Yeah, I agree. I think they tried to make her sympathetic in the movie (they sort of make that guy she killed look all abusive). In the play, Fred Casely just walks out and she shoots him–no melodrama about him pushing her or or anything. She and Velma and Billy and everyone except for Amos (oh and the Hungarian woman) are pretty awful. But that’s what makes it so fun.
It’s been a number of years since I last saw the movie, but maybe Harvey Kietel in Bad Lieutenant? Does he turn it around in the end?
While not actually evil, some of W.C. Field’s protagonists were pretty nasty lowlifes. Probably the epitome is Larson E. Whipsnade in You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man.
Kain the vampire, of the Blood Omen video games. “Vorador was right. We are Gods - Dark Gods - and it is our duty to thin the herd.”
Lolita
Bob Roberts
The Player
The Omen
Profit (TV w. Adrian Pasdar)
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
Star 80 (Paul Snider/Eric Roberts)
There’s maybe a half dozen people in that series who AREN’T evil.
All of them except Blacklight and the she-Spawn end badly, too…
Yuri Orlov from the movie Lord of War might fit the bill. I’m nervous about giving too much away, however. Suffice it to say, he conforms pretty nicely to the standards set out in the OP
Yup.
Yup.
Dr. Impossible from Grossman’s Soon I will Be Invincible is a supervillain, and proud of it.
Andrew Vachss’s Burke and his merry gang. Especially Max the Silent.
The protagonist was the Gregory Peck character, though, right? The father? Not Damien.
Blackadder.
Jack of Jack of Shadows is fairly evil, or at best amoral due to lacking a soul.
Cowin of Amber considered himself to be evil. He once called himself “an evil that destroys other evils”.
The writer and director of Die Hard both think that Hans Gruber is the protagonist.
Dr. Horrible, of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. (“Freeze ray! Tell your friends.”)
Having never seen it, I’ve heard Al Swearigen from HBO’s Deadwood is a very evil man.
Does Dexter count? He is a murderer, but he has his own moral code, and only kills other killers…I don’t know if I would call him evil…
As for my entry, I’ll go with an old one - Macbeth.
Tyler Durden.
And pretty much any protagonist Chuck Palahniuk has ever written.
Richard III, from Shakespeare’s play.