villains Tagged Articles at Cinematical

We love it when our heroes fall for the suspicious types: the wolves in sheep's clothing, the dangerous femme fatales. It happens often in film noir and a heckuva lot in comics, and provides some of the best last-act twists and turns as our hearts palpitate along with those of our protagonists... up until the bitter end. Can't that evil love interest turn out to have a heart of gold, so we can all have a happily ever after? Sometimes, yes. Most of the time, no.

What is it about these doomed romances that we love so much? Perhaps it's the futility of it all; you can't have your cake and eat it when you're a superhero or a (wo)man on a mission to right wrongs, even if you'd rather be kissing that beguiling bad guy than fighting them, arresting them, or foiling their evil plans. Turning down a chance at love is the ultimate sacrifice for a hero or heroine to make -- it proves their commitment to the side of good. Hence, loving a villain makes a hero even more heroic. How tragic!

In what will surely spur controversy, I've whittled my favorite villain-hero romances down to the seven best pairings in cinema. No, Phantom of the Opera didn't make it. That would have been too easy. Instead, find odd couples, would-be perfect pairs, star-crossed lovers, and yes, the world's most legendary bromance after the jump.

A good villain is memorable, and impressive, and scary as hell. But bring back the same villain over and over, give him lousy dialogue and have him repeatedly defeated by worthless opponents, and that villain becomes nothing more than an ineffectual bully who doesn't know when to give up. He's like that big, hairy guy down the street who scared the crap out of you when you were a kid, but who now has a pot belly, three obnoxious kids, and a Trans Am on blocks in his front yard. It makes it hard to remember why you ever found him frightening in the first place -- you'd feel sorry for him, but you just don't care enough to bother. Like these five:

Dr. Evil
Remember how cool Dr. Evil was in the first Austin Powers movie? Very few villains have fallen as far or as fast as Mike Myers' homage to Bondian baddies. Sure, he was a little out of touch with the current global economy, and his relationship with his son, Scott, was a tad strained, but he had a super-cool secret lair inside a volcano island, and a spaceship, and a clone sidekick, and lasers. Despite his flaws, Dr. Evil had all the earmarks of a world-class villain.

But by Myers' third, tired outing, Dr. Evil (along with every other joke in Myers' playbook) was used up -- so much so, that Myers brought in yet another villain, Goldmember, and he played that guy, too. It takes a lot of talent to stretch yourself that thin and get away with it -- I mean, sure, Alec Guinness played eight characters in Kind Hearts and Coronets, but he's freakin' Obi-Wan Kenobi. The Force is considerably weaker in Myers, and maybe if he'd been happy playing a few less characters, he'd have been able to come up with a better script ... one that didn't require the once-impressive Dr. Evil to spell his name "D to the rizzo, E to the vizzo, I to the lizzo." Bleh.

Sometimes it's hard not to feel sorry for a top-notch bad guy (or girl) who's stuck in a terrible movie. Many of us cherish some guilty pleasure films that we watch just for the evil characters. The plot may stink, the hero or heroine may be as dull as dishwater, the dialogue makes soap operas look subtle ... but oh, those glorious villains add a much-needed spark of life. Often, such villains and villainesses are played by critically acclaimed actors who need a gig with a big paycheck.

I've always wished I could pick up a few of these notably evil characters and move them to a better movie, one where their talents are more appreciated, one that doesn't end up on a DVD that people hide on the bottom of their shelves so no one makes fun of them. Here are a few of my favorites -- who am I missing on this list?

While watching Michael Mann's Heat, I discovered the "cup of coffee test" for screen villains. I found myself thinking again of that great scene in which the cop (Al Pacino) and the villain (Robert De Niro) sat down to share a cup of coffee. It was a simple gesture, with no chasing or guns or shooting. Just talking. But it demonstrated on a thematic and visual level that this hero and this villain were actually very close to one another. They were very similar people, with similar natures.

I started applying this test to almost every movie. Not surprisingly, most of them fall apart. Most movie villains simply sneer and cackle and try to take over the world. But think of Batman and the Joker in The Dark Knight. They don't literally have coffee together, but they do sit down together for a talk; the movie presents them as equals, and separate from the rest of the world. They understand one another better than anyone else. Consider, also, Col. Landa (Christoph Waltz) in Inglourious Basterds, who sits down several times with several heroes over several different kinds of beverages (ranging from milk to wine). He's snaky, but smart and always cordial.

Sometimes the rule gets a little gray. For example, Clint Eastwood and John Malkovich don't exactly stop for coffee in In the Line of Fire, but they do have a quick, revealing phone conversation in which it is established that they are kindred spirits. And it's unlikely that Clarice Starling would sit down for coffee with Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs -- mainly because he would probably use it to kill her -- but they do sit down and talk together.

And then, sometimes, all it takes to be a cool villain is a black mask and a respiratory problem. What do you think, dear readers? Do your favorite villains pass the "cup of coffee" test?

I'll always remember David Fincher's Se7en for a few different reasons (I even had to write an essay once about the opening credits) but the number one reason this film sticks in my brain is John Doe. Now usually when it comes to on-screen villains, you tend to remember the big personalities. In the words of Buffy, "strait up, black hat, tied to the train tracks, soon my electro-ray will destroy Metropolis," types. But as scary as the big bad wolf can be, sometimes the evil you never see coming is the one that becomes the stuff of nightmares.

In Fincher's thriller about a serial killer with a penchant for Dante and the wrath of god, we don't even get to see the bad guy until about half way through the movie. But when Doe (played to perfection by Kevin Spacey) calmly walks into the police station to hand himself over, you know that this is not your run of the mill psycho. Recently I took a look at some movie villains that manage to win you over with a little charm and charisma, and Doe definitely isn't one of those guys. He's the kind of guy you would cross the street to avoid, but only if you got to know him -- and that's what makes him scary, he is completely average. Instead of letting the audience get used to the idea of him, we only see his handiwork (as gruesome as it may be), and just like Mills (Brad Pitt) and Somerset (Morgan Freeman), we are just witnesses to the aftermath.

After the jump; Why Doe still scares the crap out of me, and his horrible plan is made complete...

One of the most chilling bad guys I've ever seen on film is in a soft-core sex flick -- a Russ Meyer movie, even. If you think of Meyer only as the director who featured supremely large-chested women in his films, you probably haven't seen his 1975 film Supervixens. Sure, there are plenty of voluptuous females in the movie, and some comedy moments, but there's also Charles Napier, and his character is truly villainous.

Supervixens is about an ordinary guy, Clint, who's married to the title character, a bad-tempered tease who is brutally murdered by an even nastier cop, Harry Sledge (Napier). Clint -- who is honestly the least memorable part of the movie -- flees town to avoid Sledge, and ends up encountering all kinds of delightful women whose names begin with "Super," like Supersoul, SuperCherry, and SuperHaji. His soulmate, though, is the amazing SuperAngel, played by the same actress as SuperVixen, Shari Eubank. Just as Clint is ready to settle down to a happy ending with SuperAngel, Harry Sledge returns.

I asked a bunch of people over the weekend about their favorite movie villainesses, and discovered something amusing: When you say "movie villainess," most people automatically think "Disney." Disney animated films seem to have set the standard for evil, conniving women in Hollywood. Other people bring up the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz, another unquestionable, unwavering villainess, although I always found the flying monkeys scarier than Margaret Hamilton, myself.

Our best villainesses in film are sometimes scary, sometimes a little campy, sometimes seemingly inhuman. Disney's witches are fine if you want uncomplicated opposition, and fun to watch, but I also like the women who seem to have everyone's best interest at heart while they spread nastiness throughout a movie. We have so many memorable, wonderful, terrifyingly evil women in film that I can't simply make a list of five or six, so I've instead compiled a list of categories into which many of our most villainous female characters fall.

Everybody loves a bad guy. They usually get the best lines, a great entrance, and a hell of a death scene. But our love affair with the dark side is no secret, and as much as we might love the bad boys, we all enjoy a good 'comeuppance', which is usually where our heroes come in. Hell, probably one of the biggest reasons most of us love the world of make-believe is that at least there, the good guys can win. Occasionally, though, you find a villain with qualities that go a little beyond being the 'man/woman you love to hate', and before you know it, that monster has managed to win you over before the credits have rolled -- which isn't always good news for our heroes.

Now this doesn't mean that I think these villains are model citizens, because well, I'm not that psycho. But when these guys are on screen, suddenly the 'hero' of the piece starts to fade away, and when your audience is bummed when the bad guy goes down, you know that you've created a villain who is just too damn charismatic for their own good. These characters can pop up in anything from a comic book flick to a period drama, but the one thing they have in common is their ability to make you think, "Hey, he's nuts, but he might have a point". So that's why for today's installment of our monthly tribute to villains, I've put together a list of my top 5 movie villains with charm to spare.

After the jump; my top five movie villains that will win you over in the end...

Oogie Boogie, the glow-in-the-dark boogeyman in The Nightmare Before Christmas, has it all. He's a singing, dancing sack full of worms with a striped tongue, and when it comes to Santa's fate, he has no qualms about leaving it up to a roll of the dice. His henchfolks, Lock, Shock, and Barrel, put the trick in trick or treat; they were supposed to kidnap Sandy Claws (aka Santa Claws) so Jack Skellington could take over Christmas, but instead delivered him right to Oogie's lair.

Oogie likes to gamble – mostly with lives, but always in style, as he ties Santa to a giant roulette wheel in his hallucinogenic underground lair and serenades Santa about his fate. Oogie, even though he's an anthropomorphized sackcloth, has a dapper demeanor because of his sonorous voice and jazzy vocal stylings. I could totally see him kicking back in a smoking jacket, martini and stogie in hand (paw?) after a long day of being bad.

Oogie also loves the ladies; Sally, who gets wind of Santa's predicament, dismantles one of her legs (being both a rag doll and a seamstress) and dangles it down into his lair. Boy is he angry when he finds out it's not connected to anything else. In the end, though, it all unravels for Oogie Boogie. Every villain has his or her weak spot; unfortunately, Oogie's was that he just wasn't put together that well.

Check out his song and dance in a clip after the jump.

Of the many things we've learned from television pundit Stephen Colbert, one of the most important is the danger of bears. On Colbert's online resource Wikiality, the Truthiness Encyclopedia, the entry on bears tells us that "Bears' strong vitality and resilience makes them one of mother nature's nearly unkillable animals. A bear has never been downed by any less than five gunshots. Combinations of high explosives, assault weapons, and trebuchets have been known to only piss the bear off."

But, you may ask, do they count as villains? Aren't scary bears in movies merely monsters, without the intellectual capacity to plot and scheme? I say bears are definitely villains, and as proof I offer three movies that feature relentless bears with more on their minds than just eating berries and looking for places to poop in the woods. Bears with purpose, with vicious intent. Bears who are, again in Mr. Colbert's words, "Godless killing machines."


Grizzly (1976)
The posters promised "18 feet of gut-crunching, man-eating terror!" (alternately, some ads also promoted "18 feet of towering fury") and indeed, Grizzly featured one large, nasty ursine villain. Sure, the whole movie was a cheesy rip-off of Jaws, which had been a phenomenal mega-blockbuster the previous year. But as cheesy rip-offs go, Grizzly is one of the best. The flick features a laundry list of 1970's B-listers like Christopher George, Richard Jaeckel and Andrew Prine, but the true star is the grizzly bear, chomping and mauling his way through a buffet of idiot campers at a state park.During the course of the film, hikers are torn asunder, cabins are smashed to bits, and the occasional deer gets dragged off to serve as a snack.