My Favorite Movie Villains

I think before beginning this list that it is important to define my parameters for a movie villain. Movie villains don't all wear black capes and twirl their mustaches and they don't just rob banks and kill people. There are comic villains as well as dramatic villains. A villain for me can be defined simply as a third party keeping star-crossed lovers apart. It could be a boss or employer who keeps putting obstacles in the way of our hero accomplishing his goals. A villain can be a movie character whose every move in the film just pisses you off. Be forewarned that I am not into Harry Potter or the Lord of the Rings or any other movies of that genre so you won't be seeing any of those villains of which I'm sure there are plenty. This is a list of my favorite villains from movies that I have seen and, as always, these are personal opinions, nothing else. Here we go:

I look forward to this list, Gideon. Actually I've been excited to see all the lists you've had to present lately.

60.
Dr. Charles Montague, High Anxiety


Harvey Korman garnered major laughs in the Mel Brooks comedy as the interim head of The Psycho Neuro Institute of the Very Very Nervous who tries to keep Dr. Richard Thorndyke (Mel Brooks) from finding out about the evil goings-on at the institute. Korman is funny as hell whether he is scaring patients into thinking they are hallucinating or giving into his sexual proclivities with with evil sexual freak, Nurse Diesel (Cloris Leachman).

59.
Earl Frank, Straight Time



M. Emmet Walsh is appropriately slimey as the parole officer of Max Denbo (Dustin Hoffman), who pretends to be supportive of Denbo's attempts of re-entering society after getting out of jail, but goes out of his way to find a way to lock Denbo back up.

58.
Poison Ivy, Batman and Robin



Uma Thurman's deliciously over-the-top performance as this campy villainess was the best thing about this terrible movie.

57.
Professor Fate, The Great Race



Jack Lemmon pretty much steals the show from an all-star cast in this perfect send-up of cartoon character Snidely Whiplash.

56.
Mrs. Eleanor Shaw Iselin, The Manchurian Candidate



Angela Lansbury does a bone-chilling Oscar nominated turn as the mother of a political candidate (Laurence Harvey) whose control over her son is more than surface deep.

55.
Carl Fogarty, A History of Violence



Ed Harris is bone-chilling as the disfigured mobster who travels to a small town to disrupt the quiet life of Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) to reveal that Tom isn't who he says he is.

Cool list. Keep them coming.

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54.
Ron Carlisle, Tootsie



Dabney Coleman, who pretty much had a patent on slimey comic creeps during the 70's and 80's provided one of his most hissable characters in this classic comedy playing the sexist director of the soap opera Southwest General, who fights the casting of Dorothy Michaels (Dustin Hoffman) as long as he can and then can never remember her name, while cheating on soap star Julie Nichols (Jessica Lange).

53.
Teasle, First Blood



From the second former military drifter John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) rolled into town, this redneck-sheriff's immediate antagonism quickly turned to an obsession where he wasn't going to rest unless Rambo left, was behind bars, or dead. Brian Dennehey is appropriately mean in this pivotal role.

52.
Avery Tolar, The Firm



Gene Hackman delivers an Oscar-worthy performance as the outwardly slick mentor of attorney Mitch McDeere (Tom Cruise) who has several hidden agendas, one of which involves Mitch's wife (Jeanne Tripplehorn).

51.
Gabriel Shear, Swordfish



John Travolta appears to be having a ball as a crazed criminal mastermind using a former computer hacker (Hugh Jackman) as part of his major embezzlement plan which includes an escape on a flying bus.

Glad to hear that...hope I don't disappoint you.

50.
David McCall, Fear



Mark Wahlberg has rarely been as menacing onscreen as he was here as a psychotic high school student obsessed with a naive virgin (Reese Witherspoon).

49.
John Baron, Suddenly



This nearly forgotten gem from Frank Sinatra's career found him boldly cast against type as vicious kidnapper and political assassin.

I'm on board with rauld14 and Optimus. Cool choices thus far and I know there will be cooler choices to come. And I don't mean to diss Mark Wahlberg or your choice of pic, but that shot of him raving at the keyhole just caught me off guard and I had to chuckle a bit. But he was indeed a nutjob in that movie.

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"Miss Jean Louise, Mr. Arthur Radley."

48.
Ed Rooney, Ferris Bueller's Day Off



Jeffrey Jones gives an on target comic performance as the befuddled high school principal determined to prove problem student Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick) is ditching school.

47.
Peyton Flanders, The Hand that Rocks the Cradle



Rebecca de Mornay keeps scenery-chewing to a minimum with an intense and controlled performance as a mentally unbalanced woman who takes the loss of her own child out on an innocent family.

46.
Jud Fry, Oklahoma!



Don't let the fact that this character was in a musical fool you...Rod Steiger is bone-chilling as a filthy and perverted farm hand who tries to rape heroine Laurey Williams (Shirley Jones) and when that doesn't happen, tries to burn Laurey and true love Curly (Gordon MacRae) to death.