Demons, Dark Lords, and Other Big Bads: The 13 Best Villains in Cinematic History

The thing about heroes is that they often need villains for the story to work. With boring villains, heroes may not even be able to rise to the occasion—so we want our “bad guys” really bad.

Whether they’re demons, Nazis, or horrifying superfans who kidnap their favorite authors, you want certain stories to have someone to root against. In the stories you’ll see below, we’ve picked the worst of the worst: terrifying and iconic, the ones who stick with you even after you’ve turned off the TV. You know which ones we mean.

Scripts from this Article

The Silence of the Lambs

Alien

The Exorcist

Psycho

It

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

Misery

The Dark Knight

No Country For Old Men

Inglourious Basterds

Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope

Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back

The Wizard Of Oz

Hannibal Lecter, The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Screenplay: Thomas Harris and Ted Tally

Few people get into the mind of a serial killer the way a globally celebrated actor can. Even fewer can do that with the crazy amount of scene chemistry that Sir Anthony Hopkins had with Jodi Foster in his role as the infamous murderer Hannibal Lecter.

An expert in psychology, Lecter consults with FBI initiate Clarice Starling (Foster) from his prison cell to bring another killer to justice, all the while handling his own plot with mind games galore.

The Xenomorph, Alien (1979)

Screenplay by: Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett

Ever since the Nostromo, these creatures have given us tons of nightmares. Simply called “the Alien” or “creature” in the first script, this freakish and disturbing organism came straight from body horror designs by artist H.R. Giger’s compendium, Necronomicon.

As Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and her team soon learn in the first Alien film, nothing could be worse than having an intruder like this and nowhere to go but out there.

Pazuzu, The Exorcist (1973)

Screenplay by: William Peter Blatty

In 1973, the dangers of the supernatural hit the screen like never before. Regan (Linda Blair) attributes strange happenings in the MacNeill household to an entity she calls “Captain Howdy.” But that being soon possesses Regan, calling himself the Devil. The voice speaking through Regan turns out to be Pazuzu (Ron Faber), named in the script and later films—though on screen, this horrifying demon maintains an air of mystery for those watching The Exorcist for the first time.

Norman Bates, Psycho (1960)

Screenplay by: Joseph Stefano and Robert Bloch

Cinema’s favorite mama’s boy (and one of the best villains of all time), Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), is a motel owner whose place of business becomes a murder scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s most well-known and oft-referenced thriller. An unseen Mrs. Bates seems to be the culprit, but there are other revelations at Norman’s residence that turn out to be even more disturbing. Namely, the ending twist: Norman has been acting as “Norma,” the killer identity he assumes as his own late mother.

Read More: Master of Suspense: Explore the Best Films of Alfred Hitchcock

Pennywise The Dancing Clown, It (2017)

Screenplay by: Chase Palmer, Cary Joji Fukunaga, and Gary Dauberman

Is is a clown? Is it a figment of your imagination? Or is it an interdimensional alien form-form bent on destroying humans and feeding on their fear? The answer is mostly “yes,” but especially when considering how it operates.

Appearing as a clown, a spider, and numerous other forms, this creature has a history all its own in Stephen King’s hefty novel—but all the same, it preys on the people of Derry, Maine, with no one but the Losers Club to try and stop it.

Read More: Horror Redux: The Most Terrifying Horror Movie Remakes Ever

Sauron/the One Ring, The Lord of the Rings (2001)

Screenplay by: Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and J.R.R. Tolkien

The iconic dark lord, Sauron (Sala Baker) speaks in a tongue that warps and frightens—he’s a fallen angel and the personification of power’s corruption on Earth. Standing against Frodo (Elijah Wood) and his companions, this master of the One Ring poured “his cruelty, his malice and his will to dominate all life” into the band, making that Ring an obstacle and villain in its own right on the heroes’ long journey to Mount Doom.

Annie Wilkes, Misery (1990)

Screenplay by: William Goldman and Stephen King

Paul Sheldon (James Caan) crashes in a blizzard, but lucky him! A fan of his, Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates), helps him back to her place. Soon, though, this unsettling woman holds him hostage and demands a rewrite of his recent manuscript on pain of torture and worse.

Annie portrays the everyday insanity that can give form to evil—and it’s only because of Bates’s delivery as that character that the phrase “I’m your number one fan” sends chills down anyone’s spine in today’s post-Misery world.

The Joker, The Dark Knight (2008)

Screenplay by: Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan

Many, many renditions of the Joker from the Batman comics appeared on TV and film over the years, with most having some merit or charm to them. But the most spine-chilling of the bunch may be the iteration by the late Heath Ledger, whose Joker proved to be a psychotic worshiper of chaos—the most dramatic foil to Christian Bale’s Batman. As old as he is, it might be the Joker by Ledger that proved what makes the Joker such a dangerous foe.

Anton Chigurh, No Country for Old Men (2007)

Screenplay by: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, and Cormac McCarthy

This neo-western by the Coen brothers showcases one of the silver-screen psychos that have become Hollywood darlings: Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem). This utterly unstoppable machine of a hitman bears no conscience and plays by his own predefined rules, making him more alien and inhuman. The audience watches him kill indiscriminately, allowing only fate itself—or a coin flip, really—decide whose lives seemed up for sparing.

Read More: 3 Tactics to Writing Like the Coen Brothers

Colonel Hans Landa, Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Screenplay by: Quentin Tarantino

The infamous Jew Hunter of Inglourious Basterds, Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) is a devious and intuitive killer in the Nazi forces of occupied France. During this alternative historical fiction by Quentin Tarantino, it’s Landa’s scary, freakish calm, and devilish playfulness that both make him so clearly psychopathic—a bastard and a danger to anyone who crosses his path.

Darth Vader, The Star Wars Saga

Screenplay by: George Lucas

Darth Vader (voiced by James Earl Jones) is the masked face of evil that we learn to fear in the original trilogy, especially by the time Episode V rolls around. But before he became the tortured dark warrior we trembled at, he was Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen), manipulated by Palpatine in Episode III to embrace the Dark Side of the Force. This fallen hero chooses to return to his original self one last time in the end, though, even killing his evil master—making him one of the most interesting success stories of cinematic villain history.

Emperor Palpatine, The Star Wars Saga

Screenplay by: George Lucas

The mastermind figure of the series, Emperor Sheev Palpatine was especially iconic in Episode VI and Episode III. As a politician (We should have known), and as the “man behind the curtain” Darth Sidious, this schemer of a space wizard crept past the detection of an entire Jedi order.

Later, he started a genocide and built an Empire alongside his apprentice, Darth Vader. But, as we all know, his true end was when Vader came to his senses and offed Palpatine himself. Darth Sidious was definitely dead after that, and nothing should suggest otherwise.

Wicked Witch of the West, The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Screenplay by: L. Frank Baum, Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, and Edgar Allan Woolf

Dorothy (Judy Garland) arrives in the land of Oz having accidentally killed a witch we never met, the Wicked Witch of the East. But she’s not the only witch out there: The Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton) makes it her mission to do away with Dorothy on her way to the Emerald City. Using animated trees and armies in the sky to fight, this is not a person you want to cross—but luckily, she doesn’t much care for getting wet.

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Devils, psychos, and space samurai with magic powers are all scary enough. But what’s even more powerful is when villains are pitted against the right hero, creating the right amount of conflict to move a story. Each of these villains has been masterfully designed—cheesy, classical, or chilling—to fit the story they belong in, and it’s thanks to the strength of that story’s conflicts that these iconic villains have remained in our minds long after watching their stories unfold.

Read More: From Hero to Villain: Essential Good Guy Turned Bad Movies