The Movie Bitch – we love to hate them but is there anything that we can derive more pleasure from than watching a particularly gifted Bitch wreak havoc? From a safe distance, of course, you don’t want to get caught up in their wake. Or, maybe you do cos you like that sort of thing. These characters know they’re going to hell, so they’re going to enjoy the ride on the way down and they’ll take as many with them as possible. Some are sly, some are loud and proud about it but all of them know better. It wouldn’t be as much fun otherwise. As someone wrote on a birthday card to me – ‘Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere’ – and I am a tame, mousey goody-goody that helps old ladies across the road compared to these chicks – these women would eat me alive. These babes go to 11 on the Bitch-o-Meter. (However, there are actually only 10, so I just made that one bitchier and made that the last one.)

Tracy Flick – Election: I know a little something about being an ambitious girl. Scratch that, I know a LOT about it. I also know that when you’re perceived as such, you’re not always liked for it. This is a result that we’re usually prepared for. Yes, being called a ‘ball-buster’ or ‘Dragon Lady’ (my personal favourite) or worse for expecting your projects to be done your way can be hurtful. Having acknowledged that – the fact that we DO have feelings – for the truly ambitious, the much stronger instinct to achieve casts the hurt aside. It’s possible to stall people like me and Tracy by chinking our armour but we cannot be stopped. My war-cry of “Don’t ask me ‘why’, ask me ‘how’” is pretty standard on my sets when people mess around and aren’t pulling their weight. All the things that Tracy is, I admire and identify with. Being demanding and pushing for what you want does not necessarily make you a bitch, although the two are often confused. The reason she’s on this list is because of the one fatal error she makes. She lets someone take the fall for something she did. Now, and this is just how I feel – if you’re going to be a headstrong pain-in-the-bum in certain areas of life, when you get caught trying to get away with something that’s not quite cricket on your way to your goal – you have to own it. You can’t puss-out and have somebody take the blame for you, even if they volunteer. When you’re wrong, you must be ‘Dragon Lady’ enough to admit, “I did it. Yes, that was me”. Then you take your lumps and live to fight another battle. If you’re gonna wear the hat, you’ve gotta be the cowboy. Tracy, Tracy; you let the side down.

Ursa – Superman II: Think of what Tracy Flick and I could accomplish if we could shoot laser-beams out of our eyes…a happy thought for me, perhaps not so much for others. This Phantom Zone escapee is a total bad-ass; ripping emblems off astronaut’s spacesuits (a girl has to accessorize!), throwing guys out of windows, threatening Lois Lane and trying to off the Man of Steel. She’s definitely the cruelest of the three and does all this while wearing a fantastic disco-chic outfit too and never breaks a nail.

O-Ren Ishii – Kill Bill, Vol. 1: If you DO upset O-Ren, try and do it so she takes care of you with one swift blow, like the guy in the clip. You don’t get to the top of the Yakuza totem-pole without being a cold-hearted yet utterly vicious bitch. I lost interest in the ‘Kill Bill’ Volumes when The Bride bested this tiny powerhouse of calm fury. Lots of movies ask you to suspend your disbelief and normally, I’m very willing. Terminators, aliens, body-swapping and Rob Schneider still making movies? I buy all that. I even buy the battle of the Crazy 88. But Beatrix Kiddo defeating O-Ren Ishii? Please…

Joanna Staten – Overboard: I felt I had to include Goldie’s comic attempt at being a bitch (and I mean ‘comic’ in that she’s funny, not that she’s comically bad or anything) because when I looked at this list, I realized that she’s the only one to really change her ways by the end of the film. Of course, for changing her ways, she requires amnesia but you can’t hold that against her.

Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil – Dangerous Liaisons: She gets her comeuppance but something tells me that there’s no way she changes afterward. When the screen went dark on this movie, I always imagined Madame de Merteuil laying low for a while, plotting her revenge and coming back nastier than ever. She’s a dyed in the wool, first class, legendary bitch. A deliciously evil part played with relish by an exquisite actress.

Glenda, The Good Witch of the North – The Wizard of Oz: Are you a good bitch or a bad bitch? Yes, Glenda – NOT the Wicked Witch of the West. Bitches come in all shapes and sizes; you might not even know they’re bitches until you step back and think about it. The best bitches are just that good. For me, the quality the Wicked Witch has going for her is that she’s upfront and honest about wanting those shoes. I can sympathize; I’ve had the urge to kill when seeing a really great pair myself. And, let’s face it, if some hick from Kansas squashed your sister with their squalid shack; you’d be pissed off too. Glenda, on the other hand, is sneaky and a big fat liar – all smiles and pretending to be your bosom buddy when she’s actually the worst kind of saboteur. You mean to tell me that she could have told Dorothy at ANY TIME that by clicking her heels she could go home, there was no need for all that hassle? Glenda claims Dorothy had to learn a lesson first but I ask you, what ruddy business is it of hers? Who made her the Queen of ‘Lesson-Giving’? Who fecking well asked HER? All Dorothy wanted was directions. Sanctimonious old bag, if I were Dorothy, I’d stick my ruby slippers somewhere that the sun don’t shine. And I don’t mean over the bloody rainbow, either.

(See how full of herself she is; in her daft pink meringue, stupid headdress and she thinks murder with a house is hilarious. See? Bitch!)

Suzanne Stone-Maretto – To Die For: Fame. It’s a weird thing. A lot of people want it but once they have it, they don’t want it any more. It’s like that riddle that you broke out of a Christmas cracker. There are a select few though that loves the notoriety and everything it comes with. ‘To Die For’ pre-dates reality TV but some of the content is like this movie prophesized it. Suzanne wants fame, literally does anything to get it and is on a drug-like high when it finally comes to pluck her from obscurity. So much so that she’ll take it in the form of being on trial for her husband’s murder.

Miranda Priestly – The Devil Wears Prada: “Get me that piece of paper I had in my hand yesterday”. Miranda is a quiet storm. She never raises her voice because she doesn’t have to. She reminds me of the nun who was principal of my secondary school – the woman radiated cold, was 4’11 and could bring huge, burly 6th years to tears with a few words. And somehow, as tiny as she was, she always managed to look down her nose at you. With her white ‘Cruella de Vill’ hair and sweeping air of entitlement, she rules her world with an iron fist. She has one moment where she’s stripped of her glamour and seems frail and vulnerable but it only lasts for a brief time. Miranda wears her spike heels proudly – all the better for crushing you with, my dear.

Regina George – Mean Girls: Whatever you want to do in life, you have go to the source to learn how to do it. If you want to be a banker, you go to financial school. A doctor – Med. School. And if you want to be a bitch, you go to high-school. Regina George makes being a bitch into an art-form. The manipulations, the rumour spreading, the boy-friend stealing, the back-stabbing; it’s all in a day’s work for her and she doesn’t even break a sweat. Even at the end, she merely finds a more physical way to express herself but she’s not sorry. Not one bit.

Bridget/Wendy Kroy – The Last Seduction: Ice in her veins, desire in her heart and brilliance in her schemes, Wendy/Bridget, is one cool customer. She is Machiavelli in a black mini. The meanest, most evil thing she does is purposely scribble schoolgirl-like doodles on a notepad (‘Wendy loves Mike’, ‘I heart Mike’, ‘Mike and Wendy Forever’ – stuff like that) and leaves it for poor lust-lorn Mike to ‘find’. To make it worse, the sap keeps it as a token of her affection! (No, now that I think about it, probably the worst thing she does is kill her husband and frame Mike for it. Yeah, maybe that’s worse). She’s the Emperess of Bitchdom.

(Some scenes are graphic and disturbing, not for the faint of heart or work.)