Karloff played Jonathan Brewster in television adaptations in 1949, 1955, and 1962. Both were televised in color. The 1962 version exists on videotape, the 1955 version may exist as a B&W kinescope film.
My first choice would be Christopher Lee, with a side vote for **Peter Cushing **just for his turn as Grand Moff Tarkin.
Oh, and Ian Mckellen wasn’t too bad as Magneto. In fact, he was GREAT. He was also good in Apt Pupil and Flushed Away. But I think playing Gandalf karmically cancels all that out.
But I don’t think anyone’s mentioned Gene Hackman yet - great as Lex Luthor (Superman franchise) and Little Bill (Unforgiven), he also does a great job in Crimson Tide and The Quick and the Dead. IMO.
Bill Nighy, while quite camp, was very enjoyable in the Underworld movies and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.
Oh, and RickJay, Vincent D’onofrio was also a fairly memorable villain in The Cell. Even though he kept reminding me of the Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan.
Was Gene Hackman really a villain in ‘Crimson Tide’?
I thought he and Denzil Washington were both trying to do their duty - and they made up at the end.
I agree with your take on the roles. Villainy is more than being a tough competitor. Villainy requires depravity and either a rejection of, or the never attaining of, any sense of compassion for one’s fellow human beings. There have been many “bad guys” who were far from being true villains.
The beginning of such a list might include:
Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire
George C. Scott’s role in The Hustler
Charlton Heston’s role in The Big Country
Any general in the American Civil War
Most of the outlaws portrayed in Westerns (like Billy the Kid, Jesse James, the Clantons, Butch and Sundance, an almost endless list until you come to Jack Palance in Shane!)
I first saw Willem Dafoe in Streets of Fire. As the camera focused on his face in the audience, gazing lustfully up at Diane Lane, I knew he was up to no good. (Add this film to my “guilty pleasures” list.)
And he played Gas in eXistenZ. Would you trust him to install a bioport?
I gotta vote ** Christopher Walken** as well.
I can’t believe that someone beat me to this. I saw the Matrix before Priscilla and I couldn’t buy his character since he was such a badass agent.
What, no one has mentioned Vincent Price? 
Professor Ratigan
Dr. Anton Phibes
Prince Prospero in The Masque of the Red Death
Frederick Loren in House on Haunted Hill
I think he enjoyed playing villians.
Price was mentioned by CalMeacham. 
I like Price a lot, but he was usually campy. BTW: he was even the voice of the Invisible Man at the end of Abbot and Costello meet Frankenstein.
brewha, I saw Priscilla first so between Keanu being Keanu and trying to buy him being a computer expect and recognizing the tough agent as Mitzi, I laughed at most of the Matrix.
While I think Christopher Lee deserves the **Lifetime Achievement ** award for best movie actor to play villains, I forgot to mention that Alan Rickman as “Hans Gruber” is my favorite single Villain.
Jim
All the villains that immediately popped into my head were posted immediately!!!
Christopher Lee’s Dracula movies scared the bejesus out of me as a kid, w/ those blood-shot eyes, and the Jack Palance portrayal did as well.
Rutger Hauer next (The Hitcher), and then Christopher Walken in Sleepy Hollow…the Horseman role was (to me) unreal, w/ those filed down teeth… :eek:
Oh, and when I was around 5, the Abominable Snowmonster from Rudoph.
Wes Study was lethal creepy in Last Of The Mohicans. Klaus Maria Brandauer always struck me as a disturbing foe as well, a tad “unbalanced” if you will.
I don’t mind at all! It tickled me that you remembered Palance in The Silver Chalice. That one flying scene is also the only thing I remember about that movie. Hell, I didn’t even remember the title.
Good point too, about bad guys who don’t qualify as villains. How to explain the difference? I don’t know, but I can often sympathize with bad guys. They usually have some rationale for their actions. Like Ryker and the cattlemen in Shane, working their asses off and then losing grazing land to farmers.
Bad guy characters are usually more fleshed out than villains.
I find I can usually enjoy movies where the “good” and “bad” guys and gals are pretty evenly distributed between the protagonists and their opposite group (I’m unable to recall the term offhand), more than I am when it’s villains versus heroes. Most of those things are too fanciful to provide much more than just raw entertainment and fantasy.
Take Pulp Fiction and The Godfather movies as cases in point. What would otherwise be villains are just meaner than average bad guys and what would be heroes are just nicer than average good guys, but they all have redeeming qualities and motivations.
If a movie can be easily divided into heroes and villains, as most of the “comic book” movies can, I’m usually not even interested in watching it.
I’ll see your Keifer Sutherland and raise you his dad Donald - particularly cold and ruthless in Eye of the Needle. No fuss, no speeches, he just kills whoever gets in his way.
Orson Welles was a fantastic bad guy ex-Nazi in The Stranger, as if Citzen Kane wasn’t enough “Bad Guy” street cred.
My personal favorite bad guy is James Cromwell - that’s right, Farmer Hogett in Babe - as Captain Dudley in LA Confidential. His eyes were cold! :eek: Great movie IMHO,and a good movie for “bad guy” actors - Kevin Spacey and Russell Crowe were in it also.