What, they played the 1980 Flash Gordon movie every Saturday when you were a lad?
The Warner Brothers trio:
Humphrey Bogart was a terrific villain – completely untrustworthy and nasty, but able to project otherwise. Once he started playing the hero, people tended to forget how good he was as a bad guy in The Petrified Forest, Dead End, The Roaring Twenties and Brother Orchid, among many.
Same for James Cagney, if only for The Public Enemy and White Heat.
And, of course, Edward G. Robinson for Little Caesar, The Whole Town’s Talking (where he had a dual role and was more than convincing as both the villain and the hero), and Key Largo.
Your dad and I had the same basic reaction to Jack Elam in Rawhide (1951) which tried to make Tyrone Power into a hero and Susan Hayward into a sympathetic mother. Elam taking shots at that baby (when I saw the movie after I was an “adult”) was almost comedy, but for the pre-teen I was the first time I saw it, that was almost as mean and nasty as Jack Palance turned out to be a couple of years later. Palance put the tin lid on cold-blooded evil in Westerns. I can’t think of any other actor to surpass his extreme hatefulness.
Elam was hilarious in one of those Cannonball Run flics as a proctologist, and he and Strother Martin were the M. Emmet Walsh and Harry Dean Stanton of the earlier decade(s) – meaning the movie couldn’t be all bad if those guys were in it (a wonderful topic for another thread if anyone feels up to starting it off).
This guy isn’t particularly well-known as a bad guy, but Daniel Benzali’s role in **All The Little Animals ** labeled him a Supreme Rat Bastid in my eyes for all of eternity.
http://www.scottjordan.com/html/pages/LRTables/mission-coffee.html
He is truly something you want to scrape off your shoe.
(Incidently, this is a great movie.)
http://www.vintagelibrary.com/CliffhangerSerials/Flash-Gordon.html It was weekly ,so we hated him every week.
Yo, Kalhoun, that is one subtle link!
Isn’t Benzali that bald-headed guy who’s been a meany in quite a few courtroom types of roles? (I could go look him up, but I just had to ask about the table 
)
D’oh! :smack:
(hangs head in shame)
I just watched Sexy Beast yesterday. I can’t decide who was more horrifying – Kingsley with his manic insanity or Ian McShane with that deadeyed stare.
I don’t get the title of the movie though. The beast in Gal’s nightmares wasn’t particularly sexy, and neither was Kingsley.
Christopher Walken – damn, I had managed to get his character in At Close Range out of my head.
I’ve gotta go with Bill McKinney , with Herbert “Cowboy” Coward as a close second!
Henry Fonda in “Once Upon A Time In The West” - solely because it’s so anti-Fonda.
VCNJ~
Ooooh…that may be the most evil character evah. He was painful to watch. That was an academy award performance, if you ask me.
Ralph Fiennes in “Schindler’s List” was about the nastiest bastard I’ve ever seen on screen, and he was a nasty piece of work in “The English Patient,” too. His Voldemort doesn’t do much for me, though. He’s not at his best without his nose, I guess.
But I actually came here to mention Lee van Cleef and Henry Silva.
I didn’t see him as a villain in Blade Runner. I totally sympathized with him. You didn’t? 
Now Sean Young – she was villainous. Maybe it was the acrobatics – she looked like she was having too much fun.
edited to add Lee Van Cleef and Henry Silva – yes! What is it about pronounced cheekbones that make people look so scary?
I have to nominate **Kiefer Sutherland - **
He has managed to make me *hate * him in such movies as Eye for and Eye, A Time to Kill, Stand By Me, Freeway and gave me the creeps in Phone Booth
IMDB link
I also want to add - Michael Wincott - with his voice and look he does well as bad guys.
One more - Jack Nicholson - great in Batman, A Few Good Men and The Witches of Eastwick
I concur with both and would put them on my top 20 list, I believe. Sharky’s Machine just wouldn’t have worked (and my main reason for owning the DVD is Rachel Ward, the music, and Atlanta) without Silva’s inspired villainy. His gunning down Gassman was nearly as cathartic as the Dar Robinson fall at the end. Reynolds preventing him from killing himself was a nice touch, too.
Do you remember Silva in Green Mansions? He was also an insider with the Rat Pack. Quite effective as well in the real Manchurian Candidate.
Although there are some fine villains mentioned here, Alan Rickman is still the boss.
Because Kevin Costner, in ‘Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves’, actually cut Rickman’s part- to avoid be out-acted.
Did you mean Daryl Hannah instead of Sean Young? If not, the acrobatics of both Daryl and Joanna Cassidy outshone Sean’s – unless I’m forgetting something (and I’ve seen BR at least a dozen times).
:smack: You’re right. Pris (Hannah) was the one I was thinking about.
Good deal. If you don’t mind my saying so, AuntiePam, I believe that in topics relating to TV, movies and such, our tastes and interests, as well as things we’re familiar with, overlap more than 75% of the time.