Who's your ultimate evil character in a movie ?and who plays him or her ?

I like Tcheky Karyo in ''Dobbermann''
he plays this twisted evil cop who stops at nothing trying to catch bank robbers...

this movie is a french flick with Vincent Cassel & Monica Bellucci ( who are also pretty good in this film...)
so ? who's yours ?

Pacino or Walken in almost anything they've done as a villain/bad guy.

Scott

Hmm…this probably seems too easy, but the one that's freshest in my mind is pretty recent: Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men. A truly unique bad guy; the actor is Javier Bardem.

Robert Mitchum also comes to mind in two straight-up classics: The Night of The Hunter and the original Cape Fear. I don't know either character's name.

Why Dr. Evil of course. Sheesh. No brainer. :p

Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest does it for me.

2x on Nurse Ratched, but how about…Frank Booth, Dennis Hopper's character in Blue Velvet? Yikes!

Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast - its about as anti-ghandi as you can get.

I've always had a soft spot in the dark corner of my heart for Wings Hauser's brilliant portrayal of the psychotic Ramrod in "Vice Squad." A great exploitation flick from 1982.

Gary Oldman in Air Force One.
He played the character so well I hated the guy. I would have liked to have done him in myself.

I liked Gary Oldman in Fifth Element. A bit campy but awesome.

Oldman in The Professional is tasty as well...
the witch form The Wizard of OZ is worth mentioning

Anti-hero/villain from "Man Bites Dog", get the unrated version.

I love that movie! Kingsley is simply menacing in the role. A couple more memorable villians I would add:

Rodney McDowell, "A Clockwork Orange"
Christopher Walken, "The King of New York"
Nicholas Cage, "Kiss of Death"
Wes Studi (who played Magua), "Last of the Mohicans"
Laurence Olivier, "Marathon Man"
The prison guard in "Midnight Express"

Not trying to be persnickety, Videodrome, but Malcolm McDowell is in A Clockwork Orange. Funny, when I put this question to my wife, he was the first guy she came up with. I think the fact that the film is over-the-top satiric makes me kinda not register the "droogs" as evil—though they are, of course.

tru blu: My bad. I got the wrong McDowell!

The scene that really stands out in terms of cruelty was the home invasion: McDowell kicking the guy on the floor while belting out verses from "Singing in the Rain," was really sick and twisted.

Although I don't recall ever seeing the bad guy in SE7EN he was one evil SOB. They only referred to him as John Doe if I recall correctly.

How about Christopher Lee as Saruman in Lord of the Rings?

John Doe was shown quite clearly in the film, played by Kevin Spacey. The interesting thing about Doe is that he thinks he's doing a good thing by creating this amazing piece of performance art that point out our sinful side. In fact, he even talks about how he's doing society a favour by offing his 'victims'.

Those are my favourite bad guys: the ones that don't know they're bad guys. One of the two villians in 'Mission Impossible: 3' carefully explains to the Tom Cruise character how America will benefit by middle-eastern terrorists getting a super powerful bio-weapon (the film's McGuffin). In his mind it makes sense, and will eventually end up being good for everyone.

You find these types of bad guys in fiction (Magneto from 'X-Men') and reality (Hitler, Bin Laden). They are absolutely convinced they're making the world a better place. Actors who play bad-guy roles keep an old saying in mind when trying to find motivation for their character: "the villian is the hero of his own story".

These do make some of the best "villians."

An extreme example of this comes to mind. There's a long-running science fiction series by David Weber that includes a war between two nations, one of which goes through about three changes in leadership during the course of hostilities. By the time the last leadership group assumes control, the purpose behind the war and the reasons that it continues have been lost - both sides are being led politically and militarily by well-intentioned people, with only a few destroyed diplomatic documents and one totally random death keeping the two sides from seeing eye-to-eye.

Now see, sdurani, I'd say that the cats you describe definitely know they're bad guys, they're just delusionally sociopathic. Another word for that is "crazy." As for Hitler and bin-Laden, I think you could also say that a pathological need for vengeance played/plays a part in their motives.

gonk, Weber's scenario sounds an awful lot like current conflicts in any number of parts of the world. If you hadn't said it was sci-fi, I might not have guessed it was such.

One more interesting bad guy: Keyser Söze, Kevin Spacey in The Usual Suspects.

If those cats know they're doing bad, then they're not delusional (i.e., they know right from wrong). If they are delusional (don't know the difference between good and bad), then they don't know they're bad guys.

Hmmm…interesting point. I guess what I'm saying is they definitely know they're operating outside the law or whatever. Recognizing that has gotta mean something…

That's possible, but it still doesn't mean you think of yourself as the bad guy. Imagine you were in the American south during the 1850s and helping slaves escape via the underground railroad to the north or Canada. You "definitely know" you're breaking the law. But would you consider yourself a bad guy for doing so?

Now put that same conviction and moral resolve into someone who is actually doing evil. Earlier I mentioned Magneto, who in the first 'X-Men' movie was going to use a machine to make everyone into mutants, thereby ending fear and hatred against his kind.

From his perspective, it's worth operating outside the law to do something so beneficial (ending discrimination) for society. Of course, by using his machine, he'll end up killing billions of people. But he doesn't care about that. And that's what makes him a really bad guy.

Not sure how much further I wanna pursue this, but to me equating a slave samaritan with Magneto seems a bit farfetched. Good and evil may be opposites, but to my mind they're not really interchangeable, so it's hard for me to see those things as analogous.

"Equating"? I pointed out things they have in common: both knowingly break the law, both believe they're doing good. My point, which apparently wasn't clear enough, is that knowingly breaking the law doesn't mean you consider yourself a bad guy. I even gave examples to support my point. Who said that good and evil were "interchangeable"? I explained why Magneto was evil, despite his belief that he's doing good. Did you actually read my post?

No, I did not…call me evil.

Wow, you're taking a discussion of fictional movie villians rather personally.

hmmm..hijacked by philosophy...
good or bad is all perception...
based on a moral stand point which often stems from a religious dogma...
now if I understand sdurani's point...
let me ask you this ?
do you know Paul Watson ?
is he good or evil ?
he does break the law...
some people even call him an ecoterrorist
but is he evil or good ?
I guess it depends who you ask....

and if we take this onto the moral person that a corporation is....
without breaking the law and without morals...
are GMO spewing corporations good or evil ?
what about a company that uses child labor or profits from a war-torn region?

all perception....

Oh dear, this is precisely what I feared would happen. For the record, Sanjay, I'm nowhere near taking anything personally. If anything, I'm embarrassed about my part in hijacking a thread that folks were just kinda warming up to. (It seems that none of my admittedly lame attempts to defuse the situation worked.) Laventura, I'm not sure your examples are all "perceptions", but in the context of this forum, they're gonna move folks away from thinking about bad people onscreen.

That said, Hannibal Lecter, anyone? Show of hands...

I hear y'a trublu
I had the tree hugger mentality take over this morning.... :rolleyes:
sorry folks...
Lecter would definitely be way up there...
How about Darth Vador ?
or as one of the creepiest...Max Shreck in Murneau's Nosferatu...

I thought about dear ol' Vader earlier in the thread, but for some reason didn't post it. Lecter's certainly a classic one, too.

Here's a fun one to add to the mix - HAL 9000. It may be somewhat debatable if he quite qualifies as a villian (certainly falls into Sanjay's category of well-intentioned, as his acts were the result a need to deal with conflicting instructions rather than malice) and he doesn't necessarily fit as "the ultimate" bad guy, but the acts themselves and the challenge that his behavior represented are unique.

"What do you think you're doing, Dave?..."

How about ol' SATAN in The Exorcist. Or the shark in Jaws. Both of those movies were so above the standard for scary that years later when they were finally shown on commercial TV they had disclaimers about being unsuitable for small children.
I had to go back to the theater to see The Exorcist on my own because my girlfriend couldn't stay past the 360 neck turn. People actually got physically ill when they saw it the first time. When you think about some of the stuff in todays movies these movies seem tame.

Don't forget the little beastie in "Alien" too. People screamed out loud when that thing burst out the first time.

Jack Palance just looked evil and mean in any movie he played in.

Richard Boone in " Big Jake".

The two above were born to be bad.They look as menacing in person as on the screen.

On that note, Al Lettier really fit the tough guy / bad guy mold. He played opposite Steve McQueen in "The Getaway" and Virgil "The Turk" Sollozo in "The Godfather."

He was one mean looking mofo'.

I recall a few people on the forum (myself included) talking about the Brazilian movie City Of God. I'd say that the gangster character Little Zé qualifies as ruthless.

There's been a lot of good ones, but I think I'll list a few:

No Country For old men ( I think this was a fantastic movie)
Se7en
The Bone Collector
American Psycho

oh and don't forget Silence of the Lamb series with our dear friend Dr. Hannidbal Lecter. That was a tasty series.

My favorite Villain is hands down Keyser Söze/ Verbal Kint Played by Kevin Spacey in The Usual Suspects.

A close second would go to The Joker by Heath Ledger in The Dark Night.

How about Mr. Brown in Reservoir Dogs?

That is a good one had not even thought of Mr Brown