Villains and Generally Creeeeeepy Performances

Villains and Generally Creeeeeepy Performances (Read 2706 times)

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Strangeluv

#1 March 12, 2008, 02:46:15 am

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We've seen them - we think they're either badass or creepy as hell. There's some of them we love to hate and some of them we feel so guilty about loving, whether they're just a pure psychopath or a corrupted DEA agent. They're vile, they're disgusting, they're evil, they're scum and they've got it out for everyone else in the film. They're villains!

So, some of these dudes aren't villains, but just overall creepy performances, but I just had to include them.

20 (Click to reveal)

"Annie Wilkes" played by Kathy Bates in Misery (1991)

You're a celebrity and you have to show love for the fans. You probably get a bunch of "You're my number one fan!" but do you really want to meet the horrifying obsession behind your real "number one fan"? That's what happens to James Caan's character in Misery, bed-ridden in the home of a crazy stout lady claiming to be his number one fan - she loves him so much that she doesn't want him to leave - ever! Kathy Bates evokes childish jovial antics in one scene, saying that the F-word is a no-no and then turning into a crazy bitch, smashing up chairs in the other. Oh, and she makes the writer burn his work. That was sure to make any writer cringe! Christ!

19 (Click to reveal)

"Colonel Frank Fitts" played by Chris Cooper in American Beauty (1999)

(spoiler)
Chris Cooper always comes off as a blunt asshole in most of his films - Syriana, Breach, not so much for Adaptation, and now this. He's a homosexual-hating retired marine corps colonel who sits at home watching army videos with his wife, who just blanks out during them. It seems that he has neglected his wife so much that her behaviour is almost zombie-like, as she sits and stares blankly at things for most of the day. And Mr. Fitts is either oblivious to this or knows and doesn't give a damn. He encourages homophobic slurs - in fact, he congratulates his son for it. Then the plot twist comes - it seems he's a homosexual himself! And he is so torn apart by someone else knowing that he kills them. I hated this character but Chris Cooper brought about a certain sadness and complexity to the role that is admired.

18 (Click to reveal)

"Norman Stansfield" played by Gary Oldman in Léon (1994)

(spoiler)
Gary Oldman can play anything, from an outer space, pseudo-gay bounty hunter dude to Dracula to a guy who self-mauled himself because of Hannibal Lecter to Sid Vicious to a U.S. Senator to that guy from Harry Potter. And now, he's Norman Stansfield, a corrupt DEA agent... ragged and drug-addicted himself, a guy out just for himself and to get what he wants, whether it be via torture techniques or murdering a family. Gary Oldman is always sleek but he seems just sub-human in this. He's scum. He'll shoot you in the back. He's that guy.

17 (Click to reveal)

"Dr. Christian Szell" played by Laurence Olivier in Marathon Man (1979)

You get the willies in the dentist office? Perhaps this movie isn't for you. In fact, during a certain scene in this movie, test audiences were too repulsed and ended up walking out, so they had to shorten it. Laurence Olivier is an old curmudgeon here with just one thing in his mind; diamonds. He's out to get what he wants and he has the means to make sure he does, whether it be simple dentist tools or that retractable spike hidden up his sleeve. "Is it safe?" Just run a marathon's length away next time.

16 (Click to reveal)

"Kevin" played by Elijah Wood in Sin City (2005)

(spoiler)
Some of you may think, "odd choice!" I know. He looks like a deranged Harry Potter, yes. But he was my favourite character in this movie, even though his screentime barely breaches seven minutes. Turn any corner in Sin City and you can find anything. Well, we found a religious, seemingly mute prostitute-eating cannibal with glowing eyes and claw-like fingernails who does backflips. We never hear his voice in the film but he supposedly has "a voice of an angel", as another character claims. Even when Mickey Rourke amputates all his limbs, he doesn't make a sound. He just sits there with that faint smile and wide-eyed gaze. Come on, man, how is that not creepy?

15 (Click to reveal)

"Private "Gomer Pyle" played by Vincent D'nofrio in Full Metal Jacket (1987)

(spoiler)
I'd hate to call this dude a villain because I felt so sorry for him throughout the entire section of the movie he was in, but you kill someone out of cold blood and look like a fucking wolf while doing it, I'm gonna have to put you in here. While Pyle's villainous tendencies did not kick in until a while into the movie and did not last long (suicided), he still is, to me, the portrait of a man gone insane by storing up too much hate. It's sad, because he starts off as a generally nice and awkward young man, who you can probably picture is the same way back home and did not change at all on his way to boot camp.

14 (Click to reveal)

"General Jack D. Ripper" played by Sterling Hayden in Dr. Strangelove (1962)

We always hear about conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory. These big-name officials being in charge of everything and we can do nothing about it. So what happens when one of these officials just goes crazy and think that our water supplies is polluted and must launch a full-scale attack on Russia? We contact the President, who has no idea what to do. We talk to the Russian ambassador, who just wants to take pictures of the "big board". We talk to a crazy scientist named Dr. Strangelove, whose hand wants to choke him to death. We talk to General Jack D. Ripper, who is the guy who made the call in the first place... and he's the only one who can call it off and guess what? He's not doing it.

13 (Click to reveal)

"Regan MacNeill" played by Linda Blair (voice: Mercedes McCambridge) in The Exorcist (1973)

Perhaps a bit overrated and perhaps lost a bit of its touch with age and maybe it's not really Linda Blair that made "Regan MacNeill" but William Friedkin's freakish direction, I have yet to see some modern horror movies mirror a character like her. Heads spinning 360 degrees, cupboards moving, vomit everywhere, levitating and of course, "Do you know what she did? Your cunting daughter!" May have lost a bit of its touch and "shock value", but damn well stand-out and memorable to me.

12 (Click to reveal)

"The Strangers" in Dark City (1998)

(spoiler)
The Strangers are well, strange beings that want to study us. They want to know what make us tick and tock. But they have unusual ways of doing it - they want to alter our very realities and take away our individuality whilst doing it. They will kill and maim and knife bloody circles around a corpse. They were intriguing, though - using our dead as vessels. Startling, because I was wondering why there was only one child among the whole crew. I'm not sure I would call them villains because they probably know no better, but yeah, definitely creepy.

11 (Click to reveal)

"Alex de Large" played by Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Alex de Large is a mischievous boy who takes his mischief to a whole different level, beating up random bums, door-to-door raping, smashing a big ceramic penis into a woman's face... you know, very horrorshow indeed, Mr. Deltoid. McDowell's performance is mesmerizing and enigmatic and it can be shown in just that one panning in shot in the beginning in the milk bar, surrounded by his "droogs". Surely, he's Kubrick-ized and the author really hated the movie, but he made "Singin in the Rain" so malicious.

10 (Click to reveal)

"Frank Booth" played by Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet (1986)

Here we have a real fucking character, to say the least - a strange sexual predator who can't make up his mind - he wants to be the daddy one minute, he wants to be the son one minute and seems to get off on dry-humping for ten seconds. This is one of the strangest performances in cinema - a vile, sick son of a bitch one minute and shedding a tear over a rendition of a song the next minute. I don't want to know what's going on in his head. I don't ever want to meet someone like this.

9 (Click to reveal)

"Bill the Butcher" played by Daniel Day-Lewis in Gangs of New York (2002)

Daniel Day-Lewis with a big butcher knife and a glass eye and a very bad temper. You got Bill the Butcher and he wants to paint paradise red... with the blood of anyone who is willing to oppose him. A performance that employs a lot of grandstanding (much like Denzel Washington in Training Day) and overshadows everyone else in the movie. We don't want to see a frame without Daniel Day-Lewis in it, even though we are scared of him. He knows every slice and cut to make you bleed like a stuck pig. Though he does honour some he kills, he is still a dirty bastard and still fights like one.

8 (Click to reveal)

"Jack Torrance" played by Jack Nicholson in The Shining (1980)

Two words. HEEEERRRREEEEEEEE'S JOHNNY!

7 (Click to reveal)

"Peter Evans" played by Michael Shannon in Bug (2006)

A lot of you may not know this one and a lot of people may not like this movie as much as I did. But even if the movie is crap, you still gotta give props to Michael Shannon, man. He is a fucking loony in this and I love how he starts off as this smart, blunt, quiet but likeable guy and ends up a raving lunatic covered in blood and scratches and convincing Ashley Judd to kill herself. One of his first lines is, "I'm not an ax murderer," as Judd's character refers that she knows nothing about him and he might as well be. He's not an ax murderer - he's worse, and he doesn't even need an ax to do all the damage he is liable to do in this film.

6 (Click to reveal)

"Amon Goeth" played by Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's List (1993)

There is something scary about a man brimming with so much hate towards a group of people that he cannot control killing one of them even though they have not wronged him. What's going through his mind? This is one of my favourite performances of all time and Ralph Fiennes can tell so much with just a stare from his cold eyes in this role.

5 (Click to reveal)

"Travis Bickle" played by Robert Deniro in Taxi Driver (1976)

This is what happens when a girl dumps you and you decide to go buy some guns from a shifty salesman, go to porno theatres to watch Swedish porn and shave your hair into a mohawk. I am torn between calling Bickle a hero and a villain and I think that makes him villainous - that he can kill out of cold blood and we can argue with ourselves that it was probably the right thing. But what I like about Deniro's portrayal of Bickle is that we see his breakdown, step by step. We see the little hints, the exchanges, the madness slowly slipping into his head as the days pass, and we can just guess what's going to happen next.

4 (Click to reveal)

"John Doe" played by Kevin Spacey in Se7en (1995)

John Doe is another one of those characters that try to convince us that he is doing the right thing by killing off all those bad people. He has a plan and he hates those seven sins so bad. Spacey plays this role to perfection and even though an on-screen murder never happens, we can look at this guy and pin him to every one of the gruesome crime scenes, despite his soft-spoken and calculating demeanour. He really gives it to Brad Pitt in that backseat.

3 (Click to reveal)

"Anton Chigurh" played by Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men (2007)

Ah, the recent Oscar winner for Supporting Actor, and very much deserved. Anton Chigurh is a stone-cold, cold-blooded bastard, a walking prophet of death, a lone wolf who doesn't give a shit about anything and anyone and sometimes will not even take responsibility for his actions... but lay it on the toss of a coin. As Tommy Lee Jones' character puts it, there's a new type of evil in town. He is a tornado sweeping up everything as he goes to get what he wants and kills just for the hell of it - kills because he could - shoots at birds on bridges because he could. And an oxygen tank as a weapon? Christ...!

Oh, and that bloody haircut!

2 (Click to reveal)

"Norman Bates" played by Anthony Perkins in Psycho (1960)

A boy's best friend is his mother, claimed Norman. And he might have taken it way too far... watch the movie and you'll see what I mean. Anthony Perkins played this role so well. He made Norman seem so timid and friendly... but he had that glint in his eye. Watch for it when he is talking to Janet Leigh's character in the motel and he's telling her about his mother. We KNOW something is not right with this dude and he is scaring the shit out of her and she just doesn't want to show it. But he seems so friendly and so nice... maybe it's time to take a shower.

1 (Click to reveal)

"Captain Vidal" played by Sergi Lopez in Pan's Labyrinth (2006)

Captain Vidal is disgusting. He did not have a single redeeming quality. If there is one movie character I would like to call evil, it would be him. He cared about nothing but his own legacy and power. And for that, he would torture and kill anyone who comes in his way. The Captain had the ability to genuinely hurt people both physically and without laying a hand on them. Just horrendous act after horrendous act after horrendous act. What an awful, awful man! But he makes my number one in villains.

So, tell me about some of your favourite villainous performances!

Last Edit: March 12, 2008, 02:54:35 am by Strangeluv

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Beasley

#2 March 12, 2008, 03:28:08 am

:rite:
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i am going to go post more on topic but i had to comment on your assumption with American Beauty:

Hidden content (Click to reveal)

Then the plot twist comes - it seems he's a homosexual himself! And he is so torn apart by someone else knowing that he kills them. I hated this character but Chris Cooper brought about a certain sadness and complexity to the role that is admired.

I entirely disagree! I feel like he was so taken aback by the sudden loss of his son, hes an entire emotional wreck, and as such resorts to what he exiled his son for. kind of an "acting out" thing? and then kills him because he had his son give him a fucking bj dude. i dunno do you have confirmation on what you said?

just saying because this really changes the way someone would interpret the movie so i am kinda wondering which interpretation is correct!

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Strangeluv

#3 March 12, 2008, 04:07:38 am

HEEEEERRRREEE'S JOHNNY!!
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Beasley,

don't read if you haven't seen American Beauty (Click to reveal)

Quote from: Taken from Wikipedia

According to Chris Cooper, much of Col. Fitts' backstory was eliminated from the final script, which Cooper says that Fitts' character was a closeted homosexual, who lost his lover during the Vietnam War.

This is also posted in the imdb trivia page:

In the original version of the script, there was a separate story that included Frank Fitts (Chris Cooper) having a gay lover who dies in Vietnam.

I, too, had a notion of what you are saying about Colonel Fitts and I suppose if you "look closely", it can perhaps be viewed in both ways. But this movie is about suburban life and how people hide their real selves behind facades. Fitts' facade, which he finds comfort in, is his manly homophobic retired marine corps persona with a neglected zombie wife.

Either way, he did what he did - whether it be to hide his own homosexuality or because he thought Lester (Spacey) and his own son were homosexuals.

Hope that covers what you needed to know but since it seemed to be the screenwriter's intention, I'm gonna go along with that.

Me and Tom Under the Boardwalk ... there is so much fun to have under the boardwalk

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local_dunce

#4 March 12, 2008, 09:26:28 am

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I pretty much agreed with everything on you list, but I can't agree with Travis Bickle. Man he IS a hero, a creepy hero but he knows what he's doign all along, and he only ever killed the drug dealers/pimps who were pimping out CHILDREN and saved little Jodie Foster. At the end of the movie you can even see that his life has gotten better and he seems to feel more purpose.

But yeah that's all opinion I guess.

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Vellfire

#5 March 12, 2008, 01:02:31 pm

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Annie Wilkes needs to be a little higher up on that list, holy shit she scares me like crazy.

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UPRC

#6 March 12, 2008, 01:10:02 pm

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Quote from: Velfarre on March 12, 2008, 01:02:31 pm

Annie Wilkes needs to be a little higher up on that list, holy shit she scares me like crazy.

Yeah, I agree. Kathy Bates played that role so well that it's frightening.

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Strangeluv

#7 March 12, 2008, 01:18:15 pm

HEEEEERRRREEE'S JOHNNY!!
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He didn't get out of the COCKADOODIE CAR!

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Vellfire

#8 March 12, 2008, 01:22:58 pm

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Kathy Bates played that role so well that no matter WHAT kind of movie you see her (or even someone that looks KIND OF LIKE HER) in you get chills down your spine.

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UPRC

#9 March 12, 2008, 01:26:14 pm

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Quote from: Velfarre on March 12, 2008, 01:22:58 pm

Kathy Bates played that role so well that no matter WHAT kind of movie you see her (or even someone that looks KIND OF LIKE HER) in you get chills down your spine.

I am agreeing with you again. Whenever I see her, I immediately think of Misery. Every time.

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thecatamites

#10 March 12, 2008, 01:46:53 pm

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Good list... but you left out the "Mystery Man" from Lost Highway and Jack Palance's character from Shane...

EDIT: Descriptions...
The Mystery Man is creepy just because he's just so weird. Everything about him is just kind of off-balance and unreal, like something from a bad dream... It's kinda hard to describe, but this clip gives a hint of it (Although it's best seen within the context of the actual movie): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZLQW2qr5Hs
Jack Wilson (Palance's character from Shane) is great because he's just so wonderfully, OTT evil... Perpetually grinning, taking all the time in the world to pull on his duelling glove, with a refreshing lack of compunction about blasting hapless villagers into the mud... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbVCMDfJAfQ (Palance's character is the one in black). It's the little pause before he actually shoots him that gets me every time...
Interesting side note: He got his distinctive skull-like face after being disfigured bailing from a burning airplane during the war.

Last Edit: March 12, 2008, 03:33:56 pm by thecatamites

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Strangeluv

#11 March 12, 2008, 01:48:57 pm

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Didn't see either of those movies but I've heard about Mystery Man and I know Lynch has a tendency to make some weird-ass characters. You can write about them if you wish - this topic is to discuss your favourite villains.

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4Dsheep

#12 March 12, 2008, 07:32:48 pm

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Leo Bill. In everything I've seen him in, he's the creepy psychopath. Always. It's gone to the point that every thriller/detective he's in is spoiled by the fact that he's in it and we know he's going to be starring as the creepy psychopath. He talks accomplices into commiting suicide. He kills scores of prozzies out of righteous indignation. He's always got just the verse to justify whatever sick deed he's commited. It's really fun answering who is playing the creepy psychopath in any given production with "the creepy psychopath" and getting "oh him".

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Ragnar

#13 March 12, 2008, 08:18:30 pm

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call it friendo :/

actually I thought Anton Chigurh was just so amoral it was comical but that's just me - I mean I guess that's creepy but as far as having a really fucked up way of thinking I thought Kevin Spacey in Seven was better

I thought Daniel Day-Lewis (Daniel-Day Lewis) was good in both There Will Be Blood and Gangs of New York but Gangs of New York was where I really thought man this guy is a bastard - I dunno I'm doing Shakespeare now and we did Richard III and I kind of thought of There Will Be Blood because both were kind of a waste of a person - like someone who could've been good but just kind of failed at that

Last Edit: March 12, 2008, 08:20:51 pm by Ragnar

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Liman

#14 March 13, 2008, 12:35:33 am

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Hidden content (Click to reveal)

This is what I call a creepy performance...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVuONhl_lAk

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post

#15 March 13, 2008, 01:09:09 am

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I think the only character that has actually effected me, to be honest, is Denzel Washington when he plays Alonzo in "Training Day." Seriously.

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Ragnar

#16 March 13, 2008, 05:09:09 am

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I think part of the downright creepiness of that Mystery Man guy is that somehow at that exact angle it feels like he's staring at a third person but at the same time you're being stared directly at it's like he has the ALL-SEEING EYE or something

Edit: Maybe they bluescreened in a different pair of eyes or something

Last Edit: March 13, 2008, 05:32:57 am by Ragnar

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Roman

#17 March 13, 2008, 10:45:32 pm

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Quote from: Ragnar on March 13, 2008, 05:09:09 am

I think part of the downright creepiness of that Mystery Man guy is that somehow at that exact angle it feels like he's staring at a third person but at the same time you're being stared directly at it's like he has the ALL-SEEING EYE or something

Edit: Maybe they bluescreened in a different pair of eyes or something

also he doesn't have eyebrows