As the equally beloved and dreaded Valentine’s Day begins to rear its ugly head, audiences might be looking back at the on-screen couples they’ve come to know and love - Baby and Johnny, Noah and Allie, Sandy and Danny… Unfortunately, none of those couples committed nearly enough felonies to warrant a special mention in the “Destructive Couple” Hall of Fame. Valentine’s Day doesn’t always look like a Hallmark movie with roses and chocolate stuffed down its throat; sometimes, romance looks like the punk rock drug use of Sid and Nancy or Thelma and Louise driving off a cliff. So, without further ado, here are some of the wildest, most reckless and vicious couples to ever grace the silver screen.

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4 Alabama and Clarence - True Romance

     Warner Bros

Guns! Drugs! Hawaiian Shirts! Quentin Tarantino and Tony Scott don’t disappoint when it comes to the utterly unhinged story of Clarence and Alabama in True Romance. As part of the average, freewheeling American road trip, Clarence and Alabama murder Alabama’s abusive pimp, the scar-faced Drexl Spivey (a name that sounds like it should be plastered across an off-brand can of multipurpose lubricant) and unintentionally drive off into the sunset with an inordinate amount of cocaine. Unfortunately, it turns out that people tend to be reasonably protective over their cocaine, and as such, hunt the duo down.

MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

Amongst the murders committed by Clarence and Alabama (in self-defense or otherwise) are Virgil, a drug gang under-lord, Drexl, the aforementioned pimp, and Marty, Drexl’s gigantic bodyguard. Lest viewers forget, Alabama successfully manages to set a man on fire with a can of hairspray and eventually stab him in the back with a corkscrew, in what could also be considered the 5-Minute Crafts of homicides.

While the pair are portrayed as kindred soulmates, including their mixed obsessions with Elvis Presley, kung fu movies and strange stomach-licking sex scenes, the ability to empathize with these characters doesn’t make them any less calamitous and destructive. Without a shadow of a doubt, Clarence and Alabama are one of the most unhinged couples in all of cinematic history, not even necessarily because of the murders, but because they’re willing to subject their future child to a life of being named Elvis.

3 Pat and Tiffany - Silver Linings Playbook

     Weinstein Company

While Pat and Tiffany from Silver Linings Playbook have justifiable reasons to behave turbulently, including long-standing mental health issues and massive psychological trauma, there’s nothing that screams “destructive” more than sarcastically shouting, “I am just a crazy sl*t with a dead husband!” and launching your quasi-boyfriend’s bowl of 9PM Raisin Bran across the room. Sure, maybe he deserves it for being a fully grown man who voluntarily eats Raisin Bran at a restaurant, but Tiffany deserves props for the sheer, chaotic spectacle that she manages to bring to every kind of social interaction.

Though it’s not like Pat ever chooses to neutralize the situation. Anytime Tiffany does something mildly disruptive, like asking about Pat’s use of antidepressants in the middle of a salad-and-duck-and-awkward-conversation dinner party, he’ll usually hit her with the comment of, “You have poor social skills,” as though one of his first conversation openers wasn’t, “How did your husband die?”

Of course, maybe they’re the Yin and Yang of poorly managed mental issues, and it’s not really as bad as the other toxic couples who usually end up going on the lam to escape a federal arrest warrant, but Pat and Tiffany definitely still belong on the severe end when it comes to destructive relationships in film (at least, for those around them who are expected to adapt to their behavior). That’s the thing about destructive couples– like a massive gravitational force, they change the orbits of everyone around them.

2 Anita and Howard - Guncrazy

     Zeta Entertainment

In 1992, Drew Barrymore was still the baby-faced wild child of various rehabilitation clinics, and American culture hung tightly to a laissez-faire attitude surrounding gun safety. With reference to this, Guncrazy is the story of teenager Anita Minteer, who shoots her abusive step-father, helps her newly-appointed inmate boyfriend out of prison, and eventually goes on a killing spree of sorts.

While the notion of “young woman inflicts some kind of cosmic anti-hero revenge on abusive men,” à la the 2020 Promising Young Woman, is an appealing concept, there’s little to anchor the visual image of tiny, chubby-cheeked Barrymore chucking the corpse of her deceased step-father into a furnace in the California deserts. Nor is it comfortable to accept the storyline of Howard, the inherently predatory felon who has been recently released, who replaces the void in Anita’s life left by her other, older male abuser. In spite of (or potentially because of) the plainly gross dynamics of their relationship, Anita and Howard are one of the most destructive couples in the list - both to others, and to themselves.

1 White Girl and Cyclona - Freeway II: Confessions of a Trickbaby

     Alliance Cinema / The Kushner-Locke Company

Speaking of teenage girls committing felonies as some kind of revenge on society, Freeway II: Confessions of a Trickbaby stars Natasha Lyonne as White Girl, a fifteen-year-old bulimic prostitute who lands in the slammer for robbing her clients, and Maria Celedonia as Cyclona, a fellow teenage girl who is described as “a lesbian teenage serial killer" in descriptions of the film. Quality stuff, right? There’s also a fundamental ‘childhood fairytale’ element, as per the original Freeway movie, which depicted Reese Witherspoon and Kiefer Sutherland in an homage to Little Red Riding Hood, and Freeway II keeps the Hansel and Gretel narrative close to heart.

In terms of plot, this film is so strange and convoluted that explaining it would be like trying to recount a particularly vivid fever dream in a few terms– child eating sex cult, necrophilia, crack cocaine, a brief vacation in Tijuana, UFO alien abduction, transgender rhetoric, and way too many beanies. Freeway II is the only item on this list where multiple homicides really seems like the least of the main characters’ problems. Fortunately, the girls “engage in some rampant, lesbian sex,” (like any good focus point of a plot summary) and as such, loosely fit into the “destructive couples” category.

Despite this film’s abysmal audience reviews, it’s almost impossible to watch this film without spending the rest of the night writing equally horrendous adaptations of a non-existent Freeway III in your head. “Freeway III: The Three Little Pigs," for instance– a story about three corrupt cops who experience gritty consequences when they fall into business with the neighborhood’s local gang member, the Big Bad Wolf. Or “Freeway III: Snow White," wherein a suitably grungy-eyed teenage girl gets trafficked into a cocaine ring where she must murder seven men to escape. Why aren’t you writing this down, Matthew Bright?

Overall, from the serial killers to the cereal killers, there’s been a fair share of destructive couples plastered across the big screen. Maybe on Valentine’s Day, instead of wishing they could have a picture-perfect movie relationship, viewers can see these films and be grateful for what they do or don’t have.