I got to thinking on this after the top ten movie thread, and seeing No Country For Old Men appear in the list
Anton Chigur does it for me. Cold, utter psychopath, totally unstoppable and 100% professional. You know that if he's after you, chances are you're screwed. The gas station scene is perfect
youtube.com/watch?v=BqMdQBox15s&
Id also rate Billy Bob Thornton as Lorne Malvo from the first season of Fargo. An absolute perfect killer.
Gary Oldman is always good value; genuine baddie in 'Leon', spoof baddie the Fifth Element'
"You're a monster, Zorg"
"I know..."
> Gary Oldman is always good value; genuine baddie in 'Leon', spoof baddie the Fifth Element'
> "You're a monster, Zorg"
> "I know..."
Yes!
I only recently discovered that Gary Oldman played the bad guy Mason Verger in Hannibal...
Nigel Farage. Half man, half frog.
Enough of your cartoon villains. A real baddie has to be steeped in reality. If you're of "a certain age", which I've reluctantly accepted I am, then a real baddie has to come from the pages of a Raymond Chandler novelette, a Dashiell Hammett page tuner or from a Film Noir. Much to choose from, but, personally, I'd go for Cody Jarrett from the movie White Heat. "Top of the world, ma!". Seminal celluloid, directed by a young Raquel Welch before she'd had the op.
Failing that, the fish from Jaws.
The penguin from the Wrong Trousers. He turned Wallace against Grommit then framed Wallace. Pure evil.
Definitely David bowie in labyrinth. Who throws a baby? Nice hair too.
‘I find your lack of faith disturbing’…
Spectre
Rosamund Pike is pretty scary! I Care a Lot and Gone Girl..
Young fool , only now at the end do you understand,
Christoph Waltz in Inglorious Basterds
I wonder if some of the characters in the new More Four series "Valley of tears" are building up to be really bad? I don't watch much TV at all, but I got hooked after being pointed to this program by Front Row.
I think Chigurh is a good choice if you are considering "recent" films but for me he is outstripped in the bad guy stakes by Max Cady in Cape Fear. Both versions are good but I think Mitchum has the edge. Speaking of which, his Harry Powell in Night of the Hunter is also a very scary creation.
Lastly, the railwayman played by Ernest Borgnlne in Emperor of the North: probably considered himself a professional company man when chucking those tramps to their deaths or knocking them off with that crowbar on a rope, but he definitely enjoyed his work too much.
Surely Alan Rickman's villain in the first Die Hard although Ben Kingley's turn in Sexy Beast produced one of the most unexpectedly memorable villains I've seen.
> Ben Kingley's turn in Sexy Beast produced one of the most unexpectedly memorable villains I've seen.
That's a good one.
I'd go for Mitchum's Cady in Cape Fear or Kinski's Loco in The Great Silence.
Re: Fargo, VM Varga by a country mile.
Verstappen, oh he's real!
Favourite fictional bad guy?
massive ego, huge narcissist, genocidal, kills on a whim, master of mind games, gas lighting and the general psychological torture of countless millions..
Am I allowed to nominate God?
> Favourite fictional bad guy?
> massive ego, huge narcissist, genocidal, kills on a whim, master of mind games, gas lighting and the general psychological torture of countless millions..
> Am I allowed to nominate God?
Which one? 😂
"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."
- Richard Dawkins
Another vote for Hans Gruber, and in a close 2nd another Alan Rickman baddie, the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves. A distinctly average film but great performance from Rickman. "Cancel the kitchen scraps for lepers and orphans, no more merciful beheadings, and call off Christmas."
Steerpike from Peake's Gormenghast - you start off sympathising with him but then, inexorably, the sadistic evil of his character builds and builds.
Ben Foster was great and very scary as Russell Crowe's sidekick Charlie Prince in 3:10 to Yuma.
As was, even more so, Wes Studi as Magua in Last of the Mohicans.
Col. Rosa Klebb, From Russia With Love.
Rickman hamming up the Sheriff of Nottingham like he's in a panto and absolutely stealing the show with it is the only reason I watch that film, it's brilliant.
Similarly Wesley Snipes in Demolition Man, he's clearly having so much fun in the role.
Jimmy the hand.
Leslie Chow in The Hangover. Pi$$ funny.
> Favourite fictional bad guy?
> massive ego, huge narcissist, genocidal, kills on a whim, master of mind games, gas lighting and the general psychological torture of countless millions..
> Am I allowed to nominate God?
God is all very well, but he's not exactly got the deadly charisma the best baddies effortlessly exude has he? For that, your go-to has to be Milton's ultimate bad-boy Satan, the eternally defiant morning star:
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven...
I don't think any list of top fictional bad guys can be complete without some flesh-crawly Dickensian creations, so I'd like to nominate:
Josiah Tulkinghorn, the merciless collector of other people's secrets in the magisterial Bleak House (played by Charles Dance in the BBC/Andrew Davies version, which also featured an unforgettable Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock);
the vey far from 'umble Uriah Heep from David Copperfield (well played by Ben Whishaw in Armando Iannucci's recent multicultural reinvention).
I'm not so sure about the book, but in film/tv defnitely!
But which one? Jack Nicholson? Ray Wise? Elizabeth Hurley?
Also - less comical Devils - who did it better, Robert De Niro or Al Pacino?
That sergeant Troy, he was a reet bad'un in Far from the Madding Crowd.
Thinking of Jack Nicholson just then reminded me..
I think my vote goes to The Joker. (But not his version though - it has to be Heath Ledger.)
The predatory Anatole in War and Peace.
Not sure I'd call him my favourite, but Henry from Henry : portrait of a serial killer was quite chilling
> That's a good one.
> I'd go for Mitchum's Cady in Cape Fear or Kinski's Loco in The Great Silence.
This opens up an interesting conundrum though. I think Mitchum in Cape Fear, but even more so in Night of The Hunter, is an incredibly effective villain but I could never say they are my favourites because I find them too evil to 'enjoy'. In that sense, to me, the most effectively realised villain I've seen was the Fiennes as the SS commandant in Schindler's List but could I describe him as my favourite? No.
> This opens up an interesting conundrum though. I think Mitchum in Cape Fear, but even more so in Night of The Hunter, is an incredibly effective villain but I could never say they are my favourites because I find them too evil to 'enjoy'. In that sense, to me, the most effectively realised villain I've seen was the Fiennes as the SS commandant in Schindler's List but could I describe him as my favourite? No.
I confused the Mitchum characters. It was Night of the Hunter I was thinking of, not Cape Fear, though his Cady is far more subtle and menacing than DeNiro's OTT incarnation.
It's the banal everyday characters that leave me most uneasy, Ray Winstone in Nil by Mouth comes to mind. Far more chilling than cartoon villains like Rutger Hauer in The Hitcher for example.
As I selected the original film as my favourite (NCFOM) in no small part because of this character I cant select AChigur again.
My other favourite baddie is Drexl Spivey in True Romance. A host of massive characters and great actors create this film but Oldman nails this perfectly nasty, low life drug dealer and pimp to perfection.
Hmmm. Love the film, love Gary Oldman but drexyl just seemed a bit naff.
As a complete aside it always makes me smile that Gary Numan is older than Gary Oldman 😂😂
Great thread. It got me thinking about baddies in film. You have the pantomime of Ledger's Joker, Rickman's Sheriff of Nottingham and Oldman's Dracula to the single minded badass of Anton Chigur, Terminator or Bain in Dark Night Rises.
In all cases, the baddies utterly steal the show in these films.
> Hmmm. Love the film, love Gary Oldman but drexyl just seemed a bit naff.
> As a complete aside it always makes me smile that Gary Numan is older than Gary Oldman 😂😂
Strange isnt it. I thought it was a standout performance.
The other smiley fact is Gary Oldman's sister is Mo Harris in Eastenders.
Don Logan in Sexy Beast (Ben Kingsley)
wot an orrible c**t
No one plays a bad Red Indian ( if I'm allowed to use that term) like Wes Studi. He played Magwa in ' Last of the Mohicans' and a baddy in many Westerns. He's a great baddy!
Not just baddies! If I can mention it on this thread, he was great recently in Hostiles.
Gus Fring, Breaking Bad.
I remember being pretty scared by another Magua, Philip Madoc (He of the greatest scene in Dad's Army) in the TV serialisation in the early 70s.
Possibilities:
Servalan.
Sorry. Didn't see your earlier mention of Wes Studi and I misspelled Magua! I bow to your superior knowledge
If he hasn't been already mentioned what about some John Malkovich baddies?
> Gul Madred (David Warner) from Star Trek TNG.
Sorry - minor rant follows, because that episode always bugged me a bit..
He's just a pastiche of O'Brien from Nineteen Eighty Four.
(Not to be confused with O'Brien from Star Trek TNG.)
With O'Brien it was "how many fingers am I holding up?" instead of "how many lights do you see?" but the Star Trek story did that thing that TV adaptations do sometimes where they just simplified it a little bit and in doing so threw out the entire point of the story.
Gul Madred was torturing Picard to try to make him lie and say he saw 5 lights instead of only 4. (And it was a bit weird that Picard consistently refused to do so, I mean why would he not?)
O'Brien continued torturing Winston Smith whether he said he saw four or five fingers. He wasn't satisfied by Smith just telling him what he wanted to hear, he wanted to break Smith to the point that he would accept the word of 'the Party' over the evidence of his own eyes and believe that there were five.
In reply to Shani:
yep another vote for God - is a consensus forming
No worries. He's just fantastic in Last of the Mohicans. So menacing in the final scene above the cliff and you know, throughout the film, what drives him. He's not going to give up.
Anton Chigurh
Or maybe Nurse Ratched
And that Sylvestre the cat. He has really got it in for that canary!
> I remember being pretty scared by another Magua, Philip Madoc (He of the greatest scene in Dad's Army) in the TV serialisation in the early 70s.
he was pretty scary in that role - are you sure it wasn't the late 60s?
Can't have been as I only moved to England at the end of 1970. Soon after that, I think.
> Or Mick Jenkins from This is England. What a c**t.
He really gave me the creeps, horrible man.
I see you're right - 1971.
I give you Roger Delgado, the real Master in Dr Who
No one mentioned The Hood yet
> Konstable Els from Tom Sharpe’s South Africa books.
There's a blast from the past. I'm not sure Kommandant Van Heerden was any better, just less impolite. John Thaw's depiction of Jimmy Kruger in Cry Freedom was similarly vile. Comes with the territory though.
Cartoonish villains: Bricktop from Snatch is entertaining and no mention has been made yet of the two hillbillies in Deliverance.
The Childcatcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
> Dick Dastardly
youtube.com/watch?v=sj6-LG5VpGk&
That reminds me, I cycled past a dead pigeon and briefly felt sad for it, and then thought 'I guess the pigeon got stopped'.
I wasn't being mean, the pigeon was already dead.
Can't narrow it down to one I'm afraid, so a selection of my favourites off the top of my head:
Lorne Malvo (Fargo S1)
Magua (Last of the Mohicans)
Anton Chigur (No Country)
Neil McCauley (Heat)
The Cousins (Breaking Bad/Better call saul)
Tuco (Breaking Bad)
Daniel Plainview (there will be blood)
Bill the Butcher (Gangs of NY)
Roy Batty (Blade Runner)
You are allowed to use "Indian". Russel Means, the actor who sent Magua to meet his maker in Last of the Mohicans, was a prominent activist and member of the American Indian Movement.
> You are allowed to use "Indian". Russel Means, the actor who sent Magua to meet his maker in Last of the Mohicans, was a prominent activist and member of the American Indian Movement.
I never knew the name of that actor. I love the character he plays in that movie.
Another film I just watched again (which coincidentally has 'Indian' in the title) that I really like is 'The Fastest Indian' with Anthony Hopkins. About an old guy from N Z who goes to Bonneville and breaks a World Speed Record in the 1950's which stands to this day! Heartwarming stuff.
Lovejoy in Sexy Beast
actually the real baddies that were my favourites the longest (since 21st December 1963) would have to be The Daleks, followed closely by the original cybermen
Don't forget Mrs Tweedy from Chicken Run, that scene with the rubber glove...
Morgoth from The Silmarillion. Destroyed light, twice, and continues to corrupt all of creation even after being cast into the void. Basically Satan, but with added spite. And with more dragons, and use of volcanoes as WMDs. His multi generational vendetta against the family of Hurin Thalion makes Keyser Soze look like a Guardian-reading charity worker….
Donald Trump in Home Alone 2.
Edward Fox in "Day of the Jackel". Ice cold, ruthless psycho.
> Need a thundercat ask? Got to be Mum Ra!
Id kick his ass. Or just pull those bandages and spin him around comically like in Scooby Doo.
This one is probably not allowed as the character portrayed isn't fictional, but for me the creeping 'badness' in Forest Whitaker's Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland is pretty scary stuff.
Ramsay Bolton from Game of Thrones
The spice girls from spice girls the movie.
> Edward Fox in "Day of the Jackel". Ice cold, ruthless psycho.
His son is worse.
Frank Booth, Blue Velvet
A fun bad guy. Xerxes from 300.
Takes him ages to get ready to climb.
Patrick Bateman
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