There’s a lot to love about action films. The stupid plots, the predictable explosions, and – if you’re lucky – the bad-ass babes. The babes that wear the pants in the movie who shoot, maim and blow up anyone and everyone that gets in their way. Sometimes they’re killing blood-thirsty aliens, sometimes they’re giving much-needed spankings to naughty vampires. Wherever it is they’re aiming the smack-down, we love to watch it. Here are Spike’s Top 7 Bad-Ass Babes of Cinema.
7. Linda Hamilton – Terminator 2
Linda Hamilton isn’t going to win any awards for hottest babe, but she’s up there for the toughest. Here’s a broad who can kick an entire looney ward’s butt, face down against two terminators, and deal with a screechy Edward Furlong all at once. She knows how to fight, shoot and detonate pretty much anything, and about the only thing that could stop her is a Terminator – though it should be noted that two different models failed. Most men can’t do as many pull-ups as she does in T2, much less hold their own against Arnold Schwarzenegger. Props to Hamilton for keeping the machines in their place as servants to humankind.
6. Michelle Pfeiffer – Batman Returns
I’m not sure I’ve seen Michelle Pfeiffer look sexier than she did in Batman Returns. Here’s a hottie who can hold her own against the foulest lowlifes in Gotham, and probably the only person in the city who can take on Batman. You know you’re bad-ass when Batman has to stop what he’s doing and put time aside to fight you before he’s able to put in a full day’s work. And you know you’re sexy when you’re the only female in Gotham who can distract Batman without killing civilians or colluding with crime bosses. A few sexy strides along a roof top, a couple lashes of her whip, and it doesn’t matter what kind of rubber pajamas you wear in public. No man has a defense against that.
5. Angelina Jolie – Wanted
She drives fast cars, she shoots big guns, she kills bad men – by the dozen. Most polls report that she’s in the top 2 percentile of teachers men would like to learn from in the event they were recruited to become part of an ancient circle of assassins. She’s probably the only person you wouldn’t be discouraged by if she came up to you in the grocery store and informed you that you were about to be assassinated. Jolie also gets an honorable mention for her sexy bouts of tomb raiding in the Lara Croft films. Whether you put this lady in boots or arm her to the teeth, she’s liable to annihilate a man or two before she’s even revealed her weapon.
4. Anne Parillaud – La Femme Nikita
After felon Nikita is convicted yet again of robbery and murder, she is not sent away to jail, but instead trained as an international spy and assassin. It seems the secret services in France prefer to make lemonade out of lemons rather than waste a perfectly lethal criminal. Yes, it’s true, 75% of the time when a film needs to infuse murderers with pathos it features an assassin. But how often do we really get to explore the inner workings of French assassins? Or better yet, female French assassins? Well, Anne Parillaud is stunning and steely as both. If you don’t have a fetish for French films, watch this one and you will.
3. Megan Fox – Transformers
For many people, Megan Fox was the saving grace of Transformers. Sure, there were huge walking robots that could talk, philosophize and save the earth from the grip of the Decepticons, but none of that compared to Megan Fox leaning over to check out Bumblebee’s engine, or running through downtown Los Angeles as Megatron blows up everything around her. If any babe could steal a scene from a thirty-foot tall Mac truck that can transform into a non-biological entity named Optimus Prime, it’s Megan Fox. And steal scenes she does. She may not wield any heavy artillery or teach anyone the P’s and Q’s of assassination, but dang if she doesn’t pull focus from every multimillion dollar effect in Transformers. If Michael Bay really wants to get a bang for his buck in the sequel, he ought to consider calling it: Transformers: Return of the Fox.
2. Kate Beckinsale – Underworld I and II
There are a whole lot of vampire movies out there, and there have even been a few hot female vampires through the ages. But I think it’s safe to say that Kate Beckinsale takes the blood-sucking succubus cake. It’s hard to nail down just what makes Beckinsale so damn hot in these movies, but I’ll take a stab at it: her skin-tight leather unitard; her ability to leap twenty feet in the air and smite whatever she lands on; her fangs. All of these things would convince most men to join the ranks of the eternally damned if it meant they would have a shot at helping Beckinsale spread her wrath to the undead. And the great thing is, for all her vampiric idiosyncrasies, she’s actually pro-human! She believes humans should be able to live their lives in peace without being ordered around like slaves by some ruling class of privileged blood-suckers. That’s more than I can say for Sarah Palin! So I’m officially casting my vote for Kate Beckinsale as the hottest descendent of Vlad the Impaler this side of the after life.
1. Sigourney Weaver – Aliens I, II, III and IV
Some people may take issue with my ranking Sigourney Weaver number one on this list. She’s not the curviest, she’s not the most seductive, and she’s certainly not the most well-endowed. But if it wasn’t for Weaver we wouldn’t have the Jolies, Beckinsales and Pfeiffers. She’s the reigning founder and queen of bad-ass babes and shall sit atop the throne until her death. From the first time she blew a xenomorph out the air lock of the Nostromo, to her genetic orgy with the queen xeen herself, Ellen Ripley didn’t take a lick of shit from any of these acid-pumping aliens. In the process she erected a monolith of cinematic feminism that took no prisoners, and paved the way for all the kick-butt babes after her. She proved that whether she was saving a colony full of dim-witted marines, or planet earth itself, the last thing she needed was a man’s help. I think the best scene from the Aliens quadrilogy is at the end of the second film, when Ripley squares off against the queen alien. Strapped into an upright forklift turned alien combat armor, she smacks the queen around like a red-headed step child. Dodging its scorpion tail and blow-torching its face she screams in fury as she triumphs over her otherworldly foe. Now there’s a feminist cause I can get behind.
