villains09 Tagged Articles at Cinematical

There are villains we love, and villains we'd love to be -- at least fictionally, imaginatively within our own little dream worlds. These are worlds where we don't have to really kill anybody or do anything bad, but can just lather ourselves in their badassedness, especially as the time ticks down towards Halloween. For me, there's probably no villain I'd rather mimic than Kill Bill's Elle Driver, California Mountain Snake.

I was mesmerized when Daryl Hannah whistled her way into the hospital in the sexiest and coolest white suit known to man, only to change into something as equally cool -- taking the nurse look so far that there's even that bright red cross adorning her white eye patch. Cool song, cool clothes, and cool fighting style. If Uma didn't do such a great job, I would've been rooting for Elle the whole time.

Of course, every time I watch the scene after the jump, I always grumble about the fact that every costume store sells "sexy nurse" outfits, but no truly sexy nurse outfits. Sorry models, but your practically bare-arsed images on those skimpy little costumes are no match for head-to-toe white suits with red umbrellas, or form fitting and classic white nurses' uniforms. But one day... I'll sew one myself if I have to!

Let's face it, your the hero of your movie is only as good as your villain is bad. If you've got an amazing, swashbuckling, ass-kicking hero who faces off against someone wimpy, it just feels like you had an amazing appetizer and a lackluster main course. We want villains that we love to hate, not villains that we hate to love, and once we find them, we don't want to let go of them so easily. Just look at how much Darth Vader has dominated the world of villainy. He was in four of the six Star Wars movies, and is still pretty much the poster-boy for awesome villains.

But what about the villains who could have joined him? There's a whole slew of sub-villains who weren't given enough screen time, or were killed off too easily. Villains who deserve to roam the hallowed halls of the bad guys and girls club. We dedicate this Cinematical Seven to those who could have been great, but are instead relegated to the ranks of the Almost Perfect Villains Club.

Darth Maul

Speaking of Star Wars, Did this guy get a bad rap or what? He a Dark Lord of the Sith for pete's sake, yet he hardly talks, zips around on a scooter, and gets killed at the end of the only movie he appears in. He does kill Obi Wan's mentor, sure, but why not keep him around for later? He looked scary and cool at the same time, and wielded very cool double-ended saber. Plus, Ray Park did a kickass job playing him and making those fight scenes look amazing. Unfortunately, one chop to the midsection and he was never heard from again. Darth Vader went on to become a legend, but Darth Maul only became "that guy with the red face and the horns," and no one is rushing to make a movie about his origins. The Star Wars saga actually has a plethora of great villains we would like to see more of: Jabba the Hutt, Grand Moff Tarkin, Boba Fett, IG-88, and more.

I usually don't like kids in the movies all that much. Maybe I'm missing that maternal gene, or maybe I'm just not that into the little rugrats. But suffice to say that I sometimes have a pretty dark view of children, and that's why I love The Bad Seed -- and I especially love little Rhoda Penmark. The Bad Seed was based on William March's novel about a murderous little girl who terrorizes her family and friends, and by the time it's all said and done, she comes up with relatively respectable body count. The 1956 film was directed by Mervyn LeRoy and starred Patty McCormack as the pigtailed terror, and in spite of a tacked-on ending to satisfy the Hays code at the time, the film is still considered on of the penultimate 'creepy kid' flicks.

But what set Rhoda apart is that usually when you have murderous kids, the moral caveat is usually that they are outside the 'normal run of things', leaving our heroes to dispatch the bad guy without any hand-wringing about harming children. So most films give you kids like Damian (the Antichrist himself) or those creepy little buggers from Village of The Damned who come from another planet -- but with Rhoda, there is no one to blame but her. Although in both the film and the original book, there is an argument that she is just the victim of her family tree, but that's not exactly the same as the supernatural kids in those other horror films. There is no excuse for why Rhoda is the way she is, and she reminds you that evil can come in all kinds of packages -- and that's why to this day, the sight of her skipping away with her braids swinging remains as one of my most beloved movie villain moments.

After the jump; some of Rhoda's creepier moments and a tribute to her lasting inspiration to the macabre everywhere...

So there I was on the Twitter, conversing with a few friends and rambling aimlessly about some movie minutiae that was hopping through my head. One of those Tweets was this one, and it prompted an immediate response from several Twitter pals ... and Erik Davis. He insisted that my admiration for character actor William Atherton would make for an appropriate edition of "Villains We Love," and here's why: Mr. Atherton is at his best when he's playing a smug, smarmy, officious authority figure who exists mainly to give a movie's hero something fun to play off of.

Case in point: Val Kimer vs. William Atherton in Real Genius. Bill Murray vs. William Atherton in Ghostbusters. Bruce Willis (and Bonnie Bedelia) vs. William Atherton in Die Hard and Die Hard 2. Pauly Shore vs. William Atherton in Bio-Dome. Certainly no one-trick pony (you also know this actor from The Sugarland Express, The Day of the Locust, and The Last Samurai), but the man's just great at playing a snooty villainous bastard. For those who require some evidence, I refer you to the post-jump territory.

More on Atherton: To find out which giant TV show he'll be guest starring on during its final season, head over to SciFi Squad.

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.

Even at a young age, I drew definitive lines for myself when it came to horror movies. I swore off the Friday the 13ths because the first not only plagued me with nightmares since my sneaky eyes caught it at a way-too-young age, but it also helped give me a healthy fear of the rural darkness. Yet I adored the Nightmare on Elm Street series -- whether I was watching the film drastically cut for Saturday afternoon TV or renting the flicks in their full horrific glory. It was campy fun, and I always figured that a mixture of laughs and horror was the magic mix that made things interesting. But there was another reason I made a distinction, one that didn't become clear until much later in life.

I adored Debbie Stevens and Alice Johnson, Sydney Prescott and Tatum Riley because they didn't just scream and quiver -- even if they didn't survive. They fought in a real, flawed, and human way. They weren't some sort of Kill Bill gang of women wildly skilled and powerful. They simply did what they could, and if they were lucky enough to survive the first few rounds, their fighting prowess would grow accordingly.

They were scared -- who wouldn't be? -- but they didn't let fright immobilize them. They were a nice and welcome comfort in a world where women usually were good for nothing but screams and bloody death.

Yes, Barnard Hughes' Grandpa stole all the thunder, between his Windex aftershave and his casual, his epic closing line, and his nonchalant way of staking the head vamp and saving his family from a pesky future of bloodlust. But the Big Bad that he killed, well, he's my favorite part of The Lost Boys. Forget the Coreys, Kiefer, or Jason.

Edward Herrmann, well before his riche Richard Gilmore years, was the most unlikely head honcho of evil. Tall, awkward, with big, thick glasses and a seemingly huge heart, Max was the video store geek. It was a look he used to his advantage, pulling off the persona of well-meaning new boyfriend for Dianne Wiest's Lucy. He knew how to be charming, considerate, and just reserved enough that you weren't quite sure if it was all for real.

Then again, maybe things would have been different with deleted scene #11 (see it after the jump). When Max describes Lucy as a lioness with her cubs and growls, I'm sure it would've given it all away. Okay, I kid. But sometimes the villain needs to be ridiculous. Not every baddie can look tough, or scare us to the bone. Just sometimes, they have to be the super-tall nerdy dude with bottle glasses and one unsexy vampire face.

How can I have a soft spot in my heart for a mute murderer who kills humans like cattle, wears their faces, and eats them for dinner? Why don't I feel the same way about, say, Michael Myers or even Freddy?

Leatherface – the original Leatherface, not the more farcical one in TCM 2 where he pseudo-humps Stretch with his chainsaw in beat-you-over-the-head-phallic-symbol way, although I do love that one too – is sympathetic in a way the others aren't. The terror of Michael Myers is his blankness; his generic Halloween mask emphasizes how little is going on behind there besides just the desire to kill. And Freddy – well, the dude was a child molester. Enough said.

But Leatherface, while he does bludgeon the free-wheelin' teens who find their way into his house of horrors, is sort of kerfuffled by the whole thing. In one scene, he mutters to himself, shaking his head by the audacity of the kids who are interrupting his normal day-to-day life. His home life is pretty messed up; his brothers pick on him, his grandmother is a dried-up corpse in the attic, and his grandfather is barely able to feed himself. And as far as the killing, he doesn't seem to see the people as much more than two-legged cows; he bludgeons them, hangs them on hooks, and stuffs them in freezers. He's just doing his job, as far as he's concerned.

It always amazes me how your perspective can change when you grow up with a movie, and sometimes the movie takes on a whole new meaning when you see it again with the eyes of an adult. When I was kid, I watched the 1980 cult classic Mommie Dearest and was terrified of Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford, the maniacal clean freak and abusive mom. But as an adult, I watch this movie, and it's pretty darn funny -- of course, that has a lot to do with watching the film with John Waters' commentary (and if you haven't heard it, I highly recommend picking up the Hollywood Royalty edition of Dearest on DVD).

Dearest was based on the exposé written by Crawford's daughter Christina in 1978, and the book dragged the Hollywood icon's reputation through the mud, and even inspired other celebrity tell-alls from other famous kids in the years to come. The film might have been a commercial success, but was savaged by critics upon release, and Dunaway even made claims that the film managed to ruin her career -- although Supergirl probably didn't help much either.

In Frank Perry's over the top masterpiece, Dunaway was a dead ringer for Crawford, and she is as scary as any movie monster when she gets going on one of her rages -- while chewing the scenery to shreds. So whether it was walloping little Christina with a wire hanger, or chopping down trees with an ax in a ball gown, the lady is just straight out bonkers. But even though I'm not afraid of her anymore, she does remain as one of my favorite movie villains of all time.

After the jump; Christina fights back and one of the many moments of unintentional comedy...