Alex
But then, there's the crux of his character. You chain down the wild animal and you can sedate him. You can torture him. But can you fix him? And what exactly are you fixing, anyhow? And is the cure more toxic than the illness? These are the questions that get asked when you watch A Clockwork Orange. To see the villain that you've watched for so long in the movie do so many vile things and then to see him strapped into the chair with his eyes wired open as the state effectively says "We will fix you even if it breaks you." It's chilling. It's unsettling. It makes you question the effective meaning of humanity.
Defining moment:
Beating an old man to the tune of "Singing in the Rain". He takes great glee in his work. The danger of this character is that there's this little bit of you that wants to giggle with him.
Max Bialystock
The amoral theatrical producer leer and swindles his way through little old widows and Nazis and a hapless accountant as he tries to defraud his way to Rio. That's pretty villainous. "Villain" is such a pliable word. Maybe... rogue would be a better word. Silver-tongued rogue. However, like all good villains, the force of his will seems unstoppable. No matter how down-and-out he may be, he always knows what he wants. Shame only gets in the way of his lush for cash and Swedish secretaries. While he may not be a criminal mastermind, he is a study in irrepressible self-indulgence. Now, you have exactly ten seconds to change that look of disgusting pity into one of enormous respect!
Defining moment:
Go! To! Work!
Bill
This is the first of two Tarantino characters I've opted to select for this group and I have to say that as a villain he is shockingly good and I had no idea he had this in him. Bill has his own morality, his own world. If it comes out of line, he corrects it and let there be no misunderstanding of what a correction consists of. While you can't really call him honourable, he has a code and there is an understanding. A sort of social contract for contract killers. He is what he is - no more, no less. He's Bill.
Defining moment:
The scene at the church before the wedding. Cold blooded Bill toys with his prey before lunging for the kill. They never had a chance.
Brick Top
I also don't know how Allan Ford kept a straight face all that time behind those googly glasses. He hams it up so grandiosely that he's a stronger man than I am for leaving no noticeable twinkle in his eyes as he moseys through hog pens, boxing rings, and makeshift abattoirs. I've always had a soft spot in my heart for Ford. He steals the show, but with the megawattage of Pitt, del Toro, Jones, Statham, and Farina hogging all the space on the DVD cover his name sort of gets lost in the shuffle. Make no mistake, though, he is absolutely menacing. And so many great lines perfectly delivered. If this is an accurate portrayal of a real-life boxing promoter I'm amazed that there are any boxers at all!
Defining moment:
Do you know what "nemesis" means?
Anton Chigurh
Now what can I add to this Oscar winning display of villainy. Ruthless doesn't even begin to describe him. He is just a raw, relentless force of nature. He is like this modern day Javert relentlessly pursuing his goal at any and all expense. He is a killer, perhaps the killer that frightens other killers. And it's not that he's unhinged either necessarily. He's just extraordinarily goal orientated. But beyond that, it's the coin tosses. It's the notion that he's not just a guy with a silenced shotgun, but he is fate. Personified. Fate is chasing you. Eventually you will be caught.
Defining moment:
The gas station scene. More tension than a clock spring. It is as though the grim reaper himself has filled up with unleaded.
Sheriff Cooley
As the protagonists are gathered around the campfire, Tommy describes Cooley perfectly not as the sheriff, but as the devil himself. It is established that what is chasing the escapees is not justice, but rather, and again, destiny. They are supposed to be in jail, but they go out and now the must pay the price for their freedom: death. Towards the end when Cooley finally catches up with them and gets down to the business of stringing them up, Everett ironically (you will recall he was thrown in jail for practicing law without a license) remarks "It ain't the law." "The law?" Cooley scoffs. "The law is a human institution." He may not get much screen time, but whenever he's there it's chilling.
Defining moment:
The gallows scene.
Judge Doom
Of all of the Christopher Lloyd roles that come to mind prior to this move (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Taxi, Back to the Future, etc.) none of them prepared me for this. Christopher Lloyd is just so Christopher Lloyd! But then I saw him as Judge Doom and I just forgot that he was Christopher Lloyd and just watched him act. Kind of like David Carradine as Bill, what I saw was none of the actor and all of the act, and that is the sign of the perfect actor in the perfect part. The first dip demonstration. The "shave and a haircut" bit. The final confrontation. Absolutely remarkable work from beginning to end. For being a "cartoon" villain, he is as cold, as haunting, and as complex as any I've seen, hands down.
Defining moment:
The freeway tirade. My God... It was beautiful.
Dracula
The complete transformation from ancient creepy Transylvanian count to young cosmopolitan (and virile!) Transylvanian count was much more than just makeup. He lords over his vampiric concubines, he broods through the streets of London, he toys with his pursuers, he manipulates Renfield (quick shout for Tom Waits! Woot!), and he does it so elegantly. The book (and I've read it twice before I was fourteen) is a series of journal entries on the surface, but it draws you in. You feel like you're right there along with it. You can smell the sanitarium, you feel exhilarated as they race towards Varna, and this movie brings it all to life in one great spectacle and the focal point is, I think, the finest Dracula to ever grace the stage.
Defining moment:
The scene with the razor in the beginning sets the tone for the remainder of the film.
Auric Goldfinger
So what makes a super-villain a super-villain? Why Goldfinger and not, say, the ever effective Chris Lee or the lovable schlub Joe Don Baker? Gert Fröbe sold it. Better than anyone else. An element that I've always considered a measure of a Bond villain is pomposity and he was as pompous as it got. He captures Bond, who threatens his entire organization and he straps him to the table to kill him via laser. Does he expect Bond to talk? No, he expects him to die; aka. shut up and let him get on with making himself filthy rich. Consider this: he gets all of his investors together in one room, fills it full of huge mechanical devices and intricate models, boasts a long-winded grandiose speech outlining plan to bomb Ft. Knox, and then gasses them all. That, my friends, is gleefully pompous! Though, honourable mention in pomposity ought to go to the massive electronic billboard of Jonathon Pryce...
Defining moment:
No, Mr. Bond! I expect you to die!
Bert Gordon
You know, some villains are easy to boo and hiss at, Bert Gordon makes me angry. The way he uses and manipulates is subtle, brutal, and deadly. If Brick Top was a caricature of a villain, Bert Gordon is the real deal. I think that the reason why he's so effective and why he evokes such a strong response is that I really could imagine a Bert Gordon in real life. I could smell the smoke on his jacket and the odor of pool halls following him around like a spectral trail. I can see the look in his eyes that nail you to the wall. I could see him slick and smug, grasping and tenacious. He has his corner of the world, the people he interacts with and nobody knows him but he knows everyone he needs to. His believability is what makes him so damn potent. This is a very dark film, and I'll never forget the venom every time he calls Eddie a loser. Brutal, awful, and just an amazing performance.
Defining moment:
The scene near the end when Bert confronts Sarah. Then the lipstick on the mirror. Nasty business. A true, true villain.
Amon Göth
As every great hero needs a great villain, Neeson has his Fiennes. The contrast is extreme. As Neeson exhibits his greatest work as Oskar Schindler, Fiennes likewise plays the other end of the spectrum. If this movie has convinced me of one thing, during times of war the inmates run the asylum. Murdering psychopaths are no longer seen as extremely dangerous, but rather extremely useful as Göth is shown true to life picking off prisoners with a scoped rifle from his balcony. During the war he was a Commandant. Once the war was over he was over he was found in an asylum before he was hanged. Even his last words, Heil Hitler, showed that there was no reasoning whatsoever. And it takes serious acting to make that look as real as if it was unfolding right before our eyes.
Defining moment:
The hanging at the end. Right up until the bitter end. There's footage of the real Amon Göth getting hung on YouTube, too. Really frightening because it's frighteningly real.
Gy. Sgt. Hartman
Now, I've never been in the military, but I assume that these scenes are more common than not and that this isn't as much is a caricature as it seems. I think that what makes Hartman seem like such a villain is the complete powerlessness you have. It's one thing to instill discipline in troops, another thing to turn every waking moment into a nightmare. The question is very similar to the one of Göth's: is this horrible soul twisting bullying or is this the necessity of life in the armed forces? Is Hartman a hardcore evil dude or is he just very, very good at his job? Maybe even a little too good? Is Hartman really a villain or is he just someone that the state pays to do the unfortunately necessary job of training people to be killers? Or is he both by definition? I find myself with more questions than answers in the end.
Defining moment:
The very end. Right until there very end he attempts to bully and bellow Pvt. Pyle into submission.
Adolf Hitler
In the movie Downfall, Bruno Ganz portrays an extraordinarily convincing Hitler. Take a moment and google Ganz's Hitler and find a split-screen or side-by-side pictures if his Hitler and the real thing. Shockingly close. Frighteningly close. That is, I believe, the real power of this character. All due respect to Charlie Chaplin, watching Ganz was like having the real deal in your living room. Worse still was the realization that the real deal was a drug addicted raving loon, and worse even still was that even in this state the whole nation was so maniacally built around on him that it wasn't until the bitter, bitter, bitter end that it was finally over. No, the effectiveness of this villain is that it really happened and is continuing to happen today.
Defining moment:
The bunker rant scene, of course.
The Joker
Maybe it's the chaotic neutrality of the character. He never seems necessarily evil, but rather a pure distillation of nihilism, which drivers other villains into fits. Maybe it's the sheer intensity that the character demands that makes it him so remarkable. The Joker always seems right on the edge at all times. When you think of other villains like The Penguin or, say, the Red Skull, they seem phoned in and lazy by comparison. Maybe it's that even though he's a cold-blooded killer he's also genuinely hilarious. Nicholson had several moments, like the Smilex commercial, as did Ledger, like the hospital bombing scene, where people were dying left and right, but you couldn't help but laugh along with you. The character sucks you in that way. Maybe it's coulrophobia. Maybe it's the face. Maybe it's the laugh. Maybe it's the absurdity. Whatever it is, it's powerful and seemingly universal no matter who it is that puts on the makeup and the purple suit.
Defining moment:
Either whipping out the absurdly long gun for Nicholson or the pencil trick for Ledger. Either way, he's a killer and he's hilarious.
Juror #3
In the original version of the movie, Lee J. Cobb has the role and plays it with a brooding, blustering gusto. In the remake the role is passed on to the growling snarl of ever-capable villain George C. Scott. (Apparently Juror #3 must be played by actors who include their middle initials in their names.) There is a moment at the end that's what really sells it to me that this character is a great villain: repentance. It really doesn't happen very often because it's often way too easy to cast solid good against solid evil, but when it dawns on him that he's not convicting the kid on the stand, but his own relationship with his son it's a revelation and a brilliant cinematic moment and shows that villains need not go down with the ship.
Defining moment
Testing the angle of the switchblade's stab. Pure tension.
Karla
But back to Karla. All you really ever see of Karla is his back and him sitting at a table across a Hungarian street. You never do see his face, but that's not to say that he has never been seen. In fact, the main character had sat face-to-face with him. A rather tipsy George Smiley (Gary Oldman, ladies and gentlemen!) stares right square at the camera with his Brick Top glasses and talks as though right to Karla. And then in the next shot there's a profile of George to one side of the screen as though the apparition of Karla is on the other side. See, the purpose of the unseen villain in many cases is not so that you know less of your antagonist, but rather that they act as a mirror and bring out a greater understanding of the protagonist. In the end George is asked what Karla looked like and Gorge... just simply can't remember, because it really doesn't matter in the end that's not the point, is it?
Defining moment:
The torture chamber.
Col. Hans Landa
You know, I could see Waltz playing the Joker. He has perfect comic timing, just the right sort of goofiness for the part, but can still play the role black as night. The way he slowly reels in the farmer, the grown up Shoshanna, the "Italians" is perfect. The logic he applies to his amorality is plain cold. This is not the same mentally unbalanced Nazi as with Göth or Hitler, but a true villain in control of all of his faculties. He's not a wolf in sheep's clothing, for he's admittedly a wolf wearing a wolf's clothing. Instead he's lion with the toothache that charms the mouse into climb into his mouth to remove the toothache causing splinter. Before they know it, they're caught in his web and there is no getting out.
Defining moment:
The farmhouse scene, hands down.
Bill Lumbergh
Who makes you do everything at work that you don't want to do? Bill Lumbergh. Who makes you work on Saturday? Bill Lumbergh. Who keeps adding one complication after the next to make your work harder day after day? Bill Lumbergh. Who sucks all the life out of your job and makes you walk on eggshells when they're around? Bill Lumbergh. Seemingly innocuous with his coffee cup, his pink power ties, and his painstakingly inoffensive, non-confrontational candor, he is the embodiment of terror.
Defining moment:
Yeah... If you wouldn't mind coming in Sunday, too, that would be great. Thanks...
Tiberiu Manescu
Unfortunately it's all a lie, and watching the lie get dismantled on live television as callers phone in one by one to snipe at him as he shrinks in his chair makes for some of the funniest deadpan humour I've ever seen. At the end of the show when the host gives him one last chance to come clean, Tiberiu declines. What makes this role so memorable is that, like Max, he is a rogue right down to his very core. Even when about to march off the side of a cliff, there is no deviation and no retreat. The only way through is forward and to hell with the consequences. Shame be damned.
Defining moment:
When the Chinese grocery store owner phones in.
Sir William McCordle
There is just so much about him that makes his performance so delightful to watch. The contempt that he shows towards his fawning relatives. The affairs not-so-secret affairs that he's had with the maids that everyone seems to know about. His fabulous wealth that he shamelessly made off the back of World War I, with the World War I veteran in the room. The batting of the coffee cup of his desk. And, of course, his dog. There is just so much to hate about this guy that it's a shame that someone had to kill him because I would have loved to have hated him for the remainder of the movie. Dirty shame. I don't recall him smiling once the whole film...
Defining moment:
The foreshadowing while out hunting.
The Sheriff of Nottingham
However, I'll tell you why in particular the Sheriff stuck with me when over the years there have been so many other great Disney villains hamming up the screen over the years. Say you wanna have your character show the audience just how bad he is. Get him to go on stage and say something like, oh I dunno, "For you, the day Bison graced your village was the most important day of your life. But for me... it was Tuesday." People will say, "Ooooo! He's mean!" Well, unless I missed something somewhere, and it's very possible I have, the Sheriff is the only Disney villain to rob a church. Cruella did some nasty things, "Man" shooting Bambi's mother was a tear-jerker, Cpt. Hook was vile, and Gaston was horrible, but the Sheriff not only stole from the infirm, but he took the pennies right out of the poor box. Shame!
Defining moment:
The climax of the film involved neither Robin Hood, nor Little John, nor Prince John. The stormy battle of good and evil there in the churchyard was the greatest act of sheer villainy I've ever watched in a Disney movie.
Emperor Palpatine
Of the new Star Wars movies (Episodes I-III) there's a whole lot of crap and incoherence. The one nice, shining part of this whole series of movies is Palpatine. As much as you see the transformation of Anakin to Vader, you see the transformation of Palpatine from lowly senator to Emperor. He certainly played everyone else for fools. H killed Samuel L. Jackson! Not even snakes could do that! There wouldn't even be a Darth Vader without a Darth Sidius. Plus he outlived Chris Lee, who himself is pretty near immortal. So the next time you watch Star Wars think not of Darth Vader, but rather of the series's unsung hero, Palpatine.
Defining moment:
Rise.
Brig. Gen. Jack Ripper
So much is made of Sellers playing three roles and of Scott falling down and going boom and of Pickens really falling down and going boom that I find that the importance of Sterling Hayden's Ripper is lost in the mix. His deep, slow talking voice, the cigars, the low, low camera angles, and his inspired insanity makes for a genius villain. As he explains the cold, fluid logic of his actions to the cartoonish Mandrake and it starts to sink in what's really going on. The best way that I can describe is is that he is a madman in complete control who knows exactly what he needs to do to save the world. When the rest of the cast descends into confusion, he's the only one (with the possible exception of Major Kong) that's a rock. What a great performance.
Defining moment:
The machine gun.
Judah Rosenthal
This is the whole crux of the film. Quite obviously Judah is the villain. He had his mistress murdered! But then no one really ever noticed. He has a conscience, but as time passes and he realizes that he's in the clear you can almost see his guilt vanish. The essential question is whether there really are cosmic consequences to all of our actions. No lightning bolt struck him down. He wasn't visited by three ghosts in the night. Though there was the proverbial deal with the devil, the devil never bothered to collect. Judah puts forward the idea that it's not that if there were no consequences it would be easy to be the villain, but rather it is easy to be the villain when there are no consequences.
Defining moment:
His speech in the end. You're looking at a free man, folks. Smiling has never been this easy.
Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg
I've always enjoyed films that have seen the villains desperate, trapped between a rock and a hard place. Zorg hams it up great for the camera as the flashy swindler, but there are other greats along this vein, too. The Mel Gibson movie Payback had a whole pantheon of villains all the way up the chain who got as much grief from Gibson as they did their higher ups in the organization. Another Bond film, The Living Daylights, had villains chased from both directions, as well. In the end it's no fun being the bad guy when there's a worse guy right behind you. Well, fun to watch - not so much fun to be.
Defining moment
I'm screwed.
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