On the blessed hellride...: House of 1000 corpses

In honor of Women In Horror Recognition Month, I present my top 3 femme fatale of female villains.

BABY FIREFLY
Portrayed by Sheri Moon Zombie (wife of writer and director Rob Zombie) Baby Firefly is a statuesque beauty with a childlike mind and youthful appearances, with a strong sadistic streak. Born as Vera-Ellen Wilson to parents Mother Firefly and Captain Spaulding, Baby Firefly soon became the perfect lure for the family victims. Even as a child Baby showed signs of mania and psychosis; at the age of seven she stabbed a school mate in the eye with a homemade knife, later on becoming an expert on knives and firearms.

Baby Firefly in House of 1000 Corpses (2003) and The Devil's Rejects (2005)

By the time of the first film (House of 1000 Corpses 2003) Baby was wanted for first degree murder, armed robbery, grand theft auto and prostitution. In the sequel (The Devil's Rejects 2005) Baby developed into a much darker character. Though having higher aspirations of Hollywood Stardom, Baby is stuck with her low-life family, taken out all her sexual aggression on her male victims and the jealousy of other women on her female victims.

Other trivia: Sheri Moon Zombie was also featured in Rob Zombie's remakes Halloween and Halloween II, based on John Carpenter's cult classics, as Deborah Myers, mother of the notorious killer Michael Myers. Apart from starring in her husband's movies, she's appeared in 15 of his music videos, including one of my favorites: Living Dead Girl.

SOPHIE-ANNE LECLERQ

Being the Queen Bee of HBO's hit-series True Blood, in a world where vampires have 'come of out the coffin' Sophie-Anne Leclerq is the five hundred year old vampire who reigns as the queen of Louisiana. Portrayed by Evan Rachel Wood, this vampire queen is the ultimate example of a femme fatale; she carries herself regally and respectfully.

Sophie-Anne Leclerq in True Blood (2009)

However, underneath that porcelain face hides the insecurity of childish mannerisms, self-indulgence and a slight attention disorder. Being obsessed with Yahtzee and lottery scratch tickets, her tendency to hyper-focused can suddenly become subject to changes in topics of discussion or even random ramblings without any specific focus. Sophie-Anne's quirky personality is enhanced in True Blood, compared to her more reserved and more mature appearance in Charlaine Harris' book series The Sookie Stackhouse Novels.

MANDY LANE
All the Boys Love Mandy Lane is the disturbed tale of high school beauty Mandy Lane (Amber Heard), a porcelain goddess who manages to tempt every boy within her reach by simply batting her eyelashes or ever so slightly licking her lips. She's got an etherial allure so prominent it literally draws all men to their doom. She's the girl every boy wants to have and every girl wants to be. The only problem is that the fair Mandy Lane herself has the complete inability to recognize her own charms.

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (2006)

The film opens at a pool party where Mandy's been invited, and decided to drag along her alienated friend Emmet (Michael Welch), much to the dismay of toddler-faced jock boy Dylan who has his sight set on Mandy. Acting on the only power that Emmet's knows he has, he talks Dylan into following him onto the roof of the house where he convinces him to jump into the pool to impress the clueless Mandy. Dylan takes a drunken dip and bashes his head onto the concrete, much to Emmet's pleasure.

Nine monts later Mandy's invited to join a group from school to a remote ranch for the weekend, which she reluctantly accepts. Despite her beauty, she's still an outsider much due to her struggling to relate to other people. Unsettled by Emmet's earlier manipulation that led to jockguy's death, Mandy decides to not invite Emmet this time.

The weekend plays out just as expected; booze, drugs and 'B-J's are exchanged and the sexual tension is buzzing. The girls are more than hormone exploding, but the boys only have eyes for Mandy Lane. What starts out to be demeaning looks from the other girls and hormonal advances from the boys, soon turn menacing. And so the drunken, selfish, horny teenagers start to get get picked off, one by one, in increasingly, almost torture kind of, ways. What's fascinating about the character development is that I found no interest in the stereotype teenagers as they were alive, but somehow felt empathy with them as soon as they got a gun pipe gagged in their mouths and their lifeless bodies wrapped in barbed wire. As the uninvited Emmet suddenly appears on the farm, craze-eyed and psychotic, it's safe to safe that the killer's identity is revealed fairly early on.

OBS! THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH CONTAINS SPOILERS!

But.... there's a twist. A tragic but sexy one, as the femme fatale Mandy Lane seemingly tries to rescue the last surviving teenager from the death-crazed Emmet, only to be the one to stab the girl to death. The earthbound angel that had been courted by every man in the small Texas town who wanted to claim her virginity, showed to be a sociopath and a tempting murderess who doesn't skimp on the gore when it comes to revenge.

Other trivia: The sumptuous Amber Heard also stars as 406 in Zombieland (2009) and as Kristen in John Carpenter's The Ward (2010).