For any of you seniors out there who used to go to Saturday matinees of Roy and Dale, you might remember Roy Barcroft. Anyone who can piss you off every week when you’re five years old has got to be a real badass – or a great villian. I hated this man so much that I was still trying to find out his name when I was in my fifties!
She didn’t normally play villainous roles, put Gene Tierney’s performance in Leave Her to Heaven was certainly interesting.
And for a live performance: Chris Cedzich in East Lynne, Bethel College, McKenzie, Tennessee, 1962.
I can only recall two movie villians that genuinely frightened me. Russell Crowe in Romper Stomper as a xenophobic skinhead and, king of them all, Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast. Kingsley was so menacing that I was praying for him to get on with the violence because the anticipation was making me squirm.
Both opinions are based on first impressions only as I never revisited either movie.
My favorite overall is Torin Thatcher, a Shakespearean actor (at least I think he was) whose performances on celluloid always seem to be as villains, which he pulled off very well. He was balding and had an elegant sense of menace.
He played the magician Sokourah in the Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. When Jonathan Small decided to make his own fantasy epic, he hijacked as many people from that film for his own Jack the Giant Killer, including Thatcher, who played the evil magician/ruler Pendragon.
Thatcher also played the Prosecuting counsel in Agatha Christie’s Witness for the Prosecution (opposite Charles Laughton’s very Rumpole-like Defender). And he wasn’t technically a villain, but he was a hard-hearted New England clergyman in Hawaii (he scenes shot in Sturbridge Village!)
His last role that I saw was something of a letdown – he’s the “Good” priest in the original Star Trek episode “The Return of the Archons” and , for someone of his stature, they shoulda given him a meatier role.
Basil Rathbone has been mentioned, but not Vincent Price, who could be wonderfully menacing as well as hammy, and played villains as well as put-upon heroes.
the previously-mentioned Anthony Hopkins played a cillain in the lamentably awful Freejack, too (One of these days somebody will do Robert Sheckley stories right in the movies, and also give him proper credit, instead of ripping him off). But my favorite Hannibal Lektor was the one played by Brian Cox, who has played other villains as well.
Why no love for the crazies? If a plane carrying Bruce Dern, Jack Nicholson, Anthony Perkins(yeah, I know he’s already dead. Indulge me) and Tom Noonan crashed, they couldn’t make any more movies about insane but oddly likeable killers.
Boris Karloff has been mentioned, but only sort of offhand. Unfortunately, I think his best roles were unfilmed, or never quite existed. I’d love to see him as Jonathan Brewster in Arsenic and Old Lace. He originated the self-referential role (“They say he looks like Boris Karloff”) onstage, and played it for a long time, but the play was still on Broadway when they filmed the movie, so Karloff couldn’t do it, and Raymond Massey played the role. I understand there might be footage of one of his portrayals that was done for TV. If so, I’d love to see it.
He also played the Prosecutor Couchonof Joan of Arc in Anouilh’s play The Lark/l’Alouettte, but I’ve never seen it (It was filmed as a Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation, so I might see it yet). Actually, I think he would’ve killed as the same Prosecutor Cauchon in George Bernard Shaw’s play on the same topic, Saint Joan. I’d killed, myself, to see it.
In any event, Karloff did play the Frankenstein monster three times, several mad scientists (including a Dr. Frankenstein), muderers and Body Snatchers, the Dick Tracy villain Gruesome, The Mummy, The magician Scarabus in The Raven (He’d also appeared in an earlier film of that name as a miurderer, opposite Bela Lugosi!), “Mothef Muffin” on The Man from U.N.C.L.E…
Here is one version of AFI’s 100 YEARS…100 HEROES & VILLAINS and it appears that Jack Wilson from Shane and Simon the Magician from The Silver Chalice missed the list. A shame.
It’s probably more about my age at the time and the lack of truly evil villains I had seen until then (what with B Western Bad Guys as my only real exposure to the world of villainy) but the completely amoral and cruel gunning down of the farmer in Shane had me all primed and ready for Shane to blow this motherfucker’s guts all over the wall. Catharsis at age 12 or 13 helped to establish the pattern for rating villains for the rest of my life: if you want the son (or daughter) of a bitch to be killed in a most convincing way – and slowly – then this qualifies as the sort of villain to make such a Top 50 list.
I also thought the flying magician was evil, but mostly (if I can recall) because Jack was playing him and it was shortly enough after Shane that I assumed Jack was a badass in everything. In fact, it wasn’t until I saw him reading Edgar Allan Poe on Johnny Carson one night that I realized he was a human being with some redeemable qualities. And by the time he was Curly in Billy Crystal’s movies, I was able to love the old boy.
But Jack Palance gets my vote because he seered evil into my mind at such a tender age.
Number two would have to be Ralph Fiennes in Schindler’s List. Regardless of the charcter he portrays in other movies, he’s still the bastard Amon Goeth shooting down people in the compound. Too convincing a portrayal for me to shed my disgust over his breakout role.
FWIW, Paul Newman took out a full-page ad in one of the trade papers (Variety I believe) denouncing his own participation in The Silver Chalice which preceded his rising to stardom in Somebody Up There Likes Me. Funny thing is, when I saw the movie I was more intent on hating Simon than even noticing Newman. He was dreadful, as I recall. And if I saw TSC again it was long enough ago that all I can remember is the shot of Jack not being able to fly. Whether it’s that way or not, I remember seeing him (or the dummy they tossed) fall all the way down.
Guy’s name was Drexl (or something close, and I’ll leave the IMDB lookup for somebody else) and I’ll add Oldman to my short list, too. True Romance is also great for giving James Gandolfini the role that helped get him the Tony Soprano part. But “Virgil” was less a villain than just a thug. There’s a huge difference, at least for me. Thugs need beatings or getting humiliated; villains need to be gutted and burned and stomped on by a herd of zebras.
I don’t know about top 50’s or who would be the only actor who could nail any given villian role, but for best cynical, calm, nasty old man who lets his vitims think he’s smarter than he is, I love Cyril Cusak, from the John Hurt 1984, the watchable version of The Day of the Jackal, and Farenheit 451.
Also, Olivier had a great trick whenever he played a baddie: he’d do all the acting with the lower half of his face, while letting his eyes go dull and lifeless. Watch for this in The Entertainer or Spartacus right before Kirk Douglas spits in his face.
Since you guys mentioned Karloff, don’t forget Bedlam What a despicable little shit!
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