Speaking of which, I loved when Armadillo got his face held down on the hot burner on the stove.
Wasn’t a sling blade that he used at the end but a sharpened lawn mower blade. It’s funny how many people remember that part wrong. I’m not 100% sure but I don’t think you see a sling blade in the entire movie you only hear about it in Karl’s story about killing his mother.
My favorite part was how he called the cops afterwards and said something along the lines of “Yup pretty sure he’s dead. I whooped him a good one”
Knead, re The Professional…can’t believe I forgot that one. Darn me!
To certain other posters: there was nothing in Spirited Away that would qualify as severe villiany. It’s just a very sweet coming of age story.
Oh yeah, another one - when Donnie Darko tells off Patrick Swayze’s character (Jim Cunningham) in front of the entire school during his “motivational speech.”
Oh, and by the way, Argent Towers, in re The Mist:
Goddammit, you should have just told me not to watch The Mist. I watched it last night, and I’m fucking traumatized by that ending.
I gotta be first on some of these occasionally, even if only through the laws of random chance. 
I immediately thought of Misery, when James Caan’s character finally escapes and gives it back to Kathy Bates’ character:
Eat it till ya choke, you sick, twisted fuck!
Just as a side issue, I think it might be instructive if we could identify which actor has contributed most by being on the receiving end of these cathartic and visceral moments in more than just one or two movies.
Nominees:
Jack Palance
Alan Rickman
Brian Dennehy
Gary Oldman
Your basic Bond villain
anybody in a black hat in the B Westerns (except Lash LaRue)
Lee Van Cleef
Peter Lorre
Glenn Close
Demi Moore
Barbara Stanwyck
Joan Crawford
Margaret Hamilton
Doris Day
One of my favorites. Very satisfying.
I never said that Yubaba was a villain. But there’s no denying that she was a horrible bitch at many points in the movie. Just like Lady Eboshi was a horrible bitch at some points in Princess Mononoke, even though she’s not strictly a villain (and she’s one of my all-time favorite animated characters as well).
Yes.
It’s been a while, but my recollection is that Yubaba was a “bad guy”. Am I remembering wrong?
-FrL-
In the original Longest Yard, when Burt Reynolds tells his blockers to let the one guard through, and then FIRES the ball right into the guy’s crotch…
And in the next play, does the EXACT SAME THING…
Yubaba was more what I would call an “antagonist”. While she’s not particularly nice at all to Chihiro, the main character, she doesn’t have any particular motives to hurt her, either. Probably the worst thing she did in the whole movie was stealing her sister Zeniba’s precious magic seal by way of Haku, whom she controlled with a spell, and subsequently abandoning Haku once Zeniba sent magic creatures to kill him. However, I interpreted the seal-theft as just another instance in a long-time series of conflicts between the sisters, and her abandonment of Haku as part of her general indifference towards others.
One thing about Hayao Miyazaki’s movies is that hardly any of them have classic purely evil villains. Probably the most purely evil character he ever created was Muska in Castle in the Sky. Yubaba is not a pleasant character, to be sure, but she doesn’t want to rule the world either. All she wants is for her bathhouse to make gobs of money and to one-up her sister by any means possible.
Actually IIRC, that is what Robert Carlyle’s character does to his wife near the beginning of the film, while she is strapped a gurney, pleading for help and unable to defend herself. One of the more disgusting and uncomfortably misogynistic scenes I’ve even seen. Whether that happens again to someone else later on, I forget, as I’ve tried to block out all traces of that horrid film from my memory.
You think severe river pollution isn’t villainy?
Anyway I put it in as a response to the “viscerally satisfying” request, rather than the “just deserts” bit; I felt the “etc” gave me the mandate to do that. 
Always thought that scene was awful. After regaining his powers and, literally, saving the world, Clark Kent takes petty vengeance on a garden-variety bully.
Don’t know why I didn’t think of this right away: in the movie Punch-Drunk Love, when the half-wit brothers from Utah crash into the protagonist’s car, injuring his girlfriend, and this time, instead of being terrorized and helpless, he calmly and efficiently puts three of them down for the count and leaves the fouth one pissing his pants.
I also love the ending of The Big Sleep with Humphrey Bogart. Guess Eddie Mars isn’t such a tough guy when it’s his own life on the line, eh?
Dirty Harry is the all time leader in this category for me.
The scene in the stadium where the lights come on and Scorpio freezes in the middle of the field… well, let’s just say disrespecting a psychopath’s civil rights has never felt so good.
Many scenes from the Death Wish series.
Here’s one that I particularly enjoyed:
Is this a whoosh? Schindler’s list, Nell, Michael Collins, Ethan Frome and Darkman all came before theStar Wars prequel.
Not to mention Next of Kin, where Liam plays Patrick Swayze’s hillbilly brother. I can’t tell you what Neeson’s acting range limits are, but I can confidently say that this role was outside of them.