Amph 50 Best Movie Villains (acc. to The Times): 1. Darth Vader (David Prowse) - Star Wars

He was the slippery Obadiah Slope in The Barchester Chronicles, though, so it's not just a quirk of American casting.

 

9. Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) ? Wall Street (1987)

They say: A villain of a different nature, but one who?s no less worthy of his place on our list. Michael Douglas is superb as the Wall Street investor every bit as reptilian as his name suggests. Despite dealing in dividends and dollars rather than doomsday devices and dominion, he?s every inch the arch-villain with a disdain for his peers and a jarring sense of ethics, or indeed the absence of them, which sets him quite apart from decent hardworking cinemagoers like ourselves.

 

Not seen this one.

 

8. Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher) ? One Flew Over the Cuckoo?s Nest (1975)

They say: The cold sadistic tyranny that Ratched demonstrates is frightening enough, that she exerts it over those supposed to be in her care is what really leaves me shaking. Louise Fletcher?s pitch-perfect performance led to a wholly deserved Oscar.

 

Meh. She's inflexible, but she's no more the villain than McMurphy is. The story is their clash; they're both fairly extreme, but I think McMurphy is a lot more dangerous than Ratched is - he gets mental patients drunk without knowing what kind of meds they're on, for one thing, which is a damned dangerous thing to do; he could have killed somebody. Ratched's just after stability; ultimately, what does she that's so bad? A lot of people point to the scene where she intimidates Billy back into his stuttering, but think about what she's doing: she's proving to him that he's not ready for the outside world, that he is not cured as McMurphy thinks he is (sure, sex with a prostitute as a cure for anxiety; that makes sense). She makes Billy crack because he isn't well, because he is still damaged just below the surface; she's just showing him that.

I think modern psychiatry has kind of defanged this movie (and the novel, though to a lesser extent). Looking at it out of the context of the rebellious seventies, McMurphy's kind of the villain and Ratched? She's actually right about almost everything. This dichotomy hasn't aged well in my opinion.

 

No kidding.

IMO, Ratched is a castrating figure; and this novelist really isn't in control of (or even aware of) what he's actually saying. A reliable sign of non-art.

 

7. The Joker (Cesar Romero, Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger) ? Batman films

They say: The clown prince of crime has attracted top drawer acting talent throughout his on-screen career and George Romero, Jack Nicholson and the late Heath Ledger have all added their own vision to this most unique of villains. Both of the former bought colour and insanity to a dandy-like adversary, but it?s the late Ledger?s salivating performance that bought The Joker?s seething psychopathic self to life.

I say: Man, I wrote out a whole thing and lost it. Let's try this again.

It's both kind of a cheat to put all the film Jokers on (though they missed Mark Hammill in Mask of the Phantasm) and kind of perfect. The Joker is a character with different versions that are simultaneously contradictory and unified.

Cesar Romero's suffers through no fault of his own - just from sharing screen time with three other villains in the '66 Batman - Catwoman and the Penguin are central to their plan, and nobody can avoid getting overshadowed when in the same frame as Gorshwin's Riddler.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have Ledger's Joker. Everything has been stripped down until just a pure force of anarchy is left (though he employs complex schemes to bring it about). He's terrifying and compelling and drives the whole movie the way great villains tend to do.

Nicholson's take hasn't held up as well post-2008. There's no mystery or driving agenda to him. He's a very human and understandable gangster. He wants to make money and knock off people in his way; that's what he wants both before and after his face gets white. It all looks very small compared to a Joker who's willing to make the entire city an explosive social experiment to prove an ideological point. There are some similarities in the way Batman '89 mishandles Bruce Wayne/Batman. But, all that said, at the end of the day, it's Nicholson playing a murderer having a great time. It's eminently entertaining, and that counts for a lot.

Hammill's is a nigh perfect blend of all three of them. The only point I can think to dock him for are being not scary enough. But a) kids are watching, and b) for all the comic relief, he could pull out the intensity when it counted. It's direct-to-video, but Return of the Joker's (spoiler alert) depiction of his last fight with Batman? Chills.

 

Have to give props to Hammill's Joker in Batman: Mask Of The Phantasm. Yes the sheer violence of Heath's Joker isn't quite there but as you said, kids are watching...

...and with that said, the Batman: MOTP is pretty damned violent. IIRC this is the first time in the DCAU where he actually kills people.

 

I still like Nicholson's Joker. It is a shame they left Mark out; his take is pretty great. Ledger's is the most iconic and shocking, but they all have strengths.

 

6. Count Orlock (Max Schreck) ? Nosferatu (1922)

They say: The villain of this early silent take on Bram Stoker?s blood-sucking bad guy laid the foundations upon which the conventional cinematic vampire has been based to this day. Many have imitated Max Schrek?s villain, but few have been able to recreate his alarming on-screen presence, and sound or no sound his appearance is still enough to challenge your intestinal authority.

I say: Creepy before he even does a thing. Incredible physical presence.

 

Regarding the Joker:

Not Mark Hamill? I am disappoint.

 

My fave Dracula. Just plain lemme-outta-here creepy/scary.

 

He was great in Batman Returns

 

Nosferatu isn't as great a movie as you've probably heard. But Schreck is incredibly effective.

And, yeah, Walken was great in Batman Returns.

 

I've always admired Max Schreck as Count Orlok, for the character -- with its pointed, hairy
ears, twin pointed teeth, broken, pointed fingernails and bushy eyebrows -- is closest to
the original version (although not by name, Orlok being chosen to avoid copyright laws)
described in the Bram Stoker's Dracula.


ed/ Willem Dafoe has his moments, as well.

 

The only thing creepier then seeing Nosferatu as a kid was seeing him on a episode of "Are You Afraid of the Dark?". Scariest episode of the series ever!

 

Would you stay overnight if your host looked like that?

Just asking...

 

Kind of. Stoker's character has white hair and a mustache, both of which Orlok lacks. And the teeth are never described as being the incisors, which feature gives Orlok a rather rat-like visage not consistent with the wolfish qualities of the Stoker character.

As to avoiding copyright laws, it didn't work. Stoker's widow (semi-)successfully sued the filmmakers and had all the European copies of Nosferatu destroyed. Accounts vary as to how the film survived; some aver that the laws were different in the US, saving the prints which had been shipped over here from destruction. Others claim that prints shipped to New Zealand are what survived. Either way, the novel entered the public domain in 1962 (50 years after the author's death) and Nosferatu has been legal ever since.

 

Good discussion of it here

Like to get a copy of "American Gothic"...it sounds interesting.

 

From the above link:

I agree with Eisner that the film never was destroyed after the court
order. Instead they just stuck it away somewhere, then five years
later, sold it later for a few Deutsch Marks to DFP. So other than to
create a good story, there's no evidence that Florence Stoker's efforts
did anything at all.

Fascinating. Apparently there's no evidence the film prints were ever destroyed at all. Certainly by 1925, when the court order was issued, the 1922 movie would have had plenty of time to run in theaters and recoup its investment.

I would love to get my hands on that pristine print the article describes as "clear[l]y a copy from the original negative." I feel that Nosferatu is overrated (Schreck's mesmerizing performance aside) but it's still historically intriguing for Dracula fans such as meself.

 

I think a shout-out has to be given to Klaus Kinski for his masterful turn as Orlok in Herzog's remake. Severely underrated film, I think it is on equal ground with the original, surpassing it even in the plague scenes, which are wonderfully Herzgoian in execution.

 

Totally agreed, except I'd go even farther and say that Herzog's remake is actually far superior to the original.

 

Is it in colour?

 

I think Nosferatu and Scherk's performance have a great mystique around them that really kind of hypnotizes us. The film is a brilliant expressionist piece in that it really feels like it exists on another plane of existence. I recently sat through the film to see if it held up and it has some pacing problems although I may attribute it to the horrendous score I have accompanying my copy. Nosferatu is a film about powerful imagery sometimes over plot and character.Does Orlock work as a villain though? No not really. I don't think Nosferatu has a very strong protagonist to make Orlock an antagonist. He is merely a force or entity that the world has to endure. This is one of the things I really love about the film. I'd say Lugosi's Dracula is a stronger version of an antagonistic vampire.