Favorite movie villains

[ArtieRollins]

Everybody loves a great villain.

The sympathy for psychopaths, murderers and bullies in TV and Movies is nothing new.

Think The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Dexter, Boardwalk Empire, Oz and The Wire.

The audience loves watching bad people doing bad things on TV, even though in real life most of them probably wish they would never come face to face with their televison heroes.

Some bad guys just happens to be very likeable.

Jaws (played greatly by Richard Kiehl) for instance were such a villain and was my first favorite villain when I was as a kid.

I always cheered for Jaws when he came up against Bond and loved it when he teamed up with James in Moonraker (1979).

Sure by then he had become a comic sidekick instead of the unstoppable and cold hearted killing machine (that would fit right into the same class of classic movie monsters such as Dracula and Frankestein) in its predeccesor The Spy Who Loved Me (1977).

 

Some actors seems to be born to do villainous roles all their life.

At the same time there are those who seems to only been given bad guy roles everytime.

Michael Wincott, William Forsythe, Michael Ironside, Tony Todd, Richard Lynch, Vernon Wells, Eric Roberts, Billy Drago, Gary Busey and the list goes on.

These are often your typical villain or thugs, but they do it very well.

Sadly very few of them have made any great impact as the heroic good guy in the world of cinema, but then again you have actors such as Rutger Hauer, Christopher Walken and Gary Oldman who must have at least a dozen villain roles on their CVs but also have provided in some great movies as the films main heroic leading man.

 

Anyway, this thread was meant as an tribute to the greatest movie & television villains ever, and I cannot think of any better way to start it up with one of my favorite Arnold Schwarzenegger baddies:    

Bennett (Vernon Wells) Commando (1985)

Vernon Wells has played a lot of evil characters in his 33 years as an actor but none of them will ever come close to his famous role as the sadistic second in command henchman Bennett, in the 1985 Arnold Schwarzenegger action classic Commando.

He might look camp as hell but this is one bad dude you don't want to meet in a dark alley, that's for sure.

Edited November 16, 2014 by ArtieRollins

[ArtieRollins]

Ernie "Big Ern" McCracken (Bill Murray) Kingpin (1996)

Big Ern might be a comedy villain, but he sure was an evil bastard.

After getting beaten by a young promising bowler named Roy Munson (Woody Harrelson) in local bowling cup, Big Ern later on gets his revenge as he lures poor, naive Roy into thinking they could make some easy money but it ends up with Big Ern on the cowardly run and Roy is left behind and gets his hand crushed and the name Munson gets a new meaning.

"Sometimes when I Wake up in the morning, Mr. McCracken is already there."

Edited July 1, 2014 by ArtieRollins