The femme fatale: the ultimate misogynistic fantasy (Lizabeth Scott, Amber Dawn, etc.)

"Most women are unhappy, they just pretend they aren't".
-Gloria Grahame as Vicki Buckley in "Human Desire" (1954)

"Traditional horror has often portrayed female characters in direct relation to their sexual role according to men, such as the lascivious victim or innocent heroine; even vampy, powerful female villains, such as the classic noir “spider women”, use their sexual prowess to seduce and overwhelm married men.
Subversive, witty, sexy—and scary—Fist of the Spider Woman poses two questions: “What do queer women fear the most?” and “What do queer women desire the most?” Amber Dawn is a writer, performance artist, and radical sex/gender activist who co-edited With a Rough Tongue: Femmes Write Porn". Source: www.arsenalpulp.com

Kristen Stewart as Mallory, in "Welcome to the Rileys" (2010)

"These characters are reflections of the estimated 20,000 or so girls who are sexually exploited in North America. My novel gives these girls power." Source: thetyee.ca

Nora Zehetner played femme fatale Laura in "Brick" (2005)

Lizabeth Scott was called "Cinderella with a husky voice" by Humphrey Bogart in "Dead Reckoning" (1947)

The femme fatale of the film noir movies of the 1940s and 1950s is representative of several related personality disorders characterized by histrionics, self-absorption, psychopathy, and unpredictability. The 1940s were an era of "women’s pictures".
In a scene reminiscent of his final confrontation with Mary Astor in "The Maltese Falcon" (1941), Bogart tells 'Dusty' Chandler (Lizabeth Scott) that he plans on turning her over to the authorities.
Lizabeth Scott with Mary Astor and John Hodiak in Desert Fury (1947)

For the first time Hollywood assembled an array of films depicting the lives, challenges, and emotions of women. Audiences were almost entirely composed of women prior to 1945. The majority of box office stars were female. World War II induced an unparalleled collective response from women, resulting in new perspectives and rising ambitions. The femme fatale thus represents the ultimate misogynistic fantasy. These women are to be feared while simultaneously scapegoated for society’s problems. She controls her own sexuality, setting her apart from the patriarchal system. There’s no greater kick in this town than when a woman finally wraps her delicate fingers around the trigger of a .38 Linga and blasts away every bit of genetic encoding and cultural repression in a roaring fusillade of little lead forget-menots." Source: www.albany.edu

According to Diana McClellan's book on Sappho Hollywood, "The Girls", Lizabeth Scott was shunned late in the studio era for her sexual orientation. It was seen as an obscenity for Scott to be associated with lesbians as well as lesbian night clubs in L.A.

Amanda Seyfried as Valerie/Red Riding Hood in "Red Riding Hood" (2011), directed by Catherine Hardwicke
"Returning to the Dark, Little seeks the “angel” who saved her from an earlier scrape. A hallucinatory fall through blackness ends with a calming vision of light: “Heaven had a burgundy-red lampshade made of velvet nap paper. Heaven had dust on the bulb. Heaven was a honeyed-pine side table … a shamrock ashtray.” Little's sense of a revived and treasured memory is dashed by the image of a wrinkled woman on the bed, “the tread of sadness on her like her whole life had been a boot fight.” The scene distills all we've come to know and foresee about Little's station in the world". Does she escape her station? True to Little's experience, Dawn refuses to break the fantasy. If there is any redemption here, it's the saving gift of imagination". Source: www.theglobeandmail.com

"Dare to meet Little, the indescribably innocent, indescribably obscene protagonist of the decade’s most indescribably juicy novel. Part pulp noir, part porn, part metaphysical carnival-of-the-mind, Amber Dawn is to our generation what Lewis Carroll and Philip K. Dick were to theirs. Sub Rosa is a cult classic in the making".
—Elizabeth Bachinsky, Governor General’s Award Nominee for Home of Sudden Service (2006)

"The lost girls of Amber Dawn's debut novel are much closer to us than Neverland ... Little leads us into the liminal, between recurring dreams and eroding nightmares, just past that alley, two blocks from where you live. Familiar and astonishing, darkly intoxicating, Sub Rosa is a Goblin Market for the 21st century". —Hiromi Goto, author of Chorus of Mushrooms (1994 )

Bannon's books, like most pulp fiction novels, were not reviewed by newspapers or magazines when they were originally published between 1957 and 1962. However, since their release they have been the subject of analyses that offer differing opinions of Bannon's books as a reflection of the moral standards of the decade, a subtle defiance of those morals, or a combination of both. Andrea Loewenstein notes Bannon's use of cliché, suggesting that it reflected Bannon's own belief in the culturally repressive ideas of the 1950s.
-"Sad Stories: A Reflection on the Fiction of Ann Bannon". Conversely, writer Jeff Weinstein remarks that Bannon's "potboilers" are an expression of freedom because they address issues mainstream fiction did not in the 1950s. -Jeff Weinstein ("In Praise of Pulp: Bannon's Lusty Lesbians")
With a sharp pen, fierce intellect and ferocious take on sex, sex work and sexuality, Amber Dawn's first novel Sub Rosa is a page-turner. Some books take on humanity, others merely relay a story. Dawn's Sub Rosa does both and is explosive. With a brashness akin to Michelle Tea, Dawn explores sexuality, sensuality and subtlety. In moments protagonist Little lingers with innocent fragility, while in others she's overthrown by a sinister force that threatens to overwhelm her. Part pornography, part pulp fiction, Sub Rosa could be a darker, perhaps more twisted, compliment to Ann Bannon's famous lesbian chronicles. It's a modern-day musing on the roots of desire. —The Coast (Halifax, NS)