I am catching up on Black Lightning this evening, and I thought – not for the first time – that Tobias Whale is the creepiest bad guy that I have ever seen in a film or TV show.
Professor Moriarty in the TV show Elementary also creeped me out, though I don’t exactly know why.
Who would you name as your best/worst bad guys in film or TV?
Totally open thread.
Update: Sort of related… (has to do with TV) I am finishing Season1 of Crossing Lines, which I paid for on Amazon Prime, and I have Season 3 recording on Tivo, but I cannot find Season 2 streaming anywhere. This show keeps me engrossed while I am walking on the treadmill, so I would really like to find Season 2!
In the meantime, I just downloaded Season 1 of Bosch for when I finish the final 2 episodes of Crossing Lines, Season 1.
The Thin Black Duke
Yes!
Wileybud
One of the best, yet underrated, bad guys in cinema was Clarence Boddicker as played by Kurtwood Smith in the original Robocop. No evil super powers, just plain evil with a side of nasty.
The Thin Black Duke
The cigarette smoking guy from The X Files.
Baud
Villago Delenda Est
Allan Rickman as Hans Gruber.
Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lechter.
David Prowse/James Earl Jones as Darth Vader.
Kurtwood Smith as Clarence Boddiker.
Christoph Waltz as Col. Hans Landa
Oh…Donald Trump as “President”.
zhena gogolia
@The Thin Black Duke:
Yes, he was good.
My all-time favorite is James Mason.
In anything. But check out North by Northwest or Prisoner of Zenda to get started.
feebog
You will love Bosch, one of the finest detective series ever made for television. And based on one of the best fictional detectives of all time. They are filming season 7 now, and they have just announced a spinoff of the series with the great Mimi Rodgers, who is a recurring character in the current series.
debbie
Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men
zhena gogolia
@Villago Delenda Est:
That last one is too scary!
Villago Delenda Est
@Wileybud: YES! “Major league bang bang!”
WaterGirl
@The Thin Black Duke: Yes to what? How creepy Tobias Whale is? (shudder)
zhena gogolia
My husband says Cesar Romero as the Joker.
WaterGirl
@The Thin Black Duke: oh, yes, he was creepy. Tied with Tobias Whale, I think.
WaterGirl
@Baud: What happened?
zhena gogolia
Christopher Lee is a pretty scary Dracula.
VOR
@feebog: Seconded, I really enjoyed Bosch despite never reading any of the source novels.
Gvg
The penguin in the 2nd batman in the 80’s.
Baud
@WaterGirl: Nothing. Changed my mind.
zhena gogolia
Sherlock had some pretty scary bad guys. Lars Mikkelson creeped me out. But best of all was the evil cab driver played by the great Phil Davis in A Study in Pink.
You have hit upon a topic that I am being very garrulous about.
Gin & Tonic
Orson Welles as Hank Quinlan. Yes, I know he’s not supposed to be the bad guy.
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: When I think of James Mason, I think of him as the charming angle in Heaven Can Wait.
Villago Delenda Est
Rickman was a terrific Sheriff of Nottingham too.
“And cancel Christmas!”
Villago Delenda Est
@Gvg: Danny DeVito? He was indeed creepy in that role. Pee Wee Herman played the Penguin’s father!
WaterGirl
@Baud: I thought maybe you were holding a grudge because earlier this week when I saw a bunch of comments from “Bau.” in spam, I hit “trash and ban” just as I saw your email address and recognized my mistake.
You were only banned for maybe 60 seconds, but I thought you must have sensed it somehow. How could I ban my favorite commenter????
Amir Khalid
I nominate CGB Spender, the Cigarette-Smoking Man, The X-Files‘ shadowy assassin, serial liar, Deep State power player, quisling to our alien would-be conquerors, and arrogant flouter of no-smoking zones, who has been killed off several times in the show’s history but keeps coming back to do yet more villainy.
Mo MacArbie
The Abominable Snowman in Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer freaked me right the fuck out.
trollhattan
Frank Booth in “Blue Velvet” [Dennis Hopper].
Baud
@WaterGirl:
I was having an all thumbs day that day. Glad you erased those comments.
WaterGirl
@Mo MacArbie: I think The Thing was the scariest movie I saw as a kid. I think there may have been a creepy hand thing as part of that movie, but I don’t really remember the details.
Poe Larity
Bosch is good but Welliver and Hector must have had some falling out as they aren’t really partners in the last few seasons. It’s like two detective series and they have chats in the office.
bbleh
Clancy Brown, both as the Kurgan in Highlander (yeah whatever) and as Brother Justin in Carnivàle was a great bad-guy, at least in part because he clearly enjoyed the roles.
Sloane Ranger
Robert Hardy as Charles Augustus Milverton in the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes series. He oozed a kind of oily avuncular malevolence from every pore. And those pince nez glasses!
MagdaInBlack
“Bob” from Twin Peaks.
Baud
Yul Brenner in West World.
Rand Careaga
Charles Dance as the implacably malevolent family lawyer Tulkinghorn in the 2005 BBC Bleak House has always stuck with me.
zhena gogolia
@Sloane Ranger:
Great actor.
Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
I just loved le Chiffre in Casino Royale.
zhena gogolia
@Rand Careaga:
He’s very creepy in And Then There Were None. Not to mention as a Nazi on Foyle’s War.
Dagaetch
FYI @WaterGirl, Bosch gets MUCH better in season 2 and remains equally good after that. S1 was a bit…formulaic.
Person of Interest had some great antagonists. Carl Elias, played by Enrico Colantoni and Root, played by Amy Acker, were incredibly morally complex and really made you consider different points of view. And even the ‘baddest’ bad guy, Greer, wasn’t a cackling supervillain out to conquer for no reason, he honestly believed that humanity couldn’t govern itself and thought in his twisted way that he was saving them. Just a great, great show all around.
Josie
Robert Mitchum in Night of the Hunter and Cape Fear.
The Thin Black Duke
Remember Oliver Twist? That cotton candy rumor of a movie which somehow nailed Best Picture? It becomes an entirely different film the moment Oliver Reed makes his appearance as Bill Sykes. He was a terrifying monster.
debbie
Jeremy Irons in Die Hard 3. The blond hair didn’t hurt either.
Mo MacArbie
Kenneth Branagh made a great Iago.
SFBayAreaGal
Robert Mitchum as Max Caddy (Cape Fear) and Harry Powell (Night of the Hunter).
The Thin Black Duke
Robert Blake from Lost Highway.
debbie
@The Thin Black Duke:
Poor Nancy.
NotMax
Couldn’t get into Bosch. OTOH, among Prime originals liked Goliath and the tongue super glued to cheek Patriot. The latter being a rare case of the second season being even better than the first.
Hm. Gotta cogitate on bad guys for a bit, perhaps with the aid of a song and dance. ;)
debbie
@Mo MacArbie:
Yes!
eponymous
Casey Affleck – The Killer Inside Me.
Full disclosure: All I saw was a trailer. It freaked me out so much I couldn’t stand to look at Casey Affleck in anything else for awhile.
Josie
@SFBayAreaGal:
Ah, another lover of old movies.
Abnormal Hiker
Z-man Barzell in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
wvng
Buffalo Bill/Jame Gumb in Silence of the Lambs. He was modeled on a number of actual serial killers and was chillingly realistic.
The Thin Black Duke
@SFBayAreaGal: Mitchum was the guy who knocked on your door when you owed money to the wrong people.
khead
Damien creeped me out in The Omen.
Michael Myers creeped me out in Halloween.
The alien creeped me out in Alien.
That pretty much covers what scared the shit out of me and had a lasting impact.
MagdaInBlack
Brad Pitt as “Early Grayce” In “Kalifornia.”
Thor Heyerdahl
Christopher Lloyd playing Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
Leonardo DiCaprio playing “Monsieur” Calvin J. Candie in Django Unchained.
Billy Drago playing Frank Nitti in The Untouchables.
Rand Careaga
@zhena gogolia: And yet, he was plausibly the romantic interest during the latter episodes of The Jewel in the Crown.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Harry Dean Stanton screaming “avenge me” to his sons in Red Dawn.
Selfish old wingnut shoulda told his kids to keep low and keep safe. Instead, he expected a vendetta.
FridayNext
The Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang gave me nightmares. He was played by a ballet dancer Sir Robert Helpmann.
And Katherine Bates’ Annie Wilkes in Misery was creepy as shit.
SFBayAreaGal
Raymond Burr as Lars Thorwald
RSA
Michael Emerson as Ben Linus in Lost
Bill Paxton as Dad Meiks in Frailty
Andy Griffith as Lonesome Rhodes in A Face in the Crowd
And going back to childhood, Benny Hill as the Toymaker in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
SFBayAreaGal
@Josie: Yes. I do love them. My favorite of all time is the Ghost and Mrs Muir.
Another Scott
Fled Cruz.
NJ.com – Princeton strips Fled Cruz of honor for trying to overturn presidential election.
[womp, womp]
(via JuanitaJean.com)
Cheers,
Scott.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
As to bad guys I like, Crowley in Supernatural tops the list.
khead
Also, when I watch RoboCop (or even Star Trek VI) now I always expect Kurtwood Smith to call SOMEone a dumbass.
Fester Addams
Smoothie (Patrick Fischer) in Happy! (2017-2019) comes to mind. Kinda wish he hadn’t, though.
SFBayAreaGal
@The Thin Black Duke: Yup. He was so good in a lot of his movies.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Jack Nicholson as Frank Costello in “The Departed”. He’s seriously demented, but not one dimensional.
SFBayAreaGal
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Oh he’s one of my favorite bad guys. I loved the actor who portrayed Crowley.
cope
Richard Boone as Cicero Grimes in “Hombre”.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@SFBayAreaGal:
Mark Sheppard. He’s a fun watch.
James E Powell
Ben Linus (Michael Emerson) on Lost
Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) in Gone Girl
Sgt Barnes (Tom Berenger) in Platoon
Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher) in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
I’d say Stringer Bell (Idris Elba) and Omar Little (Michael K Williams) from The Wire, but I’m not sure they’re villains
Kent
Not necessarily the scariest. But some of my favorite villains were on the series Justified. Margot Martindale was fabulous as the mob boss matriarch. And Walten Goggins was fabulous throughout as the local Nazi drug kingpin Boyd Crowder.
for truly creepy Both the original Cape Fear with Mitchum And the remake with DeNiro are hard to beat
Chief Oshkosh
The Flying Monkeys in The Wizard of Oz really freaked us out as kids.
raven
I bought the DVD of “Tom Horn” a couple of years ago and we’re just getting around to watching it now. It should have been Steve McQueen’s last movie but he made one more that was sort of a stinker. This is a beautifully filmed and great story of the west just as it was turning.
phein61
@Mo MacArbie:
My wife’s cousin is the spitting image of Rudolph’s Abominable Snowman, and another cousin is the spitting image of Hermie, the elf dentist. It’s our Christmas special favorite.
My favorite film bad guy of all time is Robert Mitchum in “Night of the Hunter.” Although he did kill Shelley Winters, so at least he has that going for him . . .
hotshoe
@zhena gogolia: Yes, more please, if you have lots more to say.
I think Andrew Scott’s Moriarty is too … umm … cute … to be terrifying, but he does have that amazing ability to bring out his inner psycho with only a tiny movement of his eyelids.
Phil Davis as the murderous cabbie, though, seems more realistic, and that’s more frightening somehow.
raven
@Gin & Tonic: You better lay off the candy bars. . .
NotMax
Woefully incomplete quickly thrown together list:
Richard Widmark in Kiss of Death
George Sanders in Man Hunt
Robert Ryan in Crossfire
Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar
James Cagney in White Heat
The creepy dudes in Dark City, particularly the little kid
Jessica Walter in Play Misty for Me
Laurence Olivier in Marathon Man
Siân Phillips in I, Claudius
Desslok in Star Blazers
.
Craig
John Huston as Noah Cross in Chinatown. One of the most horrifying characters in cinema
SFBayAreaGal
Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Iselin
Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates
Larry Hagman as J.R. Ewing
Laura W.
Unfortunately, only season 1 of Crossing Lines is available. Seasons 2 and 3 are even available as dvds. I really liked that show.
James E Powell
@Wileybud:
Kurtwood Smith was also pretty evil [SPOILER ALERT] as the father of the kid who kills himself in Dead Poet’s Society.
SFBayAreaGal
@raven: I agree.
Brachiator
James Mason in The Verdict.
Charles Dance in Game of Thrones.
Heath Ledger’s Joker
Laurence Olivier’s Nazi dentist in Marathon Man
John Wick. Good Guy? Bad Guy? Angel of Death
Chief Oshkosh
Mitch McConnell as Senate Majority Leader (someone else took Trump as President)
RSA
@FridayNext: Oh, thanks for your comment! I was mixing up characters (and actors) in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. It was the Child Catcher I was thinking of.
Kristine
@zhena gogolia: I don’t know what it is about the Mikkelsen family. Definitely agree about Lars. Then there was Mads as Hannibal Lecter.
If my degree of hatred counts for anything, Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren/Ben Solo. Classic abuser behavior towards Rey, his envy of her abilities obvious. A blazing incompetent with way too much power.
Sean Harris as Solomon Lane in MI: Rogue Nation was so creepy. He had a habit of invading peoples’ spaces that made him that much creepier. His voice just added to the overall effect.
James E Powell
@NotMax:
I feel like you and I are the only two people who liked Patriot
NotMax
One more which just popped into the cranium.
Angus Scrimm in the original Phantasm
The Thin Black Duke
@SFBayAreaGal: How about Hume Cronyn in Brute Force?
Kristine
@Brachiator:
Dog lover. Potential Juicer.
prostratedragon
@Wileybud: Saw this last night for the first time in years, and wow, you’ve got a point.
I’ve got a little list. This is not exhaustive (it’s an exhausting subject, isn’t it), and in no particular order, ’cause evil merely is, but here are some highlights:
Since asking me something invariably causes volumes of well-formulated thought to flee my mind, I consulted Wikipedia and found additionally these: HAL 9000; Harry Powell The Night of the Hunter; Eve Harrington, All About Eve; Harry Lime The Third Man; Frank Booth Blue Velvet (honorable mention to Ben, though no action is contingent on him); Eleanor Iselin The Manchurian Candidate, all provocatively bad.
For a more personal touch, just thought of Harry from To Sleep with Anger and his Twin Peaks counterpart, Hank Jennings, Insidious planters of tiny, evil seeds. Got a real thing about evildoers who want to be loved by their victims.
James E Powell
@Brachiator:
The Prince of Fucking Darkness!
Josie
How could I forget? Henry Fonda in Once Upon a Time in the West.
LesGS
@SFBayAreaGal: Mark Sheppard! I also liked him as the bad guy Badger on Firefly.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Rand Careaga:
Scarier as a Victorian solicitor in Bleak House than as a medieval warlord in Game of Thrones.
The Thin Black Duke
I’m surprised nobody mentioned Alex from A Clockwork Orange.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Are we doing spoilers? Igby Goes Down is going on twenty years old, but as I recall the character who’s revealed as the villain is… a surprise for a couple of reasons
Kropacetic
Nah, performance wasn’t believable.
RSA
@prostratedragon:
Good one. I think the characterization of women as villains in the movies tends to be be much narrower than with men, but that’s a great one.
Geminid
Walter Brennan as Old Man Clanton in John Ford’s My Darling Clementine (1946). An evil man, vicious to the very end. The stark black and white photography gives added impact.
prostratedragon
@RSA:
Andy Griffith as Lonesome Rhodes in A Face in the Crowd
See? I just watched that, dammit!
mrmoshpotato
@Josie:
Haven’t seen Cape Fear, but yes on The Night of the Hunter.
WhatsMyNym
WaterGirl: Ovation TV has the rights to Crossing Lines and is broadcasting it (if you can get the station) and it’s looks like they might show it on the website as well. They just started the 2nd season.
Benw
1/3 = 0.33333…
1/3 x 3 = 1
0.333333… x 3 = 0.99999999….
0.9999999… = 1
prostratedragon
@James E Powell: I think Stringer is, in the matter of young Barksdale at least. He’s also tragic on several levels, but then so are many villains. Omar I don’t think is one, notwithstanding.
Ascap_scab
Anthony Perkins in Psycho
Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs
danielx
@zhena gogolia:
Christopher Lee as Saruman.
NotMax
(Dis)honorable mentions:
Geno Segers as Chayton Littlestone in Banshee.
Also, while not so much bad as intrinsically flawed, Mary Tyler Moore in Ordinary People.
MagdaInBlack
@Josie: Oh yes! I’d forgotten that one too.
Jackie
The flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz terrified me as a child and still give me the heebie-jeebies.
mrmoshpotato
@Chief Oshkosh:
Flung poo from the skies!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Gene Hackman in The Unforgiven.
Margo Martindale in Justified.
glc
Fascinating. Mostly in terms of what I have missed over the years.
I was definitely freaked out by Cape Fear but then I was 13 and not into the genre. A little older, fortunately, when I saw Psycho. Anthony Perkins disturbs me even when he is the love interest. Which I mean as a compliment.
danielx
@NotMax:
Laurence Olivier in Marathon Man
Der Weisse Engel!
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax:
BOOOOOOYYYYYYY!!!!!!
Mathguy
James Mason as Richard Straker (the vampire’s right hand man) in Salem’s Lot.
Peter Lorre as Hans Beckert (the serial killer) in M.
Heath Ledger as the Joker.
prostratedragon
@NotMax: Ordinary People is an interesting case. She caused a lot of damage, but I think somehow she herself was quite damaged as well and no one around her seemed cognizant of it. Since she hadn’t willfully caused the central calamity, I always felt a bit sorry for her.
prostratedragon
And yes, those flying monkeys got me but good when I was about 10, in an aisle seat at a live performance (Goodman Theater).
Peale
Yoo Ji Tae’s character in Oldboy. The cruelty of his revenge is extreme and not commensurate with the injustice it was trying to correct.
raven
Tom Berenger, Platoon
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Not a traditional villain, but Nicole Kidman in To Die For. Still the best thing I’ve ever seen her do on screen. And then… the other guy
Craig
Lena Headey in Dredd. Grim.
Almost Retired
Soames Forsyte in the Forsyte chronicles/saga. Especially since the character was played by otherwise likeable actors (Damian Lewis, Eric Porter). The character was low-level evil, and powerless to disrupt lives much beyond his immediate circle. But he wreaked havoc on the people closest to him. Soames wasn’t historic-level vile, but he was the mundane devil we know.
Thor Heyerdahl
@Josie:
mrmoshpotato
Did actors come running down the aisles?
Josie
@Thor Heyerdahl:
Exactly. And he pulled it off so beautifully.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Pat Hingle as Bobo Justice in The Grifters. Also, though it’s more complicated, Anjelica Huston. And Annette Benning.
rikyrah
???
NotMax
@prostratedragon
Remember standing in line outside waiting to be let in for the next showing.
Usually when the previous patrons exit there’s chattering about what they just saw. This was the only occasion I ever witnessed when an entire audience filed out in utter silence.
Suzanne
Ehhhhh my father-in-law was taken to the hospital via ambulance. Neither he nor my MIL have been vaccinated yet. He apparently hasn’t been taking his anti-seizure meds for two weeks. EHHHHHH.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Kent:
Mitchum’s original Cape Fear psycho was scarier, as his menace was more subdued. And given the time, the whole subject was beyond tense.
TiredOfItAll
Christopher Walken in “Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead”.
Christopher Walken in “True Romance”.
Christopher Walken.
Thor Heyerdahl
Ralph Fiennes as SS officer Amon Göth in Schindler’s List
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Brachiator:
As a dentist-phone, that movie scared (and scares) the shit out of me.
“Is it safe?” (Shudder)
Omnes Omnibus
@Jackie:
The flying monkeys were among the few things I liked.
prostratedragon
@mrmoshpotato: They did! One got right in my face. I could hardly focus on the rest of the performance.
NotMax
@TiredOfItAll
Also can execute a mean tap.
;)
mrmoshpotato
@prostratedragon: Yikes!
Amir Khalid
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
I had not heard of this occupation before. :-)
TiredOfItAll
@NotMax
I admit, the man can dance, ‘specially when he does The Continental.
But I think he has resting villain face.
Thor Heyerdahl
American Film Institute “100 Years…100 Heroes & Villians”
Craig
Marc Warren as The Gentleman in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.
RobertDSC-Mac Mini
Ian MacDairmid in Return Of The Jedi as Emperor Palpatine.
Craig
@NotMax: hella creepy as Frank White
Thor Heyerdahl
Morgan Woodward – the mirrored sunglasses boss aka “The Man with No Eyes” in Cool Hand Luke
Omnes Omnibus
You want scary? Nurse Ratched. The less said about Pennywise, the better.
You want charismatic? Vader.
You want oddly appealing romantic couple? Spike and Drusilla.
AliceBlue
Joseph Cotten as Uncle Charlie in Shadow of a Doubt
Orson Welles as Harry Lime in The Third Man
debbie
@raven:
“I am reality.”
khead
James Coburn as Glen Whitehouse in Affliction
cain
@The Thin Black Duke: Speaking of which I am out in my patio smoking a cigar and having
whisky’s as a celebration of our win tonight ! And some nice 79s funk and bunch of other stuff
Eta apparently Nicaraguan cigars are better than cuban these days .. paired with a Westward 100 proof super smooth whiskey.
Anybody else a cigar aficionado?
NotMax
@TiredOfItAll
Ever see him in Scotland, Pa.?
Chetan Murthy
Denzel Washington, _Training Day_. [mic drop]
Craig
Ryunosuke Tsukue in The Sword of Doom. The grim and darkest of samurai films.
Mike in NC
I nominate Donald Fucking Trump, Russian asset, to be one of the worst persons who ever lived.
mrmoshpotato
@Thor Heyerdahl: Bruce from Jaws is listed, but no Sharptoooooooooth! from The Land Before Time? :(
cain
@Villago Delenda Est: Gubbar Singh from Sholay.. check him out on amazon prime .. great flick !
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Harvey Korman in Blazing Saddles
Keenan Wynn in Dr. Strangelove
Ann Marie
Tobias Whale and Elementary’s Moriarty are two of my favorites too. Also, Billy Burke as Phillip Stroh in multiple episodes of Major Crimes. Really creepy and really smart.
Mark Sheppard is fun as a sort of villain on Leverage.
zhena gogolia
@Suzanne:
I’m sorry. I hope it will be okay.
mrmoshpotato
Everyone in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
I’ve never seen a movie where I felt bad at the end. Not sorry for the characters, but sorry for myself.
Major Major Major Major
Gary Oldman in The Fifth Element was a great villain. I always draw a weird blank when these sorts of question come up but eventually he came to mind.
billcinsd
I had Peter Lorre in M, but was beaten to that one.
I’m adding Max Schreck as Count Orlov in Nosferatu
TiredOfItAll
@NotMax
I have not; I will check it out.
Major Major Major Major
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: That actor’s a great villain wherever he shows up, haha
Omnes Omnibus
@Major Major Major Major:
Oldman in The Professional.
mrmoshpotato
@billcinsd: *Count Orlok
“Your wife has a beautiful neck.” BEST. LINE. EVER.
MissBarbie
@debbie: You beat me to it. I saw J Bardem on some late night television show with that bowl cut. He joked that his hair had its own fan club.
Major Major Major Major
@Omnes Omnibus: Oldman’s great.
Tehanu
@zhena gogolia:
Mine too, and not just as a bad guy. He was great as a noble hero, as a pathetic loser, as an intrepid explorer, as a sad old man, as — well, as anything.
Craig
@Major Major Major Major: I wish he’d play George Smiley again.
Amir Khalid
@mrmoshpotato:
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? has a cast of four really unpleasant characters, but none of them exercises the kind of malign power over the others that marks an actual villain.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Craig: I really hope Smiley’s People is on the horizon, much as I love the Guiness version.
catclub
@Kent:
 
yeah, beat me to it.
NotMax
Kind of surprised no one seems to have mentioned Dr. Miguelito Loveless.
;)
J_A
@James E Powell: I liked Patriot very much
catclub
@Omnes Omnibus:
Glenn Close Fatal Attraction. Angela Lansbury Manchurian Candidate.
catclub
@NotMax:
Wo Fat on H50?
Villago Delenda Est
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch: Heck, Sterling Hayden in Dr. Stranglove.
opiejeanne
@WaterGirl: Jack Elam as John Wesley Hardin. For some reason his performance in the somewhat obscure movie “Dirty Dingus McGee” made me want to hide under the seat in the theater
But Javier Bardem in No Country still gives me chills.
catclub
I could watch the Flying Monkeys, I could not watch the scene in the forest right before they arrive.
J_A
One of the best (worst) villains ever is Tim Piggott-Smith as Roderick Merrick in The Jewel in the Crown.
His resentment, his sadism, his racism, his misogynism, his sociopathic lack of empathy. Is there anything he doesn’t excel at?
Villago Delenda Est
@catclub: “I’m not going to be ignored!”
Rabbit stew, anyone?
The Fat White Duchess
@The Thin Black Duke: The movie is just called Oliver. Or possibly Oliver!, and I’m not going to look it up. (But, as you know, a definite Yes for Oliver Reed as Bill Sykes. Nightmares when I first saw the movie at age 9.)
Alan Rickman (again), in Closet Land, which is just one of the creepiest films I’ve seen. If his character has a name, I don’t know it.
David Warner as Jack the Ripper in Time After Time.
NotMax
Ooh, ooh. Frank Sinatra in Suddenly.
Villago Delenda Est
@TiredOfItAll: Christopher Walken as Max Zorin in A View to a Kill. You get the feeling he was having such fun doing that.
opiejeanne
@opiejeanne: How could I forget Robert Mitchum in Night of the Hunter.
lollipopguild
@khead: Kurtwood was a very good bad guy who was also quite funny.
burnspbesq
Mr. Morden from Babylon 5. Dude would have been a perfect fit in the Trump White House.
Hyman Roth from The Godfather, Part 2.
Sheriff Cobb from Silverado.
Capt. Dudley Smith from L.A. Confidential.
burnspbesq
There is only one George Smiley, and Sir Alec Guinness is his name.
Gary Oldman was amazing as the bent cop in The Professional.
lofgren
Azula
Craig
Linda Fiorentino as Wendy Kroy in The Last Seduction. Just unrelenting evil femme fatale, but such a thoroughly watchable nightmare person.
The Fat White Duchess
@Suzanne: I’m sorry. Best wishes to all of you.
burnspbesq
Does Don Draper count as a villain, or is he just severely messed up?
SFAW
Although not a character with much screen time, for me as a child it was the Gremlin in “Terror at 20,000 Feet”; the scene where the curtain is ripped back freaked me right-the-fuck out. [And, in case there are any wiseasses out there (looking at YOU, NotMax): No, Bill Shatner was not scarier.]
I have a soft spot for Andrew Scott’s Moriarty. He was scary in a different way, almost matter-of-fact in his evil, and definitely having fun in his evil. Much better than Jared Harris’s version. [I don’t remember much about the Moriarty in the Jeremy Brett series, unfortunately, although I liked Brett’s Sherlock.]
Other than those, I’m drawing a blank re: whether there was anyone (not already mentioned) who creeped me out. Will probably think of a couple after this thread has died.
Major Major Major Major
@burnspbesq: antihero, isn’t he?
wvng
@danielx: is it safe?
Kirk Spencer
I’ll add Terry O’Quinn in the 1987 The Stepfather. Yeah, the opening scene helps a lot, but it still takes acting to constantly carry off the impression “there’s something evil in that normality”.
Major Major Major Major
@SFAW: Oooh, if we’re talking monsters of the week, John Ritter was amazing in Buffy.
James E Powell
@TiredOfItAll:
Christopher Walken in At Close Range
SFAW
@mrmoshpotato:
Nah, it’s “I never drink … wine” by Bela Lugosi. [For the Drac-like movies. For other movies, it’s either “Well, nobody’s perfect” or “Mein Fuehrer, I can walk!”]
Jackie
Steve Railsback as Charles Manson in Helter Skelter and Ted Bundy’s portrayal by Mark Harmon. The eyes were so creepy. It took years for me to see Mark Harmon as someone other than Bundy.
SFAW
@Major Major Major Major:
My brother thought “The Gentlemen” (if I have that right) were the scariest villains in Buffy.
BruceFromOhio
Arthur in Peaky Blinders was pretty bad.
NotMax
@SFAW
Also Karloff’s “The phone is dead. [pause] Even the phone is dead.” in The Black Cat.
wvng
Turns out there are a lot of really great villains and bad guys..
James E Powell
James Woods in Ghosts of Mississippi
James Woods in Once Upon a Time in America
James Woods in real life
Major Major Major Major
@SFAW: you know I never really got into anything after they went to college.
Kristine
I haven’t watched the Netflix series Jessica Jones, but friends have mentioned David Tennant’s character as pretty darned creepy.
Anya
Tyler Hayward of Wandavision is the worst villain in the history of villains because he is so lame.
James E Powell
@J_A:
I was exaggerating, but I was completely unsuccessful in getting any of my friends to watch more than one episode.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Major Major Major Major:
Gary Oldman, but in The Professional.
Danielx
@wvng:
Usef to joke with my dentist about that scene.
Martin
The Borg. I don’t find most villains to be that creepy because they’re always given some human sensibilities and shortcomings. There’s always got to be a weakness. Even virtually indestructible heroes like the Hulk and Superman can be pushed back, stunned, delayed, etc. Most villains will try to justify their actions, pause to consider killing someone. The Borg should not have been defeatable in Star Trek as they were described. Terminator/Skynet falls somewhat in the same category.
The scariest to me as a kid were the spaceships/aliens in the original War of the Worlds. They were a notch worse than the flying monkeys.
@TiredOfItAll: Christopher Walken in ‘More cowbell’. The way he kept pushing the band members into conflict without a single care.
rikyrah
@Suzanne:
????
NotMax
@Martin
Until the Borg were forever ruined by the introduction of the queen.
patrick II
@Josie:
I am with you 100% about Robert Mitchum, especially in Night of the Hunter. I am surprised there are so many mentions of him in the comments considering how old the films are. But he conveyed such an undercurrent of threat. He was such a fine actor.
NotMax
@patrick II
Here is young Bobby in a wartime propaganda film, part of a crew grounded because their pilot has contracted syphilis.
Martin
@NotMax: Yeah. The initial introduction by Q was really good, but as they made them part of the landscape they had to keep screwing with them and nerfing them.
That’s really the problem with villains – they have to lose, and so they can’t really be as bad as they need to be.
cain
@Suzanne:
oh goodness, I hope he’ll be ok.
TiredOfItAll
Personally, I am utterly terrified by Transformers. And those dancing Boston Dynamics robots freak me the f*ck out. I’ll take flying monkeys over metal death machines any day of the week.
NotMax
@TiredOfItAll
Beware the ones TiredOfItAll.
Also too, Turbo Teen had a high, if ignored, creepiness factor.
;)
NotMax
@NotMax
Errata on my part. Attention diverted with the ongoing Zoom RPG group on the other monitor. Fix.
@TiredOfItAll
Beware the ones which fart.
Also too, Turbo Teen had a high, if ignored, creepiness factor.
;)
patrick II
@NotMax: Wow! Wallace Beery Jr. was his partner! I remember him mostly as Rockford’s dad.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Dean Wormer in “Animal House”
Illinois Nazis in “The Blues Brothers”
prostratedragon
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:
Keenan Wynn in Dr. Strangelove
Hard to beat ill-timed and resolute stupidity for evil, in’t?
piratedan
sure its late but….
Bob Guinton as The Warden on The Shawshank Redemption
Imelda Staunton from Happy Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
these petty tyrants of power frighten the shit out of me for some reason, maybe because we know that they are out there amongst us every damn day.
Tony Jay
‘Ralphie Glick’ in the TV Miniseries of Salem’s Lot. Haven’t been able to sleep with the curtains open since I was seven.
The ship itself in Event Horizon and the house in Haunting of Hill House. Redeeming features they have none, they just want you forever and ever and ever….
Chris Johnson
Seriously, no mention of this one?
Kevin Spacey. Glengarry Glen Ross, Seven, The Usual Suspects, Baby Driver. And apparently, real life.
I don’t get why this guy isn’t being cited as an ultimate villain. They can’t all be Margaret Hamilton, a cool person who got to play a great villain. I’m thinking, sometimes an actor is channelling something real, and though that implies a terrible price is being paid, you get something you wouldn’t get otherwise.
tokyokie
Dead thread, I know, but another vote for Robert Mitchum in Night of the Hunter and the original Cape Fear. I’d also throw in Laurence Olivier and William Devane from Marathon Man; Olivier is the main bad guy, but the death of Devane’s character is the one for which the audience cheers. And I would be remiss if I didn’t do a shout-out to Lee Van Cleef as Angel Eyes in Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo.
AM in NC
@FridayNext: I was coming here to vote for the Child Catcher.
Booger
@NotMax: Well, he’d be on my short list.
Booger
@J_A: See also his performance in “V for Vendetta”
Geminid
Alan Arkin terrorizing the blind Audrey Hepburn, in Wait Until Dark. She gets him in the end, though.
Dave P
Tim Curry as Pennywise in the made-for-TV version of Stephen King’s “It”
WaterGirl
@WhatsMyNym: Are you sure? Because where I live they are halfway through Season 3 on Ovation, and I don’t see how to get Season 2.
SFAW
@TiredOfItAll:
New band name
UncleEbeneezer
Gyp Rosetti in Boardwalk Empire
Ramsey Bolton and Joffrey Lannister in GoT
Andrew the Nazi and Tuco Salamanca in Breaking Bad
Glad to hear you are enjoying Black Lightning. We watched season 1 but then lost interest sometime in season 2. Really just found other stuff we liked more. But it’s a fun and silly show that sometimes has some great messages about social justice. We really enjoyed seeing a comic/superhero story in a super-Black setting for a change.
Tokyokie
@Craig: The actor who plays Ryunosuke Tsukue in Sword of Doom is the great Tatsuya Nakadai, for whom one can make a compelling argument is the world’s best living actor. He has a face that seems incapable of expressing joy, and when he tries, he’s only scarier.
Heidi Mom
@UncleEbeneezer:
@UncleEbeneezer: My husband and I once had a discussion about whether Ramsey or Joffrey was the more evil. Then it occurred to me that the most evil character was neither of them, but Stannis Baratheon, for one absolutely unforgivable act committed in pursuit of his supposed destiny.
Mathguy
@Tokyokie: It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Sword of Doom, but Tsukue is a great one.
JimV
Dr. Hannibal Lecter in “Silence of the Lambs”.
Siskel & Ebert had what Ebert called their biggest disagreement ever about this film in their review show. Ebert thought it was a great movie (as did I–had to then buy the book, which was even better), Siskel was thumbs-down because “it glamorizes serial-killers”. It turned out Siskel was right, it caused an explosion in serial-killer plots and made Hollywood somehow make Thomas Harris write a sequel in which Lecter was the hero (which semi-disgusted me).
In SotL, it is clear that Lecter is an egotistical psychopath, who knows all along from past history who Buffalo Bill is and where he lives, but pretends to figure out things the FBI has missed from slight clues in the case files. Clarice Starling is the hero of that movie, not Lecter. However Sir (then Mr.) Anthony Hopkins did an amazing, mesmerizing performance. Since then I have made it a point to see every movie he is in, figuring that if I ever made a movie, Sir Anthony would come to see it.
JustRuss
No love for Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood? I find his plucky, hard-scrabble businessman revealed to be a remorseless monster to be terrifying because it’s completely believable.
opiejeanne
@JimV: My sister’s ex worked as an extra in movies for many years, and one day he was working on something with Hopkins in it. My nieces were there with their dad and when he got a call that he was needed, Hopkins offered to babysit them. He fed them lunch in his trailer and played a board game with them until Tony came back from his scene.
This was about a year after Silence of the Lambs had been released and my reaction was visceral horror.
bluefoot
@Kristine: omg, I had to stop watching Jessica Jones partly because of Tennant’s character. Way too believable. The show also had IMO one of the depictions of the aftermath of trauma in an abusive relationship I’ve ever seen.
DaveInOz
@WaterGirl: Have you tried https://justwatch.com. You can add the streaming services that you have and it will recommend movies and TV series for you. You can also search for particular items and see where they are being streamed.
I’ve discovered loads of content that Netflix has never recommended for me.
Nelson
A lot of great villains in the Harry Potter series:
Alan Rickman as Snape (yeah, turns out not to be a villain in the end, but still, wonderfully creepy)
Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix Lestrange (that girl had issues)
Jason Isaacs as Lucius Malfoy (nobody does sneering arrogance better)
Imelda Staunton as Dolores Umbridge (I was really disappointed that she didn’t receive some explicit comeuppance at the end of the series)