"I like dangerous women," says actor Charlie Sheen.  Hey guys, admit it.  We are all like Charlie Sheen.  We love dangerous women. 

 

Charlie is a fatalist when it comes to the ladies in his life, but some chicks are literally fatal.a

 

Take the Ventura County broad who, a few years ago, abducted her lover¹s wife from a Target parking lot, killed her, and dumped the body in a riverbed.  Unlike Charlie's women, she was not a prostitute.

 

The hookers in L.A. are not like the homely bimbos in "Fargo".  Some of them are porn stars, or ex-porn stars.  A lot of them just say they are porn stars.  While they are sometimes beautiful, your best interests are not what they have in mind.  They are often in it for drugs, and some of the diseases they have to offer might not be cured by penicillin.

 

These femme fatales, not to be confused with streetwalkers, lure guys into their web of deception via the Internet, or ads in LAXpress, often using photos of gorgeous adult film stars with come-ons that make it sound like getting gangbanged and drenched in jizz is their only motivation.

 

What bravery (or stupidity) it takes for a dude to pursue these women to the final conclusion!  It usually involves showing up at a location in a less-than-desirable part of town, with a lot of money in their pockets, and walking into a situation that can result in robbery, or worse.

 

Since the beginning of mankind, the male of the species has sought adventure and danger.  This is why Man decided to kill the Woolly Mammoth, cook it with fire, then eat it.

 

Eventually, the hunt came to be sport, and our urges forced us not just to cook with fire, but to play with it. 

 

Why?  Because the femme fatale is, as Robert Palmer might put it, is simply an irresistibly alluring creature.  We love bad girls, and all their evil, scheming ways.  Shakespeare touched on this subject in “Taming of the Shrew”.  The more taboo, the more reckless the behavior, the more we are fascinated with women fraught with danger and mystery. It is what we do! 

 

L.A. is steeped in the tradition of the femme fatale, which means "fatal female" in French, but there have been plenty of famous dangerous women outside LaLa Land.

 

The "Long Island Lolita"

Amy Fisher was a teenage sex vixen who lured an otherwise normal man into an illegal and illicit set of circumstances that almost killed his innocent

wife.  Now 25, she was only 16 when she fired a bullet into Mary Jo Buttafuoco¹s head.  She had been having sex with Mrs. Buttafuoco's husband, Joey, who later served six months in jail for statutory rape.

 

"You can’t trust women," says former Los Angeles Angels pitcher and renowned playboy Bo Belinsky.  "They¹ll cut off your balls and leave you twistng in the wind."

 

The original "Lolita" was the creation of author Vladimir Nabokov, who

triggered a deep conflict within the American psyche about crossing the line

between love and the perverse lust for a child.

 

The Hollywood version

Hollywood has always loved the femme fatale.  Who could forget Barbara

Stanwyck, the cunning brains behind an insurance-fraud scheme that eventually kills her husband and smitten sales schlep Fred MacMurray in

"Double Jeopardy"?

 

Or the devious Linda Fiorentino in "The Last Seduction"?

 

Busty former Penthouse Pet Julie Strain has created a B-movie franchise

playing ass-kicking man-eaters.  You cannot turn on the TV without seeing

scantily clad babes knocking the Bruce Lee out of a coterie of whipped men.

Chyna and her band of siliconed diva-sluts are portrayed as being far too physical for any of the WWF men to dare handle them.  In the cyber world it

is Lara Croft and Tank Girl.  Got only knows how many times the artists who create these visions of monster cleavage take time out to jack off!

 

The badass beauty franchise got a boost in the 1970s with "Charlie¹s

Angels", and judging from box office receipts, the public still eats it up.

 

1995s "To Die For" was based on the true story of a newswoman who seduces a couple of high school boys to kill her husband.

 

"Thelma & Louise" was a highly successful 1992 film that played on the

"outlaw woman" theme.

 

"Male-bashing, once the sport of hairy women in denim jackets and combat

boots, has flushed like toxic waste into the culture mainstream with (a)

vengeance", wrote the Boston Globe¹s John Robinson of the film.

 

Female critics had an opposite reaction, arguing that a weasely male figure

deserved a violent fate.  Audiences showed up in droves to check out these

cock-teasing criminals.

 

Keeping it real

Ava Gardner played angels on screen.  Off screen she was a real femme

fatale.  It is rumored that the raven-haired beauty satiated her sexual

appetite with orgies in which she would avail herself to a large roomful of

pre-selected young studs every Saturday night.  These hedonistic extravagances were described in barely-veiled detail by Mario Puzo in "The

Godfather".  Many of the young actors "allowed" to have sex with Ava were

not invited back for seconds, for whatever fickle reason Ava decided.

Apparently, some of them were reduced to stalking and masturbating in

desperate quests for Ava, years after their one-night fantasies had become

memories.

 

Her husband, Frank Sinatra, was completely thunderstruck by Ava.  Life with her was an agonizing duality in which he was both turned on and repulsed by her pornographic siren song.

 

Of Frank, Ava had this to say: "That man is all cock!"

 

What a gal.

 

Before Ava, Hollywood¹s "it girl" was another devotee of the swinging

lifestyle.  Clara Bow used to take on the entire USC football team,

including lineman Marion "John Wayne" Morrison, back in the 1920s.  No

wonder Howard Jones¹ teams were so good.  Talk about a good recruiting tool!

 

Victim or vixen?

One femme fatale who was accorded heroic status in some quarters was Lorena Gallo Bobbit, who was set free after slicing off her sleeping husband's member with a kitchen knife.

 

"I'm just a poor innocent suffering woman," Lorena told a sympathetic jury

and cheering supporters.

 

Her trial contained the same kind of "he-said-she-said" contretemps of the

Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill soap opera, and no doubt helped spur a

national "empowerment" movement which led to 1992s Year of the Woman,

bringing many ladies to the House and Senate.

 

"We are both angelic and demonic," said neo-feminist author and Al Gore

advisor Naomi Wolf, of Lorena¹s actions.

 

Lizzie Borden took an axe

"Lizzie Borden took an axe

And gave her mother forty whacks.

And when she saw what she had done,

She gave her father forty-one."

 

This famous poem resulted from heavy press coverage in the Massachussetts papers after a spinster schoolteacher, Lizzie Borden, committed one of the most heinous acts of the nineteenth century.

 

It was "... one of the most dastardly and diabolical crimes that was ever committed in Massachusetts, worthy of Classical Greek tragedy,” according to further news analysis from the puritanical New England press.

 

That Lizzie avoided capital punishment and even was acquitted led to debate over punishment of women criminals.  Should they be subject to the death penalty?

 

A few years ago, Texas put their first woman to death since the early 1970s.  In contrast, in 1999 over 80 men were executed.

 

Are women the weaker sex?  They are certainly subject to some of the most

horrific of crimes.

 

The Black Dahlia

Elizabeth Short¹s naked body was found posed, lying on her back with her

arms raised over her shoulders, her legs spread eagle. She had been cut in

half at the waist.

 

She was dubbed the Black Dahlia because of a film noir movie making the

rounds at the time (the 1940s).  Somehow, the would-be actresses’ story seemed to symbolize a Hollywood Babylon world of failed dreams and dashed lives.  Speculation has been that she  was killed by a lesbian woman.

 

A femme fatale?  The killer was never discovered.

 

SLA: No escaping the past

On February 4, 1974, Patricia Hearst was a 19-year-old college student

abducted by the Symbionese Liberation Army.

 

Hearst was held for weeks in a closet, and indoctrinated by radical rhetoric

and sex.

 

Hearst metamorphosed into a femme fatale named Tania, and was photographed carrying a phallic carbine during an SLA bank robbery.  Hearst eventually went underground until her arrest on September 18, 1975.  She served about two years before President Jimmy Carter commuted her sentence.

 

In 1999, the SLA story was revived.  Kathleen Soliah was a member of the

group charged with placing bombs under Los Angeles police cars in 1975.

 

She escaped and assumed the identity of Sarah Jane Olson.  Now 53, she had

married and lived with her doctor husband in an upscale Minneapolis

neighborhood, and was active in community theater work, where her acting

drew notice from local reviewers.

 

The FBI arrested Olson after receiving tips from viewers of America¹s Most

Wanted, which featured her in a recent broadcast.

 

"This is all so old," Hearst told WCBS-AM. "I don’t want to be drawn

into all of this."

 

The cautionary tale of the femme fatale can be summarized in the ending of the Michael Douglas/Glenn Close film “Fatal Attraction”.  After killing femme fatale Close, Douglas maintains solidarity of the family unit, but only at great cost to all that is dear to him. Men will always pursue their wilder instincts.  There is much to be said for living on the edge.  However, knowing when to pull back from the cliff is an important lesson that seems to separate the smart from the stupid. In the meantime, beautiful, scantily-clad women should come with a sign on their ample chests that reads, “Proceed with caution."