Godzilla kind of falls into “Force of Nature” to me…like Galactus. 
Yeah, everyone in the galaxy wants to shank me and take my job. I’m sure it’ll be easy to find someone I can trust to stick sharp motorized instruments in my mouth.
-Joe
To add one to an already great list,
Captain Vidal from Pan’s Labyrinth is an especially brutal character.
Jack Nicholson as the devil from The Witches of Eastwick. Magnificently depraved. The scene of his corpulent bodyface down humping a bed as some sort of erotic come-on to Cher was so truly and hilariously disgusting that Jack has to feature somewhere, for mine.
Serpentor. This I command.
ok, I was only kidding about that.
Joseph Cotten as Uncle Charlie in ‘Shadow of a Doubt’. Great portrayal of a very bad man.
I think another great villain of this ilk was Dustin Hoffmann’s Winston King in Confidence. Scared the crap out of me whenever he was on screen, no matter how innocuous the action.
Not regarding how they were acted or anything The Dark Knight’s Joker was better just because of how successful he was. Pretty much through his actions ended up turning Batman into a villain, killed the D.A., assistant D.A., judge, and commissioner of Gotham City, blew up a hospital, created mass chaos, and finished off the mob, which is gonna leave a power vacuum for more villains. (Which is interesting, he did the job that Batman couldn’t do). And he didn’t die, he just got caught by the Gotham City police, which probably means he would’ve been out in a week.
Really, what did Jack Nicholson do that compared to that?
Odd you should say that, as it leads into something I was going to post.
Killed a mob boss played by Jack Palance, who deserves his own mention in this thread. The bad guy he played in “Shane”, Jack Wilson, was a memorable (and nasty) piece of work - including the classic introduction where he walks into the bar and the dog slinks out under the door.
I’ll unleash a pack of flying monkeys on all who do not agree with the above choice of most evil villian…and your little dog, too!
Sid 6.7
How about a NSFW label there?
My pick:
God, in The Rapture. Offstage, but very much there.
Doctor Strangelove was a villian? Okay - maybe his left hand was, but not the rest of him. General Ripper was a much better villian.
Two not yet mentioned, and deserving of the title:
Harry Roat Jr in Wait Until Dark
Jack the Ripper in Time After Time
Phyllis, in Double Indemnity.
Lars Thorwald, in Rear Window.
Kiefer Sutherland’s character inPhone Booth.
Most of the big bads on Buffy were pretty good villains. My favorites are The Mayor, Glory, and Adam, in that order.
The implacable, liquid-metal assassin T-1000 from Terminator 2.
Keyser Soze from The Usual Suspects. Brilliantly devious and unscrupulous.
John Doe from Se7en. Simply diabolical.
Gollum from LOTR, all the more so because he was such a tragic figure.
Of course, “Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!”
Dolores Umbridge. Ooooooo, she’s bad, and cloying too, which is even worse.
Magua from The Last of the Mohicans. One scary motherfucker, who’d just as soon kill you as look at you.
Frank Booth from Blue Velvet. Ditto.
Jack the Ripper from Time After Time. Also ditto, but witty too. Maybe David Warner’s best bad-guy role ever, in a career full of them.
Scarlett O’Hara
Randall Flagg from The Stand. The Walkin’ Dude.
StG
Having the advantages of being played by a great actor AND having a really, really cool name.
A good villian in an otherwise mediocre movie was Philip Seymour Hoffman’s bad guy in “Mission Impossible III.” I don’t remember much else about the movie, but I remember his villian being so believable. He wasn’t a super evil genius or a wisecracking invincible cartoon bad guy. He was just a sociopathic asshole who had no scruples about killing to get his way. Hoffman played him absolutely straight and he was real as could be. Very nasty peice of work.