Star Wars III.
Quite a few Vincent Price movies:
Tower of London
The Masque of the Red Death
Master of the World
Witchfinder General
House of Wax
The Abominable Doctor Phibes
Doctor Phibes Rises Again
The Invisible Man Returns
Speaking of which, The Invisible Man.
I have not read The Island of Doctor Moreau, but in the two film versions I have seen, Charles Laughton’s and Burt Lancaster’s scenes are far more memorable than the hero’s.
Kind Hearts and Coronets
Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog.
Unforgiven.
Salt (probably lots of spy movies…)
Doesn’t count since Richard III was a real person. Of course, many of the dirty deeds attributed to him in Shakespeare’s artful bit of character assassination he probably didn’t do in real life so it’s certainly arguable whether the play should be labelled as “fiction” or “biography”.
So was MacBeth. Neither of the plays was exactly what could be honestly called ‘historically accurate’, so ‘fiction’ is a fair description of both.
No Bonnie and Clyde yet?
Oh, good point. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
And another Christie novel (probably her best seller too):
Ten little Indians (also known as* And then there were none)*
I wouldn’t agree here. Salt is the main character, and it turns out she’s a sleeper agent - but very much not a villain. She’s turned against her handlers, and opposes their plans to start WW3.
The Luck of Barry Lyndon, by Thackeray. If you think he’s a total bastard in Kubrick’s film, believe me, he’s a saint compared to the Barry Lyndon of the novel.
By the same token, hellbitch Becky Sharp is a quite incredibly sympathetic character in the 2004 adaptation of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair.
It’s always that way. I guess directors figure that the reader of a novel can be made to sympathize with an unsympathetic character, through deep immersion in that character’s POV, but they despair of carrying that over to a film adaptation.
While none of the major characters in that book are particularly good people (which is, of course, sort of the point), I wouldn’t say the murderer in that one is the main character. IIRC, the murderer is “off screen” for much of the novel.
Macbeth, Richard III, Othello, all have the villain as the POV character, the one who gets to break the fourth wall regularly.
Cronenberg’s The Fly.
In fact, the protagonist and antagonist do a reversal, Seth Brundle becomes the villain and Stathis Borans saves the day.
And the hero-antagonist is a huge jerk, to boot.
The OP does not exclude fictional characters based on real people.
Downfall should count, all main characters but Hitler’s secretary are villains. (And heroes in their own minds, which makes it still more interesting.)
I think Lady Macbeth and Iago, not the title characters, are arguably the villains of Macbeth and Othello. I’m not that familiar with either play though (I’ve seen Macbeth once, and have never seen Othello), so I wouldn’t be the best person to actually make that argument.
WRT Iago, that was my point. As for Lady Macbeth, she is the one who is too full o’ the milk of human kindness – she goes mad with guilt, while Macbeth commits ever-greater crimes unflinchingly.
Godzilla?
Crime stories told from the criminal’s POV, of course, make up a whole genre of their own. Where would Hollywood be without them? All the way back to Scarface (1932), The Public Enemy (with James Cagney), Little Caesar (Edward G. Robinson), etc.