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Oh, here she comes
Watch out, boy, she'll chew you up
A classic character type, the beauty who uses her feminine wiles to undermine a moral and upright man, for evil purposes. She's evil and sexy, a liar and a sneak, and uses the good guy's sympathy against him, often with a sob story about her mother and some hospital bills or a Wounded Gazelle Gambit.
Unlike the Femme Fatale and Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter, she is rotten to the core, and will never be swayed from the path of darkness by love.
The name comes from classic silent films, where this character is part of a standardized plot. A red-blooded American boy must choose between his familiar, cutesy-plain sweetheart and this seductress.
This trope is Cyclic. In certain eras, as with the "hat dichotomy" from westerns but more actual in fact, The Vamp is almost always black-haired, while the good girl is a blonde. At other times, blondes are inherently more evil. In the cold war era, the raven-haired temptress was a Soviet spy, when not just a torturer like The Baroness.
Is often the Lady In Red and even more commonly the Woman In Black.
Although the name is derived from "vampire", this character is most commonly a normal human, but some supernatural entities are known to influence men in this way. Succubi and Sirens are known to lure men in to be eaten, for example.
Compare with the Femme Fatale, the somewhat more sympathetic version of this character, and Casanova.
Examples
Anime and Manga
- Mitsuko Souma in Battle Royale.
- Slan from Berserk.
- Evangeline from Mahou Sensei Negima is more of a Noble Demon, but definitely has had some vampish moments- appropriately, being an actual vampire. Her attempts at seduction fail miserably, though, since her first target was Happily Married, and the second hasn't gone through puberty yet.
- It should be noted that Tsukuyomi represents something like this to Setsuna; she tells Setsuna that being human is a weakness and behaving like a teenage girl is likely to cost her more fights. Its possible that she both wants to force Setsuna away from Konoka by showing her her weakness, while also setting up an In Love With Your Carnage situation once Setsuna does move towards her 'heartless swordsman' persona.
- Parodied in Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, where a woman tries to pull this to steal government secrets from a group of Otaku. Of course, they were specifically chosen to guard the secrets because their obsession with 2D girls would make them immune to The Vamp...
- Houshin Engi has Dakki.
- Light Yagami from Death Note is a rare male example.
Comic Books
- Ava Lord from the Sin City story "A Dame to Kill For" was an evil (by her own admission) and greedy seductress who manipulated her old lover Dwight McCarthy through a Wounded Gazelle Gambit into murdering her husband so she could get her hands on all his money, and then tried to kill him once he had outlived his usefulness to her. As Manute, her Dragon (who would later show up in "The Big Fat Kill") explains, Dwight is not the first man she has destroyed with her deadly wiles. Lampshaded-slash-deconstructed in her admission, as she points out that "evil ruthless seductress" is so cliche nobody believes she can be one ... until it's too late.
- Poison Ivy in the Batman comic books, especially before she became eco-terrorist.
- Nocturna is another seductress Batman foe. What's it with Batman? Is it the ears? It's the car. Chicks dig the car. Or, maybe the hat. You have to touch it.
- Sandman Mystery Theatre had an arc titled The Vamp, featuring one of these. The title character became a bit more sympathetic when her Start Of Darkness story was told.
- Mystique, long time foe of the X-men, is the absolute embodiment of this trope.
- Selene, the Black Queen of the Hellfire Club, also qualifies.
- Bridget Keating from Knights of the Dinner Table, although Bridget is more selfish than evil.
- Lulu Romanov in Nikolai Dante
Film
- Black Widow (1987), played by Theresa Russell, a serial killer of rich men she married, ostensibly for their money. Strong bisexual theme as well.
- Pick a version of The Parent Trap. In this case, it takes the twin girls wreaking havoc on The Vamp to make Dad realize that he's about to marry a gold-digging bitch, which was completely obvious to everyone else from the moment the woman appeared on the screen. She'll likely overlap with the Rich Bitch in this case.
- Kris Bolin from The Temp
- The 1967 version of Bedazzled has Lust, played by Raquel Welch.
- Silent film actress Theda Bara in ... pretty much anything, but especially 1915's A Fool There Was, where she's actually billed as "The Vampire."
- Elektra in The World Is Not Enough.
- The woman from the city in silent classic Sunrise.
- A whole series of Film Noir movies made in the 1940s and 50s: Phyllis in Double Indemnity, Kathie from Out of the Past. Even Marilyn Monroe's character in Niagara.
- A significant portion of Marlene Dietrich's career was built on such titles as Devil Is a Woman.
- Conchita in Bunuel's That Obscure Object of Desire. Hell, it took two actresses to carry all this vampishness.
- Kara is even referred to as such in the 2006 high school noir, Brick.
- Cthulhu (2007). Susan tries to seduce the protagonist Russell Marsh as part of the Cult of Dagon's plan to have him pass on his seed (creating a Hybrid Monster). As Russell is gay, her charms don't work on him, so she drugs and rapes him instead.
- Bridget in The Last Seduction (1994)
- Suzanne Stone the Villain Protagonist of To Die For (1995) is a partial parody of The Vamp - she's beautiful, utterly ruthless, manipulative... and dumb as a post.
- Lady Kaede in Akira Kurosawa's Ran starts out as a Lady Macbeth to her husband. After he's killed in battle she becomes a Vamp to his brother, seducing becoming Lady Mac to him and makes him order the death of his wife, Lady Sue.
- In Dracula's Daughter, the actual vampire Countess Marya Zaleska also tries to play this role with Dr. Geoffrey Garth. This is lampshaded when the Head of Scotland Yard tells his man-servant that he is going hunting "vampires," to which the latter replies: "But I always understood you went after them with chequebooks, sir."
- Nazi Vamps like Ilsa Haupstein (from Hellboy) and Dr Elsa Schneider
 from Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade. Unrepentant and black-hearted bitches. Also an example of The Vamp, Blondes Are Evil and Evil Is Sexy.
Literature
- Milady de Winter in The Three Musketeers.
- Played for laughs in The Science of Discworld II: The Globe; the queen of The Fair Folk tries to seduce Rincewind, but all he desires is potatoes.
- Vorpax Mortal Kombat: Conquest. Not that there's anything wrong with wanting to seduce Shang Tsung...
- The Snow Queen
- The White Witch of CS Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia, even more so in the films. But even in The Magician's Nephew, she strikes Diggory as stunning (while Polly doesn't see the attraction), and Uncle Andrew loses his head over her, even imagining she might find him attractive. And, of course, the Lady of the Green Kirtle from The Silver Chair seduces and enslaves the prince. Jill does see the attraction. In the film adaption of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Edmund even imagines her promising to make him "a king...and more," making it obvious that this was a large factor in his decision to come her mole.
- Zenia in Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride.
- In Graham McNeill's Warhammer 40000 Horus Heresy novel Fulgrim, Bequa Kenska. When her attempt to seduce Ostian Delafour fails, she is enraged both to lose the chance to corrupt his youth and innocence, and because she had never failed before.
- The titular character in Andrew Vachss' Strega (the second Burke novel) is explicitly The Vamp to the extent that she even Lampshades the fact that she can bend men to her will. The protagonist Burke does succumb to her sexual wiles but subverts the trope in that he's perfectly aware of what she represents, and he manages pulls away once her goals are no longer parallel with his. The girlfriend in Vachss' The Getaway Man plays the trope straight, however.
- Lara Raith of The Dresden Files. She's also a psychic vampire who feeds on people's souls during sex.
- Nefer of The Egyptian although she is considerate enough to actually warn him first. Doesn't help, though.
- Cavilo attempts this with Emperor Gregor Vorbarra in the Vorkosigan Saga. As you might guess from the "attempts", it doesn't work out the way she planned.
- This trope is so old even parodying it is Older Than Steam. At the end of the King Arthur story Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Gawain claims he has learned never to trust women, that they only lead you to sin, etc. etc. The Green Knight tells him this is ridiculous and that he has to take responsibility for his own failure.
- Male example: Spyros Stavaronas, the attractive young shrimp fisherman in Alexandra by Scott O'Dell. At first, he uses his charms to distract Alexandra so his henchmen can smuggle cocaine on her boat. When Alexandra finds out, he further tries to charm her into keeping his secret and not turning them into the cops.
- Mr. Wickham from Pride And Prejudice is another male example. Unlike the passive if Hedonistic Casanova Willoughby of Sense And Sensibility, who doesn't care if he breaks hearts, Wickham actively tries to win the heorine over and turn her against Mr. Darcy via Malicious Slander. This is years after he tried to get revenge on Mr. Darcy by seducing his sister. Elizabeth later feels terrible over how easily she believed his lies.
Live Action TV
- Victoria Metcalf, the psychotic, poetry-loving bank robber who was the love of Benton Fraser's life in Due South.
- Lila in Dexter. Granted, Dexter is most certainly not your typical "moral and upright man", but Lila's willing to go places that even he won't. The nihilistic temptress comes complete with black hair, in contrast to Dexter's blonde good-girl girlfriend Rita.
- Catwoman in the Batman TV series was always trying to tempt Batman into joining her in a life of crime, even offering to kill Robin in a painless fashion to free Batman from his obligations.
- iCarly: Valerie in iWill Date Freddie uses her feminine wiles to lure Freddie to her web show, temporarily stealing him from iCarly, and even goes so far as to try it on Sam. Another example is Missy trying to "break up" Carly and Sam.
- "Saffron" in Firefly has married numerous men under as many aliases for pretty much the express purpose of ripping them off. Damn good criminal mastermind, too.
- Oz. Shirley Bellinger, who drowned her own child in a fake accident based on the Susan Smith case. She gives sexual favours to both inmates and prison guards in exchange for preferential treatment, leading to a Crowning Moment Of Funny when, as she's being led off for execution, Shirley calmly informs Warden Glynn that the guard escorting her has been "coming into my cell every night and fucking me." Faced with a glowering Warden and a prisoner who'll soon be beyond any retaliation, the guard can only mutter, "Bitch."
- Ashton Main Huntoon Fenway from the 1980s mini-series North and South. She marries James only to gain a sort of political power and wealth despite coming from a Southern aristocratic family, plots against her sweet sister Brett and Billy's romance-turned-marriage, seduces multiple men after a failed attempt to get into Billy's pants...and this is all just Book One...
- Vala Mal Doran from Stargate SG-1 was introduced as a straightforward vamp, but she got better.
- Tammy, Ron Swanson's ex-wife on Parks and Recreation played by Megan Mullally. She's the deputy director of the Library department who seduces her ex Ron, the head of Parks and Rec dept. and sleeps with him again in exchange for the empty lot his deputy director Leslie Knope wants to turn into a park. As Tammy tells Leslie: "Les, there are two kinds of women in the world. There are women who work hard and stress out about doing the right thing, and then there are women who are cool."
- When "Tennessee" Ernie Ford comes to visit in I Love Lucy, Lucy tries to scare him away by dressing up as a "wicked city woman" ("the kind your mother warned you about!"). She "vamps" him by messing up his hair with her hands, and it backfires when he starts to like it.
- On her first appearance on Hercules, Xena was this as well as a Dark Action Girl. By her second appearance all traces of the vamp had disappeared and she was only the Dark Action Girl before being redeemed.
- Sarah from Survivors is first seen using her feminine wiles to manipulate a smitten plague survivor who she promptly leaves to die after he breaks his leg in an accident. She begins working her way through the male members of the main cast from there.
- A very similar character appeared in the original version of the series under the name Anne, although she only appears in handful of episodes.
Mythology and Religion
- The classic Vamp, of course, is Delilah, from the biblical story of Samson. While the true historical Delilah is unknown outside of this account, the biblical story clearly treats her as a villainess who tempts Samson away from his godly ways, and thus brings about his downfall, symbolic emasculation, and captivity. So this trope is Older Than Feudalism.
- Did Not Do The Research. They were a couple before she intended to betray him. And she betrayed him very effectively, but you have to remember that her life was threatened. Of course, she could've just asked her extremely Bad Ass fiance for protection. That almost qualifies as Too Dumb To Live.
- As mentioned above there are a few mythological creatures who act like this.
- The Succubus, a demon which disguises itself as a beautiful woman to cause trouble (what kind of trouble tends to vary).
- The Sirens from Greek mythology. Bird-women who lured sailers to their death with their singing.
Tabletop Games
Theater
Video Games
- The SiN series features Vamp/Baroness combo Elexis Sinclaire.
- The Metal Gear Solid series features a (male) character codenamed Vamp, who fits aspects of this trope. His codename is derived not from his taste for drinking blood, but from his bisexuality, playing off of an older use of the term. The sexual aspects were downplayed in-game, compared to the original trailer, but it was conclusively stated that he was not, in fact, a vampire. Twice.
- Vamp is a subversion. Vamp had a boyfriend in the form of Scott Dolph before said boyfriend was killed in the tanker incident. Although it's never outright stated that his relationship wasn't for some sort of underlying, self-centered motive, nothing about it ever gave him any kind of gain. His boyfriend was his best friend's father, on top of it, which could've conceivably risked damaging that friendship, so the only possible reason for him to have the relationship was just to have it out of genuine care for Dolph. It's played straight in Guns of the Patriots, however, as he's really friendly with Naomi, and she does have something of value he wants; his own death.
- Also EVA from MGS3 to some extent, though you don't find out till the ending. However, she's more of a deconstruction of this trope, as it's revealed that she genuinely did love Big Boss, and even joined him in overthrowing the faction of The Patriots lead by Major Zero, Para-Medic and Sigint after the organization was split in two thanks to a falling out between Big Boss and Major Zero, part of which was caused by Zero cloning Big Boss and creating Big Boss' "sons." Moreover, EVA volunteered to be the surrogate mother of Solid and Liquid, all because her love for Big Boss, and even though Solid Snake was a clone, she still saw him as a son.
- Dahlia Hawthorne in the third Phoenix Wright game.
- Trauma Center: Under the Knife 2 has Reina, who attempts to get Derek to join her company, steals his Healing Touch, and finally carries the final Neo-GUILT.
- You can play one in the Neverwinter Nights mod A Dance With Rogues. There are a surprising number of quests in which having sex with enemies is a shortcut to let you kill them more easily, or in the case of the Dhorn Generals' Heads quest in the first chapter the only path to getting to kill them.
- Morinth from Mass Effect 2. Her modus operandi is seducing people, then killing them via her genetic defect that causes brain overload during sex. Interestingly, she's a recruitable character.
- I-No from Guilty Gear.
Webcomics
- Sabine from Order of the Stick is a succubus in red leather. In a bit of a subversion, her vamping didn't work on the Genre Savvy Roy Greenhilt the time she tried it on him, and most of it's directed at her boss Nale. It didn't work on Miko, either.
- Amelia Sturtz in Dominic Deegan used her looks to get men close enough to her to hypnotize them through eye contact.
Web Original
- In Survival of the Fittest, several female players, such as Katherine Marks, Clemence, and Chi Masumi, have used their looks to try to seduce male opponents and catch them off guard or get protection/help from them. Usually, they try to kill the male once they're vulnerable. This has just about never worked, James Coombs, Naoji Hideyoshi, and Aaron Redfield being the only actual victims of this tactic so far. Non-player females sometimes try to do something similar to charm males into helping them, but this has become rare by v3.
Western Animation
- The Martian Queen from Duck Dodgers tries. The hero's too stupid to fall for it. (In some episodes she's a Femme Fatale who's genuinely in love with Dodgers, but he's still too stupid to notice.)
- Subverted in one of Saturday Night Live's "Ambiguously Gay Duo" cartoon shorts. An alien queen plans to use her feminine wiles to distract Ace and Gary, but Dr. Bighead replies, "I, uh, don't think that'll work on those two." Which it didn't. They have very strong moral constitutions obviously.
- Avatar: The Last Airbender: Most Mai haters portray her in this role for Zuko in Fan Fiction, though in the show, the job clearly belongs to Azula.
- Venus in The Tick is a G-rated example, played for comedy. She can channel her "feminine wiles" into a form of actual mind control.
- Blackarachnia of Transformers Animated wavers between this and Femme Fatale. Even if she was redeemed, it would be very hard for anyone (besides Optimus, the sap) to trust it. Which is odd, because while she's fairly sexy by human body shape standards, she's also technoorganic—and most Transformers are repulsed by anything organic. However, many of the Autobots find her very attractive and only Blitzwing and Sentinel Prime react with anything approaching disgust. The latter even tries to kill her, despite the fact that she was once his best friend.
- Hollie Would from Cool World. Kind of like the evil blonde version of Jessica Rabbit.
- Sedusa of the PowerpuffGirls
Other
- Roodaka from Bionicle is a quintessential example.
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