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100 Greatest Movie Villains

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PillowRock

Regular
After reading something that mentioned the Online Film Critic's Society compiled list of the 100 Greatest Villains of all time (their choice for #1 was Darth Vader), I couldn't resist tracking the list down on the web to see what their full set of choices was.

I grinned to see a couple of relatively obscure movies that got to me represented; the theif from the title of The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover and Wndy Kroy (though that wasn't the character's real name) from The Last Seduction. I also found it interesting that there was exactly one character that was listed twice, for different actor's portrayals: Max Cady from the two versions of Cape Fear. DeNiro's version came in at 44 and Mitchum's at 59. Of course, I have relatively quibbling disagreements, such as how highly they placed Hans Gruber from the original Die Hard. I mean, he was pretty good, and Rickman was fun to watch playing him, ....... but the fourth greatest villain of all time?

Then I look at the list a little bit more .... and wonder how I could possibly take any of it seriously. I mean; if they are going to claim that Dr. Evil (from the Austin Powers movies), Biff Tannen (from Back to the Future and its sequels), and Principal Ed Rooney (from Ferris Beuller's Day Off) are all greater villains than all but one of the Shakespearean villains that have been committed to film (the one being Ian McKellen's Richard III) then how much credibility can they claim? The presence of the one disproves the thought that they might have been discounting interpretations of such "classic" characters and just considering more "original" characters (I know that version of Richard III was done in 1930's -> 1940's costumes and sets, but the text, and character, was still the original).

Anyway, the full list is here . So take a look, and let us know what you think of their poll results.
 
/forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif not one mention of Morden /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif /forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif /forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif /forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif
 
Gshans wrote: "not one mention of Morden "

Then the list isn't complete. He gets my vote. /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif
 
25 Amadeus - Salieri - F. Murray Abraham
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This is the whole reason I like message boards:

Is Salieri a villian? /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif
 
Interesting list, but much I don't agree with either.
Picks I like best:
5. Dennis Hopper as Frank Booth in Blue Velvet
6. Robert Mitchum as Rev. Harry Powell in NIght of the Hunter
17. Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
55. Richard Widmark as Tommy Udo in Kiss of Death
56. James Cagney as Cody Jarret in White Heat
95. Carl Boehm as Mark Lewis in Peeping Tom

Funniest picks:
84. Anne Bancroft as Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate
88. Roger Smith as Roger Smith in Roger and Me

Picks I consider heros, not villians:
31. Marlon Brando as Col. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now
35. Rutger Hauer as Roy Blatty in Blade Runner
99. Peter Sellers as Clare Quilty in Lolita

Picks they missed that would beat out most of theirs:
Lawrence Tierney as Steve Morgan in The Devil Thumbs a Ride, and as Sam Wilde in Born To Kill
Boris Karloff and Myrna Loy as Fu Manchu and his daughter in The Mask Of Fu Manchu
Toshiro Mifune as MacBeth in Kurosawa's version, called Throne Of Blood
Jane Greer as Kathie Moffat in Out Of The Past
Kathleen Turner as Matty Walker in Body Heat
Joan Crawford as Eva Phillips in Queen Bee
 
not one mention of Morden
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The list was of the 100 greatest screen villians of all time, screen referring to movie theaters.

That is quite a list though. I can't say I've seen all those movies but I've seen a great many of them. Darth Vader as #1? C'mon, Grand Moff Tarkin blew up an entire world. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 
(Pre-post disclaimer: Yes, I saw the smilie but this is a conveniant launching point.)

But Vader was always much more interesting thatn Tarkin. Vader had a certain charisma, he always drew your attention when he was on screen. It was also clear that, though Vader was an "underling" in some sense, he still also had his own ideas and agendas. Tarkin, on the other hand, just came off as a very run-of-the-mill overstuffed, vindictive bereaucrat.

I would put Casablanca's Major Strasser in that same category with Tarkin, which is why I think that he was overrated in this list. To me he just came off as the local representative of the pertinant evil, opressive empire without any real gravitas of his own.

That sort individual interestingness (coining words can be fun /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif) and agenda, separate from the master that gives them power is why I would rate both Basil Rathbone's Gisbourne from the Errol Flynn Adventures of Robin Hood and Faye Dunaway's Milady DeWinter from The Three Musketeers (and Tim Roth's character from Rob Roy, which they did remember on their list) above people like Tarkin and Strasser on *my* ranking of movie villains.

Speaking of Faye Dunaway, and using precedents that their list set of rolling pairs of characters together (they did it for Deliverance) and of listing protagonist anti-heros as villains: How aboutthe title characters from Bonnie and Clyde. I certainly found them more interesting villains than several that were on the list.

This starts to raise an interesting (to me, anyway) question. At what point do you consider characters that are clearly criminal to have crossed over all the way over into being "villains" for the purpose of a discussion like this? If you consider the Barrows to be villains in Bonnie and Clyde then do you consider the similarly titular Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to be villains? Going a bit further, if Butch and Sundance are villains then are Redford's and Newman's other pair of likable criminals from The Sting? Or does their lack of actual physical violence keep them away from the "villain" label? Now, lack of violence is not an argument that you could ever apply to Jackson and Travolta's characters in Pulp Fiction.

I think that I made it pretty clear in my original post that bafoonishly comedic characters like Biff Tannen, Dr. Evil, and Ed Rooney don't meet my criteria for "great villains". Ed Rooney was both so cartoonish and so completely ineffectual that I would even rate the assistant principal from The Breakfast Club (I don't remember his name right now) to be a better "villain" than him. However, that doesn't mean that I that character should be on this list, either.


Well, I think that I have rambled on long enough for the moment.

But I will make one more quick comment anyway.
In The Graduate I can see Mrs. Robinson being described as a villain. She doesn't necessarily start out that way, but from the moment that Ben meets her daughter her behavior slides into what could much more easily be described as "villainous". I din't find that selection to be nearly as eye-rolling laugh inducing as the inclusion of Roger Smith.
 
PR, for the record, I actually do think Roger Smith is a villian of sorts. My laugh at that comes from the fact that he is a real person, on a list of screen villians, and he got national notice, of a sort, as such.

I laugh at the Mrs. Robinson pick because I wasn't much younger than Dustin's character when the film came out, I saw it, and thought I wouldn't mind getting to know her! /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

If you haven't seen Born to Kill and Devil Thumbs a Ride, I think BTK is available for rental, you should check it out. Lawrence Tierney was about 73 when he played in Resevoir Dogs. He was about 28 when he played in BTK and DTAR, and he was one mean, cold, calculating amoral dude. Tarantino drew inspiration from these films, which I like better than his. Both films pop up on cable occassionally.
 
At what point do you consider characters that are clearly criminal to have crossed over all the way over into being "villains" for the purpose of a discussion like this?
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I think a villain is just someone who is "mean." There are plenty of outlaw characters that are heros, and those were supposed to be upstanding citizens who turn out to be villains. Physical violence isn't necessary either, as there are villains who are plotting and manipulative instead.

A villain is just someone who either intentionally hurts people, like a murderer, or who doesn't care at all that his actions hurt others. It's about whether the character has a conscience.
 
A villain is just someone who either intentionally hurts people, like a murderer, or who doesn't care at all that his actions hurt others. It's about whether the character has a conscience.
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Then the lead in "A Clockwork Orange" would have to get my vote. Even though you might have sympathy for him later in the movie, he's definitely the protagonist-villian at the start. I won't say more to avoid spoilage here.

In a strange way, Kane from "Citizen Kane" would qualify, too.

ON the "lighter side" of villiany (if there can be such a thing) I'd go with Khan in Star Trek's "The Wrath of Khan". The most poetic, but intense, villian I've ever seen. I actually find him far more interesting than Hannibal from "Silence of the Lambs". But Hannibal's character was meant to scare. Khan could be a bit more over-the-top. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif
 
Physical violence isn't necessary either
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Violence is certainly not necessary, but is it sufficient?
Edit: At least when visited upon noncombatants / bystanders / victims.

Just for the record, I wasn't talking about Robin Hood style criminal out of defense of himself and others. Nor was I thinking of things like Oscar Schindler's humanitarian, but criminal in that time and place, activities.

The Barrows were nowhere near being criminals who never harmed anyone and didn't seem to particularly mind that fact, so are they villains? Is Sundance a villain by virtue of his willingness to pull the trigger (literally)? And if Sundance is a villain then where does that leave Butch, who doesn't shoot people himself (if he can avoid it) but keeps Sundance around in case those situations arise?

Our heros in The Sting (for some reason the only character name that is coming to me right now is the mark's, Doyle Lonnigan) can certainly be said to be in the Robin Hood zone of a justifiable crime to exact justice for the murder of their friend during the bulk of the movie (which is underscored at the end when the two leads walk away without bothering to take their cut of the money). However, they are career grifters and I don't think that it can be argued that all of their marks are specifically chosen to be people who deserve it and can afford it. At the beginning of the movie Redford is running short cons on the street; there is no way that all of his targets of oppertunity would be people who could afford the loss. So, ..... villain? Or, by virtue of only thinking in terms of his actions during the main plot of the film (when they are in Robin Hood mode), not villains?
 
I think a villain is just someone who is "mean."
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Coming at this from the opposite direction (relative to my last post), and using a character who was on the 100 Villains list:

Is Travis Bickle's vigilantiism mean spirited enough to warrent the title of "villain"?
 
I am troubled that Amon Goeth (#14 of 100) appeared on the list, since his character in Schindler's List was a real person. What bothers me is that some audience members without a proper grounding in history might believe that his was a character contrived for the movie, or perhaps cobbled together as a composite based on anecdotal evidence from multiple sources.

The actor who portrayed Goeth in the film did an outstanding job with what seemed to be an over-the-top performance. In real life, Amon Goeth was so brutal and inhuman that his own superiors considered him to be out of control. So much, in fact, that the SS leadership arrested him and placed him on trial for excessive abuse of prisoners (who were valuable to the Nazis as a labor force). Goeth was captured by the U.S. Army, tried by the Polish high crimes commission after the war and eventually hanged.

It just makes me queasy to see him included on such a frivolous list, alongside the likes of The Joker and the shark from Jaws. By celebrating Goeth's *evilness* we are dancing on the graves of his victims.
 
At least in the case of Goeth the listing is for "as he was portrayed by an actor". This is in contrast to the listing for Roger Smith, which was the real person in a documentary.

(Note that I don't mean to liken the actions of the two men in any way. I don't think that there is any comparison.)

It is also probably worth noting that Goeth is not the only actual historical figure with blood on his hands on that list. Richard III is also a historical figure who is believed to have cleared his path to the throne through the murder of children (who were ahead of him in the line of succession).
 
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