Casey Anthony: Disturbed females fascinate movie fans - Hal

Casey Anthony: Disturbed females fascinate movie fans
posted by halboedeker on June, 5 2011 12:43 PM

“You’re dealing with a disturbed woman.”

That line from a favorite movie kept haunting me last week as TV commentators described Casey Anthony as disturbed, weird and eerie. Those descriptions were based on Anthony’s behavior in tapes of police interrogations and jailhouse conversations.

Let’s face it: American popular culture has been fascinated by disturbed females for a long time. The upside of art is that it can supply meaning to such bizarre behavior. Here’s a gallery of classic movie performances:

1. Faye Dunaway in “Chinatown”: She plays a femme fatale who lies frequently, but the detective hero (Jack Nicholson) forgives her when he learns why, and shocked moviegoers did as well in 1974. She inspires the line “you’re dealing with a disturbed woman.”

2. Bette Davis in “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?”: A deranged former child star tortures her crippled sister (Joan Crawford). In a chilling fadeout to this 1962 drama, we learn a horrible truth about wasted time and devastated lives.

3. Gloria Swanson in “Sunset Boulevard”: A delusional silent movie star is bad news for everyone in her orbit, especially a young screenwriter (William Holden) who wanders into her life and her bed. For off-her-rocker theatrics, nothing tops the final scene in this 1950 Billy Wilder drama.

4. Patty McCormack in “The Bad Seed”: A bad child goes on a rampage in this unsettling 1956 drama. Hollywood, unfortunately, supplies an all-too-convenient ending that wasn’t in the play.

5. Glenn Close in ”Fatal Attraction”: The lover who won’t be denied. She is bad for married men, bunny rabbits and bathroom decor.

6. Kathy Bates in “Misery”: A fiction fan takes her favorite author (James Caan) hostage and rattles his bones. She won an Oscar for swinging a wicked sledgehammer.

7. Charlize Theron in “Monster”: Her frighteningly accurate performance as serial killer Aileen Wuornos won the Oscar.

8. Vivien Leigh in “A Streetcar Named Desire”: She helped establish Blanche DuBois as a landmark figure with a haunting, Oscar-winning performance in this 1951 drama.

9. Tippi Hedren in “Marnie”: She steals, but why? A dashing man (Sean Connery) is determined to find out in this unusual 1964 Alfred Hitchcock drama.

10. Gene Tierney in “Leave Her to Heaven”: She is beautiful, and she is very, very bad. She will stop at nothing to have her way. Tierney galvanizes this stunning 1945 drama filled with blazing photography and pulsing music.

Do you have a favorite disturbed-woman performance?

http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment_tv_tvblog/2011/06/casey-anthony-disturbed-females-fascinate-movie-fans.html