick. Catherine “fucks” with her ice-pick. Catherine is by no means a polite lady. When Nick and his partner, Gus Moran (George Dzundza), first question Catherine about her murdered lover, Johnny Boz (Bill Cable), they discover that she is not what Gus would call a “nice girl”.

Nick:		How long were you dating him?
Catherine:		I wasn’t dating him. I was fucking him.
Gus:		What are you? A pro?
Catherine:		No, I’m an amateur….
Nick:		Are you sorry he’s dead?
Catherine:		Yeah, I liked fucking him. Look, I don’t really feel like talking anymore.
Gus:		Listen lady, we can do this downtown if you want.
Catherine:		So read me my rights and arrest me and then I’ll go downtown. Otherwise, get the fuck out of here. (Long pause.) Please.

Catherine has no time for polite language. She is very frank about her sexuality and firmly asserts herself as a woman in control – in charge. Gus immediately assesses her as evil, but Nick is intrigued. Nick is tempted. Nick likes his sex rough and dangerous. Catherine tosses out the bait and reels him in: hook, line and testicles. As opposed to Alex Forrest, book editor, Catherine Tramell is a book writer, and the murder of Johnny Boz is an exact replication of a murder in one of her novels. Now Catherine is writing a new novel, this one about a detective who “falls for the wrong woman”.

Dan:		What happens?
Catherine:		She kills him.

Coincidently, Catherine is using Dan’s recent shooting incident as the basis for her book. An even stranger coincidence is that Catherine had an affair some years back with Dan’s ‘on-again/off-again’ lover, police psychologist, Dr. Beth Gardner (Jeanne Tripplehorn), and Catherine, feeding Dan titbits of information, leads him to the mistaken assumption that it is indeed Beth who is the psychotic killer. Later, Dan shoots Beth when he thinks she has killed Gus. Though the police now believe their murderer has been dealt with, the final scene of the film leaves little doubt as to who was the real psychopath. As Dan and Catherine are having sex, the camera tilts down the side of the bed to reveal, lying on the floor under the bed, an ice-pick.

The Hand That Rocks the Cradle does not have the same ominous opening as either Fatal Attraction or Basic Instinct, but it certainly has the psychotic woman hell-bent on disrupting the patriarchal order of things. This film starts off with the idyllic white house in idyllic white suburbia. The wife, Claire Bartel (Annabella Sciorra), is in the kitchen. The husband, Michael (Matt McCoy) is in the bathroom, shaving. Their daughter, Emma (Madeline Zima), is watching her father as they sing together. Just another joyous day in the lives of a happy family. Solomon (Ernie Hudson), black-skinned and mentally disabled, comes to build a picket-fence for the Bartels:

Solomon:		Do you want the fence to keep people in? Or to keep people out?
Claire:		Um, well, both. (She looks to Michael for approval.) But mostly to keep people out.

The white picket-fence is an icon of the security and stability of the white patriarchal American family. In this film, that icon also becomes the dealer of justice with the psychotic woman impaling herself on it at the film’s end. Peyton Flanders (Rebecca De Mornay), is actually Mrs Mott, the wife of a gynaecologist who commits suicide after being charged with indecently dealing with his patients. It is Claire Bartel, pregnant with their second child, who instigates the charges against him. The stress of the charges, the suicide and subsequent financial ruin causes Mrs Mott, also pregnant, to suffer a miscarriage and emergency hysterectomy. In the crazed mind of Mrs Mott, Claire has not only caused the demise of her husband, but has also taken away her unborn child and her ability to ever bear children. Claire has stolen her maternal and reproductive functions. To get revenge, she adopts the alias, Peyton Flanders, and becomes the Bartel’s nanny, their baby now born. Telling Claire that being a nanny is “the next best thing to being a mother”, Peyton snakily begins replacing Claire as the mother of the Bartel household. She breast-feeds the baby in the middle of the night and befriends Emma with treats, letting her stay up late to watch horror movies, and dealing with the school-yard bully for her. She frames Solomon, who becomes a threat by inadvertently seeing her breast-feed the baby, for abusing Emma. She frames Michael for having an affair with family-friend and former girlfriend, Marlene (Julianne Moore). She is, little by little, paving the way for her to replace Claire completely. She sets a booby-trap in the greenhouse for Claire, but after Marlene discovers who she really is, she tells Marlene that Claire is in the greenhouse. Marlene is killed. Claire suffers an asthma attack when she discovers Marlene’s body. When she returns from hospital, Claire finds Peyton has replaced her – wearing her jewellery, playing card games with Emma and Michael on the lounge room floor in front of the fireplace. Claire eventually discovers the truth about Peyton’s identity and kicks her out. But Peyton returns with a psychotic determination and a shovel. “It’s my family”, she avers as she hits Claire with the shovel. They fight, but Claire is overcome by another asthma attack. Peyton whispers in her ear:

When your husband makes love to you, it’s my face he sees. When your baby’s hungry, it’s my breast that feeds him. Look at you. When push comes to shove, you can’t even breathe.

But Solomon miraculously returns to help fight this evil. Claire pushes Peyton out a window and she falls onto the picket-fence. The family is re-united, including the handyman. The final shot of the film is the front of the house – patriarchy restored.

Each of these films feature the monstrous-feminine, the psychotic, psychopathic femme fatale. Each of these women, the knife-slashing Alex, the ice-pick thrusting Catherine and the shovel-swinging Peyton, has been defined as monstrous “primarily in relation to her sexuality” (Creed 1993, p. 151). But why? Is it because, as Freud, according to Creed (1993, p. 1) would have us believe, men fear women due to an “infantile belief that the mother is castrated”, lacking those ‘dangly bits’ men consider so vitally important as to give them ‘crown jewel’ status? Or is it more, perhaps, to do with the fact that “women”, as Luric (Creed 1993, p. 6) argues, “are not castrated…woman is physically whole, intact and in possession of all her sexual powers” (emphasis in the original). If woman is castrated, then surely woman is victim (Creed 1993, p. 7). The women in these films are certainly not victims, unless one argues they have become victims to their own sexuality, to their own functionality as mother and bearer of children. Perhaps it is more to do with man’s fear of that functionality, for surely the ability to give birth, to nurse and to nurture the next generation is a powerful property – a property vested in the feminine. It is a property which the patriarchy might well wish to keep under control; to keep restrained by apron strings; to keep in the kitchen of the patriarchal domain, secured behind that white picket-fence. The American movie industry, as a powerful mediator of cultural conditioning, has historically sought to keep that knot in the apron strings of that nation firm and secure, evoking paranoia with its depictions of women, as Boozer (1999) argues, “Ambitious…in the metaphorical plots of classic films noir, where they are made to appear beautiful but also treacherous, criminally depraved and castrating in their desires”. With the introduction of the psychotic woman in the late eighties and early nineties, Hollywood has merely upped the ante, giving these neo-femme fatales the sharp, solid and threatening vagina dentata physically represented by the knife, the ice-pick or the shovel. In doing so, the American movie industry has constructed women, in particular, “ambitious, single career women” as threats to mainstream society (Boozer 1999). These women, these Alexes, Catherines and Peytons, are, as Traube (Boozer 1999) perceives, “scapegoats for new forms of conservative revisionism”. Impaling these women on the white picket-fence “offers”, Traube argues (Boozer 1999), “an imaginary solution”. Unfortunately, Hollywood, in providing the solution, may well have misread, or misinterpreted, the problem. By representing woman as monstrous, Hollywood has morphed the feminine, the mother and nurturer, into a psychopathic predator. The message to women is blatant – stay in the kitchen and serve your husband, or you shall pay with your life. When things go wrong, who is to blame? The monstrous-feminine. It is a rickety fence indeed that is built on such sandy foundations.

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