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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Films of villainy

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nyarlathotep's shoe horn

15:59 / 11.07.05

this idea stirred from a recent re-watching of two of my favourite films (in a list of hundreds of favourites), within which four of the vilest villains operate and machinate.

The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover

Albert Spica by far the nastiest I've ever seen. He's loud, boorish, with aspirations of epicurianism, treating all manner of aesthetic experience with crude observation. prone to violence and degradation, he takes the prize in my pantheon of Evil.

I guess the opening scene sets the tone appropriately.

Rob Roy has the distinction of housing three nasty villains, and I'm not sure which I love to loathe the more:
Killairn, Archibald Cunningham, and Montrose. Each a despicable cad. Killairn, the plotting opportunist, Archie the self-serving fop of action, and Montrose, who puts himself above his station as he holds everyone else down to theirs.

I mean, ick!

anyone else got any cinematographical champions of vice?

>pablo

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

16:13 / 11.07.05

My favorite movie villain of all time is Frank from Blue Velvet. Hennis Hopper at his peak, and Lynch at his most "over the top" made him juyst a joy to watch on the screen.

I heart that movie.

17:41 / 11.07.05

Ming the Merciless. Turning planets into moons, enslaving whole populations, authorizing the use of bore worms on his own daughter...

paranoidwriter waves hello

17:49 / 11.07.05

The loan-shark from 'Raining Stones': "Give me your rings. Give me your f**king rings!" Every time I see that film I want to jump through the screen and twat the bastard.

Plus, any of the Italian generals (etc) in 'Salo'.

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

18:24 / 11.07.05

haven't seen Raining Stones or Salo.

are they truly the types you love to loathe??? I may seek 'em out.

there's nothing like a good bit of nastiness to seethe at once in a while.

I liked Hans Gruber from Die Hard - hardly despicable. Alan Rickman created such a archetypal criminal that countless action movies from the 80s followed suit. But he's not wikkedly hate-worthy.

Or the protagonist from Man Bites Dog. A film crew documents an opportunistic serial killer as he goes about his daily routine of murder, robbery, and spouting out his personal views on how life works. A brutal film, lots of the ultra-violence, with a cold heart driving it forward.

yeah, he's really loathesome, but not nearly as well-developed as the previous lot.

ttfn
>pablo

paranoidwriter waves hello

18:28 / 11.07.05

are they truly the types you love to loathe???

Yeah. In that they're both extremely poignant films and the baddies are extremely true to life (even in 'Salo')

I may seek 'em out.

I recommend you do. They're both brilliant films in their own way.

18:35 / 11.07.05

Craig from Big Brother. Iago the Sniveller, with a generous dash of vintage Morrissey.

P. Horus Rhacoid

19:58 / 11.07.05

Tenix- Oh man, Man Bites Dog is so disturbing. I love the scene where he's watching video of a botched murder in slow motion, analyzing it and trying to figure out how he screwed up.

My contribution: The two nameless villains from Michael Haneke's Funny Games. One of them's very cold and calculating, the other fairly bumbling. They invade a family's lake house and play a variety of games with them to decide in which order to kill them. The sheer number of botched chances for the family to escape is painful to watch.

22:35 / 11.07.05

The gal, Asami, from 'Audition' was wonderfully horrible.

Frank from 'Blue Velvet' was a terror, true, but his buddy who continues to lurk about today, the man so smooth, so casual, so unnervingly fucked, whom we know and love as Ben.

08:23 / 12.07.05

The black magic totin' Native American from The Missing was a vicious bastard.

08:31 / 12.07.05

Hard to top Frank, Ming or Gruber. Who are definitely up there with my favourites, for very different reasons.

Sebastian Hawks from Mike Leigh's Naked. A disgusting bastard.

Oh, and Davros!

lonely as a cloud...

08:34 / 12.07.05

The bad guy from Oldboy - I can't remember his name. He is extremely twisted, and the plan he devises to take his revenge is just incredible in its detail and warped-ness. Watch the film - it's not quite as visceral as Audition, but when you think about it, it's worse.

09:37 / 12.07.05

Jim Carey?

Seriously though, how about John Doe from Seven. Calmly committing atrocities in pursuit of his own little religious philosophy.

Stansfield from Leon. Drug-fueled bent copper with the love of classical music so necessary in a truly evil villain. "Bring me everyone."

Can't remember his name, but the Captain in Day of the Dead is a really evil bastard. Plus he has the best death scene everrrrr!

10:16 / 12.07.05

The head nazi in the "Last Crusade" is quite evil, but possibly not the worst ever.
I remember being horribly freaked out by the ringwraiths in the animated Lord of the Rings, (it was the sniffing that did it) but that was probably as much to do with my age at the time as their actual villainy. Plus they might count as a monster rather than a villain.
Captain Barbossa from "Pirates of the Carribean" is a good villain, evil yet with a motivation we can understand, but still really evil.
It really depends whether you prefer your villains to be out and out monsters or whether you prefer to be able to identify somewhat with them.

12:57 / 12.07.05

What do you mean, "everyone"?

16:17 / 12.07.05

Chad from In the Company of Men. Argh, what a toolbox! That movie made me want to punch people.

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

17:06 / 12.07.05

Child Snatcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Brrrrrrrr.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

18:32 / 12.07.05

Daleks. Not Davros- he humanises Daleks too much, makes 'em less scary. Daleks are the ultimate functional persoanlity-free Nazi killing machines. They're the perfect villain.

Well, other than Robin Williams as anyone, of course. But that would be too obvious.

paranoidwriter waves hello

19:36 / 12.07.05

Well, other than Robin Williams as anyone, of course. But that would be too obvious.

LOL! Perfection. Robbie Williams is Pop's equivalent of a young JR Ewing. I love / hate him so much I could crush him like Lennie's mouse in 'Of Mice and Men'.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

19:57 / 12.07.05

Nah, I meant RobIN.

I have my problems with RobBIE, too... I have good stories, in which he is somewhat redeemed, but I'm too drunk and lazy to post them now, and this isn't really the place. Sometime in Convo, I shall share them with you.

paranoidwriter waves hello

20:40 / 12.07.05

[Insert embarrassed face ] Erm...oops? Damn it, I always get those two clowns confused! Sorry.

To try and make up for my embarrassment and shameful threadrot, how about Baron Vladimir Harkonnen and his doctor from David Lynch's film version 'Dune'?

04:51 / 13.07.05

Wayne Newton in The Adventures of Ford Fairlane - smarmiest bad man on film, and so evil he drops a Hendrix guitar out of the window of Capitol Records without batting a heavily mascaraed eye-lid.

06:20 / 13.07.05

HELLO, PRETTY!

THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!

06:54 / 13.07.05

I dunno, I just always really liked it when Davros went on a mad one; and starting getting all exciting and crazy.

... though yes, the relentless inhuman nature of the Daleks did add to their scare factor a bit.

Jack The Bodiless

10:28 / 13.07.05

Aaron Stampler from Primal Fear. What a bastard. The moment at the end when he starts clapping... sends shivers up my spine. Ed Norton's never even gonna try to beat that performance, is he? Sigh.

I'm gonna second Chad from In The Company Of Men. I've never been able to see Eckhart in a movie since without wanting to punch his Rollins-a-like head in with a binliner wrapped around my fist so I didn't actually have to touch him in any way. Yuck.

14:14 / 13.07.05

John Doe in Se7en gets another vote.

How about Keyser Soze from The Usual Suspects?

Oh, and I have a thing for Jafar from Aladdin. He's just so bad-ass at the end of the movie.

14:23 / 13.07.05

Surely Darth Vader has to feature somewhere in this lot - he blew up a whole planet just to get Leia to talk.

Essential Dazzler

14:24 / 13.07.05

Seconding the guy from OldBoy, that is one seriously messed up film.

Nurse Ratched from Cuckoo's nest is Queen Bitch

14:32 / 13.07.05

The alien from Alien.

Unstoppable insectoid rapist from a nameless planet. Best villain ever.

14:47 / 13.07.05

Oooh, Nurse Ratched - nasty nasty woman, p-p-please don't t-t-tell my m-mother

14:53 / 13.07.05

'Twas Grand Moff Tarkin blew up Alderberan, and Leia had already talked. He did it just to be MEAN.
Now that's evil.

Poke it with a stick

18:58 / 13.07.05

Raymond Lemorne in "Spoorloos" (the original The Vanishing, not the horribly naff Keifer Sutherland remake): A genial, jolly family man - a man who just so happens to be a psychopath that likes to hold barbeques a few feet above his slowly dying victims...eep.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

19:59 / 13.07.05

Small screen, but... Derek. Ben's evil twin in Sunset Beach. He went round fucking people's wives, destroying their lives... and everyone thought it was Ben. My worst fucking nightmare, really. He wasn't just a cunt- he made all somebody else's good works appear as nothing. THAT's evil.

20:15 / 13.07.05

Stoatie. Because he watches Sunset Beach.

05:20 / 14.07.05

DS9 has a lot of my favourite villains, even though it's not a movie. Dukat, Weyoun and Wynn are second to none brilliant. Come on, Jeff Combs and Louise Fletcher in recurring roles...

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