Marnie

Are monsters like Wuornos depraved because they're deprived? That psychological chestnut gets the acid treatment in "Marnie" (1964), one of Alfred Hitchcock's most perverse plunges into the female psyche. Tippi Hedren, the ice queen who allegedly turned down the director's ... moreadvances, plays a shape-changing siren who seduces and steals from men.

Sexually traumatized as a child, Marnie is turned on by getting her hands on men's goods. In her world-view, "women are stupid and feeble, men are filthy pigs." The cold blonde's true love? A great black stallion she comes home to after every excursion into larceny.

What treatment does Hitchcock prescribe for Marnie? Supermacho Sean Connery, the rich, smart stud (named Rutland!) who traps and "tames" his exotic captive. This upscale outlaw must be brought down from her high horse — rape followed by a psychodrama at her mother's knee ought to do the trick. Horrifying to contrast the confident con artist at the beginning of the film with the childlike, broken woman in the last scene of "Marnie."

Hedren in "Marnie" (Courtesy the Everett Collection)