The radical intervention achieved by the original edition of Women in Film Noir two decades ago was its celebration of this male-imagined genre as a rare acknowledgment of female sexuality and power, i.e., of the femme fatale as an agent within the popular sexual economy. It is important to note, however, that the classic femme fatale’s lust was overwhelmingly for money rather than sexual pleasure. Despite her sexualised image, economic ambition supplanted her libido and violence displaced sexual pleasure. The classic femme fatale was known for her trigger-happy killings, not her orgasms. Her sexuality per se was passive, limited to its allure. Although narratively she manoeuvred the male protagonist with her sexuality, the specifically sexual desire and pleasure it served belonged to the male.

By contrast, the neo-noir femme fatale wants sexual pleasure as well as economic power. In The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), platinum blond Cora (Lana Turner) trades in her older husband for the younger and more erotically appealing Frank (John Garfield), but in the film’s remake (1981, with Jessica Lange) Cora not only gets off on rough sex but arouses herself manually while Frank (Jack Nicholson) is still getting into position — thus making her sexual goal explicit (to us as well as him). In Double Indemnity (1944), Phyllis (Barbara Stanwyck) teases Walter (Fred MacMurray) with double entendres, but in Body Heat (1981), black widow Matty (Kathleen Turner) entreats her lover-attorney Ned (William Hurt) — who thinks it was his idea to break through her door and have sex on the floor — ‘Yes, yes, yes. Please do it.’ The orgasmic femme fatale has become a staple of neo-noirs such as Black Widow (1986), Fatal Attraction (1987), After Dark, My Sweet (1990), Basic Instinct (1992), Body of Evidence (1992), Romeo is Bleeding (1994), The Last Seduction (1994), Diabolique (1996) and Lost Highway (1997).