Top 10 Male Movie Villains

It's funny how the bad guys are often the characters in a film we enjoy watching the most; the best are so good at being horrible, you can't help but love them.  Whether they're intense, funny, violent, or just downright scary, movie villains (male or female) have the greatest power to capture a viewer's attention.

So these are my top 10 picks for greatest male villains.  As always, there were dozens of awesome choices I had to omit; I would've happily written a list of top 100 baddies, and still wouldn't have been able to squeeze in all the best ones.  But here are some that were reeeeeeally close, but sadly missed a spot on the Top 10:

Frank Boothe (Blue Velvet), Keyser Soze (Usual Suspects), Scar (Lion King), Szell (Marathon Man), Castor Troy (Face/Off), Percy Whitmore (Green Mile), Howard Payne (Speed), Frank Costello (The Departed), Tommy (Goodfellas), Mr. Potter (It's a Wonderful Life), HAL-9000 (2001: A Space Odyssey), Michael Corelone (The Godfather saga), The Alien (Alien saga), Noah Cross (Chinatown), Travis Bickle (Taxi Driver), Terminator (Terminator saga), Harry Lime (The Third Man), Tony Montana (Scarface), Nicky Santoro (Casino), and Darth Vader (Star Wars).

No Darth Vader in the Top 10, you say???  Well, damn right.  He's a great looking villain, but in the first film he barely does anything, and in the last one he becomes good again.  And….the prequels kinda ruined the menace, don't ya think?  Anyway, here the Top 10 Movie Villains of all time, and so it goes…

10. The Shark – Jaws (1975)

Never before or since has a movie menace seemed so unstoppable, and so unthinkable.  There is no grand master scheme in the Shark's tiny noggin — he just wants to eat whatever is in front of him.  The hilariously bad sequels ruined "Bruce the Shark" a bit (also, the later sequels are females, but according to the book the first was a male).  But if we only count the first film, I would easily label him the best monster in all movie history.  The sucker just keeps coming and coming, eating everything in it's path.  No mercy, no hesitation — just pure animalistic evil, underscored by the best villain musical theme that has ever been written.

There are dozens of great movie monsters; the face-huggers in the Alien franchise, or the typical dudes like Frankenstein and Dracula.  But the Shark takes the cake, for me.  Unseen for a solid hour of the film, we only see the consequences of his wrath, and hear the musical notes pounding away.  When you finally see the Shark, the effects are a bit dated, admittedly.  But this fake shark made an entire generation afraid of going in the water, and that's not something Dracula ever accomplished.

9. Ratigan – The Great Mouse Detective (1986)

Out of all the Disney villains, Ratigan (from the underrated Great Mouse Detective) stands supreme.  Sure, he isn't as shockingly evil as Scar, for instance, and he also never does something like "attempted rape through magical staff" like Jafar.  But he's my favourite Disney baddie for one major reason — he gets the most sheer fun out of it.  Scar and Jafar are villains only because the good guys get in their way of what they want; Ratigan is evil because it's the only way he can get a laugh out of life.  His delight in being wicked shows in every frame of the film — his wide sneer, his charming tuxedo, his perfectly coifed hair, his sinister and feminine giggle courtesy of the great voice acting by Vincent Price.  He loves being bad.

Great Mouse Detective is Disney's most undervalued film; a great caper flick that remakes Sherlock Holmes as a mouse, with Ratigan playing the role of Moriarty.  When he's under control and keeps his temper simmered, he's more humorous than scary.  But when he truly loses his shit, such as in the finale where he rips apart his clothes, bares his fangs, and literally beats the hero almost to death with his bare hands….well, I gotta tell ya, as a kid he scared the hell out of me.  Hilarious and freaky is hard to do, but Ratigan pulls it off perfectly.

8. Amon Goeth – Schindler's List (1993)

Ralph Fiennes performance of Nazi officer Amon Goeth in Steven Spielberg's epic is just about the most banal evil that the screen has ever seen, and I mean that in a good way.  Unlike, say, Hannibal, who seems to delight in picking apart his victims, Goeth does it because it's his duty, and because he doesn't know how to live without murdering.  It's a shocking portrayal (perhaps the best ever that didn't win an Academy Award), and his character is still spine-chilling to this day, made even more so because he was based on a real person .

Fiennes has done many villain roles in his career, most notably Voldemort in the Harry Potter films.  But the strength of his work here casts a pall on all of those (a factor in why Voldemort isn't on this list).  He kills without any kind of pity or sympathy, and never asks for forgiveness or salvation; possibly his best moment as a bad guy is at the very end, when he's about to be hanged, and he still simply fixes his hair and says "Heil Hitler".  To me, it's one of the purest forms of evil a human character has ever shown.

7. Hans Gruber – Die Hard (1988)

Alan Rickman's snake-oil performance is the epitome of the "Classy Villain".  He kills, but only when he's being inconvenienced.  He steals, but only if he can make it appear to be something it isn't.  And he's impeccably dressed, loves classical music and the finer things in life, and has an awesome German accent.  For a while, Rickman's bad guy was the model for every action movie villain, but eventually the "Class Act" became replaced with the "Corporate Asshole". 

Gruber is the perfect antithesis of the hero, played by Bruce Willis.  Whereas John McClane is rough, gritty, and a profane New Yorkah, Gruber is charming and quietly sinister.  Most of the film shows Rickman simply sitting behind a desk, planning and scheming.  But the best moments are when McClane shows up with a gun in his face, and he does a delightful and hilarious turn-around, pretending to be an American victim.  It's a great performance and a terrific character that you love to hate.

6. Jack Torrence – The Shining (1980)

I knew Jack Nicholson would show up on this list eventually, somewhere.  But which one?  I guess I kinda include him as The Joker, but what about his awesome scenery chewing in The Departed, or his iconic turn in A Few Good Men…but wait, what about the movie where he tried to kill his wife and kid with an axe?  Yep, that's the one.  The Shining is possibly Kubrick's most watched film (many still have trouble finishing the more famous (and better) ones like 2001 or Clockwork Orange), and while it may not be terrifying in the modern day horror sense, it's still one of the more unsettling and creepy films I've ever seen.  Jack Nicholson is a major component of that — always staring with this cold, Kubrickian eyes, laughing that insane giggle, and becoming more unhinged than almost any other actor.

Many of the most famous scenes of the film are well known, and have therefore lost a bit of their edge (the cat-and-mouse game on the stairs with Shelly Duvall was so perfectly parodied in The Simpsons, it's hard to see past that).  But he's truly as evil as they come — hunting down his family, accepting their fate with a team of ghosts, becoming trapped in a snowy Hell forever, and yelling "Heeeere's Johnny!" (a line ad-libbed by Nicholson).  I can't imagine any list of movie villains being complete without Kubrick and Stephen King's freaky creation.

5. Anton Chigurh – No Country For Old Men (2007)

There's two discernable characteristics of Anton Chigurh that almost everyone immediately thinks of — the gas tank he uses to kill most of his victims, and that insane haircut.  While these are definitely reasons why Javier Bardem's character was so popular back in 2007, they demote the power of his performance, and the amazing way the Coen brothers handle his actions and his dialogue.  Anton Chigurh is a remorseless killing machine, a human Terminator, and frankly I think he's scarier and more effective than any of those murderous robots.  The opening scene, where he strangles a cop to death with his handcuffs, shows one of the best movie villain close-up's of sheer glee at being evil.

And then there's the coin toss scene.  Even if he didn't shoot and destroy basically everyone in this movie, he would be worthy of being on this list just for the coin toss alone.  The Coens shoot it perfectly, rarely giving us an intimidating close-up (except for his snack wrapper slowly unshrinking).  They write it wonderfully, with the dialogue between predator and prey circling in, ever so quietly.  And Javier Bardem plays it beautifully, almost regretful as he realizes he has to kill this poor middle aged man simply because…well, because he feels he has to.  That kind of rationale is as scary as it gets.

4. Alex De Large – A Clockwork Orange (1971)

For me, Clockwork is the greatest of all Stanley Kubrick films, a perfect amalgamation of his musical choices, his editorial styles, and his bizarre camera work.  Malcom McDowell's portrayal of Alex in the lead role is also one of the most disturbing (and greatest) acting jobs in all cinema history — are we supposed to kinda like this psychopathic rapist with a taste for Beethoven and "ultra-violence"?  Kubrick certainly frames the movie that way, making him a victim of society and scientific experiments, and by making us relate and even occasional sympathize with an inhuman asshole, Clockwork asks some very troubling questions.

But despite the fact that Alex De Large is the film's main character and "humble narrator", he is as far from a protagonist or movie hero as you can get.  Alex is despicable; the film opens with him giving the classic "Kubrick stare", drinking milk, engaging in gang beatings, home invasions, and rape (in the book it was the rape of an underage girl, which the film wisely avoided).  The fact that Alex has become an almost cult figure with people dressing up as him for Halloween every year is a testament to how powerful the last half of the film is, where Kubrick and McDowell make Alex a villain in a sea of even bigger villains.  Who is the biggest monster in the film?  I have no idea.  But there's no denying Alex's spot in this list.

3. Norman Bates – Psycho (1960)

So…spoiler warning, I guess, if you haven't seen Alfred Hitchcock's original Psycho (and if you haven't, leave your computer right now and go see it.  Seriously.  Run.)  The film is a masterpiece of tension and suspense, and it also contains just about the greatest movie villain of all time.  First off, the performance is incredible; finely tuned nervousness never came with such ease as it did from Anthony Perkins here.  Once the full reveal of his character comes out, all the fidgety stuff we used to find funny or even kind of cute are replaced by sheer terror.  And, like the shark in Jaws scaring everyone of the ocean, Norman Bates has forever ruined hotel showers for many, many people.

I think the main reason he works so well is because Hitchcock makes us complicit with him.  For most of the flick, we like him.  He cleans up after his "mother's" murder not as a complicit criminal, but as a dutiful son, worried that his poor ol' Mom might be in trouble.  For most of the film, it's that parental figure we assume is the evil one; when the now-famous twist arrives, it floored an entire generation of movie-goers, and the final shot of Perkins looking up at us with that terrifying smile is one of the most chilling moments in movie history.  Plus, y'know…there's the shower scene.  Dressed in drag or not, it's still eye-popping.

2. The Joker – Any Batman Film

I knew The Joker would place very high on this list.  He's one of the most iconic and brilliantly realized villains in the modern age; he can live in a comic, television show, animated film, or live action movie, and he's horrifying and awesome at the same time, every time.  The psychotic clown in purple has long been Batman's best foe (although it wasn't always like that — the original incarnation of the comics was so trivial they actually killed him off for a while).  But in making this list, I thought about which one I loved the most on the big screen.  Jack Nicholson's classic madcap performance in Tim Burton's Batman?  Heath Ledger's Oscar winning work in The Dark Knight?  Or what about Mark Hamill's wonderful voice-acting turn in Mask of the Phantasm, or the surprisingly dark version seen in Batman: Under the Red Hood?

I couldn't pick my favourite, so I wound up choosing all of them.  Each version is clearly The Joker; whether it's a more classic approach like in Phantasm, or a brilliant revisionist take like Nolan and Ledger did in Dark Knight, it's still very definably Joker-ish.  No other movie villain has as much fun being evil as Joker does; no other mass murdering asshole has as much pleasure in killing and torturing, whether physically or psychologically.  He continues to endure as one of the most famous pop culture villains because it's so hard to define what makes him tick.

1. Hannibal Lecter – The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Of all the baddies on this list, Hannibal might be the one that made the most with the least amount of screen time.  In the first Silence of the Lambs film, Lecter is shockingly only in the film for 16 minutes; and yet, when Anthony Hopkins won the Best Actor Oscar, no one was surprised.  Lecter makes such an impression, there's no denying that he's the most infamous and well-known movie villain in…well, possibly ever, with the exception of perhaps Darth Vader.  But Lecter is far more evil than Vader.  There is no redemption, no saving grace, no troubled back-story that explains who he is (because Hannibal Rising doesn't frickin' count).  Hannibal is evil because he is Evil Incarnate.  The fact that he's played by Hopkins as also being a polite and charming bastard only enhances the fear of him.

In the first Lambs movie, Lecter was almost completely contained in a small jail cell, and it made him more terrifying than, say, in the sequel Hannibal, where he roamed the streets killing whoever he wanted.  In Silence, he stood rigid like a snake, waiting to pounce, biding his time.  And when he finally made his move, it was more violent and gasp-inducing than we could've imagined.  The evil doctor is a cannibal, yes, but he's so evil (and sickeningly enjoyable to watch) not because he eats people, but because he CHOOSES to eat people.  He never touches Clarice and Barney because they were "polite" to him; everyone else, watch the hell out.  There has never been a more perfect and terrifying movie villain.