"Bad girl movies" are a subcategory of film noir labeled by latter-day movie buffs to describe the dark films of the 1940s and 1950s starring beautiful women who were usually on the wrong side of the law. The movie posters to these films usually featured sexy artwork of the lady in question, posed seductively, and these images today in original posters and reproductions are as collected today, as are the films themselves are on VHS and DVD.

Among the classic "bad girl" performances are Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity (1944), Gene Tierney in Leave Her to Heaven (1945), Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), Ann Savage in Detour (1946), Jane Greer in Out of the Past (1948), Joan Bennett in Scarlet Street (1948), Rita Hayworth in The Lady From Shanghai (1948), Marilyn Monroe in Niagra, Cleo Moore in One Girl's Confession (1953), and Jane Russell in The Revolt of Mamie Stover (1956). Stanwyck, Savage, Bennett, and Moore made multiple films that fall into the "bad girl movie" category as did Ava Gardner, Gloria Grahame, Dorothy Malone, Beverly Michaels , Lizabeth Scott, Audrey Totter, Claire Trevor, Mamie Van Doren, Marie Windsor, and Shelley Winters.

Perhaps the ultimate bad girl movies are women's prison movies with the women in question behind bars; the majority of these films were made well after the classical film noir period and include one of the more socially-conscious films of the genre, Why Must I Die?