1. Phyllis Dietrichson - Double Indemnity (1944)
The story of Walter Neff is told in flashback. He is an insurance salesman who was accosted by Phyllis Dietrichson who makes it clear that she wants to take out an insurance policy on her old man and then kill him, collecting the financial spoils. Walter backs off but he cannot stop thinking about the charms of Phyllis and together they pull off killing her husband and collecting the money. Barton Keyes, who works with Neff is unconvinced it was suicide and he speculates Phyllis had an accomplice. To complicate matters, Phyllis' stepdaughter Lola arrives and is suspicious and hostile. The authorities are on to Neff and Dietrichson. Phyllis admits she has been having an affair with Lola's boyfriend Nino and Keyes thinks he is the other party. Neff goes to phyllis and there is a showdown with guns between the two which eventually necessitates murder and a confession. At the time the film was made, Barbara Stanwyck was not only just the highest paid woman in Hollywood, she was the highest paid woman in the world. Initially wary of taking on such a project with an evil femme fatale (Stanwyck had always been heroines in her films), she came to appreciate the film after she made it because it is possibly the greatest film she worked on. Stanwyck took on the role of the double crossing dame with ease and had no problems portraying the full ugliness of Phyllis Dietrichson's character. The thieving, deceiving, murderous super-slut - is brought to life capably by Stanwyck and was much imititated in a flurry of films that strove to replicate Double Indemnity's success, but did not have the simultaneous charisma and menace of Stanwyck's character Phyllis Dietrichson.