Their screen images will chill the blood in your veins and make you look over your shoulder while you walk in the park in the dark. Intelligent, brutal, immoral, sadistic – these movie characters have convinced us that the world can be a very dark and horrid place indeed. Here are the top ten movie villains of all time!
10. Francis Dolarhyde (Red Dragon) – played by Ralph Fiennes
It is ironic that Ralph Fiennes – the perfect and suave English gentleman that he is – should find a place in this list not once, but twice. And for a good reason too – his blood-chilling portrayal of Francis Dolarhyde in Red Dragon was the highlight of this “Silence of the Lambs” spin-off. In a classic Freudian style, Francis is horribly molested as a child and finds violence to be the perfect outlet for his anger. Completely unable to feel empathy, he is a blood-thirsty killing machine – strong, intelligent, ruthless – a serial killer per se.
9. Agent Smith (The Matrix trilogy) – played by Hugo Weaving
Despite being a software program in the Matrix, agent Smith managed to become one of the most recognizable movie villains of the new century. Calm, under control, threatening – the perfect embodiment of a law enforcement agency officer – Smith is the counter image of Keanu Reeves’ Neo, his negative duplicate. If you add to all this the fact that he is an unstoppable lethal mass-killing machine who can fist-fight his way through a concrete wall while keeping his suit in perfect condition, you will easily understand why millions of people felt spell-bound by his charisma. Not to mention the sublime (as usual) performance of heavyweight theatre talent Hugo Weaving.
8. Dart Vader (The original Star Wars trilogy) – with the voice of James Earl Jones
Arguably the most iconic villain of all, the Dark lord of Sith sits on the eighth place for a couple of reasons. First – at the very end of The Return of the Jedi he saved his son Luke Skywalker and redeemed himself. Second – for all its special effects glory, Star Wars remains a surprisingly shallow movie, despite its unquestionable place in movie history. We never understood Vader’s motives to turn to the Dark Side, nor the source of his evil. We had to wait for more than twenty years for that, and the second trilogy was nothing short of a cinematic disaster (Jar Jar Bings, anyone?).
7. Patrick Bateman (American Psycho) – played by Christian Bale
What better reason to kill someone than the fact that his business card is more elaborate than yours? A movie that affirmed Christian Bale as a movie icon and one of the leading actors of his generation. A movie that turned into a pop culture phenomenon by simply describing how shallow, twisted and even demented the world of the one-percenters can be. Patrick Bateman is utterly brilliant and completely insane at the same time – a particularly disturbing combination, especially when he is running with an electric chainsaw, trying to cut a prostitute in two.
6. Alex (Clockwork Orange) – played by Malcolm McDowell
Out of the twisted collaboration between legendary director Stanley Kubrick and one of the most iconic actors of all time Malcolm McDowell comes the disturbing, dystopian grotesque of Clockwork Orange. McDowell is obscenely good as Alex – absolutely immoral, insane and with uncontrollable outbursts of violence. But it is not the violence itself that is disturbing – the fact that it is performed like a game, like a childish hobby, is truly depraved.
5. The Joker (The Dark Knight) – Heath Ledger
All due respect to Jack Nicholson and his iconic performance in the 1989 Batman flick. But it was Heath Ledger’s incarnation as the volatile Joker that truly kept us on the edge of our seats. “Some people just like to watch the world burn”, says Michael Caine and all we have to do is agree. The Joker was the only opponent who truly got under Batman’s skin and almost outplayed him in the mind games. Swaying between being master-tactician of gangster warfare and uncontrollable psychopath, the Joker is so utterly disgusting and unacceptable because there is no end behind all this destruction, no reason. There is just the fire of madness.
4. Anton Chigurh (No Country for Old Men) – played by Javier Bardem
It is quite rare (if ever) that the Academy bestows the Oscar for creating a negative character, let alone a mass murderer who decides the fate of his victims by a coin toss. But Javier Bardem was so sublime, so dominantly perfect in his portrayal of assassin Anton Chigurh that it was worth the exception. Besides, if you are able to frighten the audience with your haircut only, you are the real deal.
3. John Doe (Se7en) – played by Kevin Spacey
Kevin Spacey appeared for about ten minutes at the end of Se7en but it was enough for the audience to hate his character for a lifetime. A brilliant serial killer with a sense of biblical revenge, Doe performs his master final act as the curtain calls. Articulating with an almost autistic calmness, he plays cat and mouse with Brad Pitt’s character Mills, only to reveal one of the most shocking plot turns in cinematic history. It is a brilliant scene, performed by a brilliant cast, depicting pure, embodied evil. What more can you desire from a movie?
2. Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Silence of the Lambs) – played by Sir Anthony Hopkins
Take one of the best psycho-thrillers of all time. Then add arguably the most chilling character we have ever seen on the big screen. Mix it with one of the most gifted and iconic actors ever. Voila, you have the recipe for creating an unforgettable villain, a monster that would haunt your dreams forever. As brilliant as he is cruel, Dr. Lecter likes violence for violence’s sake. And while we are quickly convinced that he is absolutely insane, we still fall for his charm and charisma, dancing a tango with death where he is always one step ahead.
1. Amon Goeth (Schindler’s List) – played by Ralph Fiennes
While all the characters so far are fictional, the number one spot goes to a historical figure – a person so abominable and frightening that we have to put our humanity and common sense under question to believe he was real. Amon Goeth was the SS commander of the Plaszow concentration camp near Krakow from 1943 to 1944. He was personally responsible for the murder, torture and extermination of thousands of Polish Jews. His hobby was to shoot prisoners before breakfasts with his hunting rifle from the terrace of his villa.
Fiennes was good beyond description in the movie, a larger-than-life performance that was awfully snubbed at the Oscars. And while Hannah Arendt wrote The Banality of Evil for Adolph Eichmann it is even more accurate for Goeth – a mass murderer who truly believed in his mission.
