As Sharon Stone makes a seductive return in
'Basic Instinct 2,' we highlight cinema's naughtiest gals

By Sean Axmaker
Special to MSN Movies

Sharon Stone on 'Basic Instinct 2'

Watch the 'Basic Instinct 2' trailer

Down the mean streets of crime movies walk the tarnished urban knights. They wear business suits of soiled armor and follow a long-corrupted chivalry, if any at all. Some of them search for damsels in distress -- sometimes to save them, sometimes merely to comfort with masculine manners and lusty desires -- before they set off on another scheme or scam or joust with another hungry hustler. But often the damsels themselves are more dangerous. Their feminine wiles and feigned fragilities are simply masks for a dame deadlier than the man: the femme fatale.

A true femme fatale is no mere bad woman. Anyone can be bad. The femme fatale is wickedness as high art, beauty carved out of arsenic. She's a devil in stilettos and a skirt (preferably slit all the way up her long, gorgeous gams), a siren who uses sex to lure men to their doom. She has larceny in her heart, murder in her soul and a fortune in her eye.

Her patsy is the corruptible cop, the bored businessman, the weak husband with wandering eyes and curious hands, the morally flexible lawyer and the private eye. She comes on like a kitten, cuddling and toying with her prey before drawing blood; behind her kittenish purr and womanly curves growls a man-eating lioness.

And she is timeless, perhaps eternal. Just look at Sharon Stone, whose icy blond sex bomb Catherine Tramell returns in "Basic Instinct 2" for more fun and sex and murder-as-foreplay. It takes more than a murder investigation to keep a bad woman down.

Don't believe me? Check out the files on the 10 greatest, most ruthless femmes fatales, from  hard-boiled film noir dames to contemporary temptresses. The hemlines may rise and the banter evolve, but wherever there are men ripe for manipulation, the femme fatale will be there to pull the strings, make them dance to their tune and then cut the cords, leaving them a hopeless heap on the empty stage.

10. Renata (Connie Nielsen), "The Ice Harvest" (2005)

Her tangled web: Connie Nielsen is no stranger when it comes to playing calculating women of dubious ethics (see "Gladiator" and "Demonlover"), but her brazen yet tastefully stylish Wichita, Kan., strip-club manager in "The Ice Harvest" is a classic noir dame in modern dress. She's got Veronica Lake looks, Barbara Stanwyck confidence and a seductively breathy voice that hides a cynical soul and a killer instinct. It's easy to see why shyster lawyer John Cusack carries a torch for the brittle beauty, and easier still to understand his reluctance to trust her completely.

You know she's trouble when: She has a small fortune in bound bills sitting in her closet.

Luscious line: (moments before she tries to kill her lover) "To the victor go the spoils."

9. Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss), "Memento" (2000)

Her tangled web: Natalie is a femme fatale largely by opportunity in Christopher Nolan's ingenious post-modern noir. When an obsessed detective (Guy Pearce) with no short-term memory walks into her bar, she finds a patsy tailor-made for her wiles. Where other femmes fatales are cold and unfeeling, the emotionally calloused Natalie is angry and vulnerable, and her wicked cruel streak is unforgettable. She reconstructs his reality in front of his face and smirks as she twists his quest for vengeance into her own sordid revenge.

You know she's trouble when: She gleefully rubs your face in her scheme ... and you can't do a thing about it.

Luscious lines: "You know what? I think I'm gonna use you. I'm telling you now, because I'll enjoy it so much more if I know that you could stop me if you weren't such a f***ing freak!"

Next: "Romeo is Bleeding," "Out of the Past" and more