VILLAINS. Bad guys. What the French refer to as 'Les Diabolique Frederiquesons'. And if they don't, they really ought to because it sounds awesome.
Since the dawn of time, villains have been harassing people, and, to a lesser degree, adorable puppies. Cinema, then, has had ample opportunities to depict villains with the appropriate panache and moustachioed badassery. Yet it so often fails, and fails harder than the penis of a Finnish porn star intent on making his fifteen minutes as sweaty and fap-worthy as humanly possible.
Here, then, are what I deem to be the ten shittiest villains in screen history. And if I've left any out that you feel particularly strongly about, you can sit on it. And by it, I do of course mean a comfortable chair.
10. Auric Goldfinger - Goldfinger
Let's start with something simple. First of all, the actor playing Goldfinger didn't speak English, which immediately makes him a bad person. possibly even a war criminal. Secondly, he commits the cardinal sin of TELLING HIS ADVERSARY EVERYTHING. Then, what, he leaves the room to have a chat, and lets Bond go when the laser is about to separate his church and state? Can you imagine what the searing scent of cooking Bond cud would smell like? Everyone within a fifty mile radius would get spontaneously pregnant. How could they NOT have written that into the script? And how could Goldfinger have stopped that from happening?
(Incidentally, make sure you click the little speech bubble below the video before watching.)
9. Soldeed - Doctor Who: The Horns of Nimon
The Horns of Nimon is a serial from the Fourth Doctor's run, in which Tom Baker played The Doctor.
Doctor Who is, and remains, one of the best things about life, not just television. But I'd be lying if I said that some of the actors they hired in the seventies and eighties for the show weren't so ham fisted you'd think they'd been planted there to try and get the show cancelled. As far as villains go, Soldeed has the following attributes: he dresses like an intergalactic wizard pimp. He's a simpering douche-tuba. He revels in serving his 'overlords', in this case, shitty minotaurs called The Nimon. And he comes in at number nine because, when faced with defeat, his responses to his antagonists are subtle. You know, like a train wreck, or that retarded meat dress thing GaGa wore.
8. Edward Malus - The Wicker Man
The original
Wicker Man, a Hammer Horror film with some sweet boobies AND Christopher Lee (sadly, however, not his boobies), was amazing. This remake was a fetid parody, only it didn't think it was. It was awful, and Malus, played with understated charm by Nicolas Cage, was totally the villain.
Firstly, he was using his cosmic voodoo bullshit to stop the production of honey. Those innocent pagans totally need honey for… something. Anyway, he also punched and kicked THE LADIES, several of which were old or hot, and all of which were ladies. Total ladies. Then, he stops kids from having perfectly innocent fun with the corpses of small animals made into masks (they don't show how the masks are made at any point, but trust me, I've done my research. It's not a pagan child mask if it isn't a baked and sculpted cocoon of roadkill effluence). THEN, he gets his just desserts (delicious bees) and he COMPLAINS about it. Like a fucking baby. Now look, I'm not trying to be senator Dumpus or anything, dumping away like a dumpus, but come on. There's badass cop out for revenge, and there's Nicolas Cage punching the ladies and being all crazybad dumpus.
7. Asshole guy whose name I can't actually find - Banglar King Kong
Yeah, this guy is the shitty bad guy in question.
Not because he enslaves a gigantic primate, which is totally fine as far as I'm concerned. Monkeys and all their variants are assholes and deserved to be harvested for their delicious meat. No, he's a villain because he's the lynch pin for the plot of this ridiculous film. Everything that happens in it; the terrible dance numbers, the horrendous bluescreen, the abundance of bananas, all of them take place because this jackhole exists. Sure, the trailer is funny because everything foreign is inherently hilarious, but there's a limit.
6. Everyone - Geteven: The Movie
Where do I begin with this cinematic abortion? First of all, the title is amazingment. They fused together two words to create a new word, which is bold. Secondly, watch the trailer. It's hard to tell whether the film was made as a weekend exercise for some mentally handicapped and surprisingly buff moustachioed simians. You know, as some sort of group therapy shindig. Or maybe John De Hart, AND ACTION FILM VETERANS WINGS HAUSER and WILLIAM SMITH (I know, right? I love those guys!) are genuinely awesome. Or maybe they found some Nazi gold and sold it to someone who trades Nazi gold for video cameras and state of the art editing equipment, who knows. Either way, it's such a morally ambiguous universe depicted in
Geteven that one can only assume EVERYONE is a bit of a bad guy, which makes them all suck just as much.
I watched the first ten minutes of the film and almost committed seppuku with an unsharpened pencil.
5. Denny - The Room
If you've not seen or heard of
The Room, it's basically the worst film ever made, and has become a massive cult hit the world over. If you HAVE seen it, I'm sure you're thinking, what the hell? How is Denny the villainous core in this unbelievably inbred apple? Well, he sows discord, almost expertly. It's like he was bred in a lab to fuck with people. First off, he messes with Tommy and Lisa's sex life, which may have been a catalyst for the traginold that was due to occur later. Secondly, he takes drugs, and messes with drug dealers; the ensuing arguments he has with Lisa and her cancer-addled mother add yet more tension to the proceedings. Everything he does expertly guides everyone towards the films conclusion, which involves DEATH. He's like Damien from
The Omen, except he appears to have been dropped on his head as a child. Observe the wondrous quilt of misery this idiot weaves.
4. Criswell - Orgy of the Dead
I'm sure you're thinking to yourself, Paul, how can a film called
Orgy of the Dead POSSIBLY SUCK? Well, enter Criswell, the villain of
Orgy of the Dead. Far from doing what he ought to do and allowing himself to be stuck hither and thither like some cock pincushion, Criswell avoids an actual orgy and decides instead to inflict some of the clumsiest, shittiest villaining on his victims I've ever seen. EVER. First up, here he is intimidating a superb and convincing actress:
You'll notice his commanding presence. Oh, wait, sorry. I was thinking of someone who sucked less. To be fair, though, we really ought to see him monologuing before we judge; one of the key attributes any good villain ought to possess is the ability to monologue. Let's watch and judge accordingly. Oh, and you're also about to see how he reacts to torture, and how he handles the ladies:
I trust you're done hemorrhaging blood now.
3. Chitti Babu - Enthiran
Enthiran (also called 'Robot')
This is the highest grossing Tamil science fiction film of all time. In fact, it's the highest grossing Indian film of all time. It took nearly a decade of pre-production, and two years to make. And, like much Indian cinema, it lacks both subtlety and… well, the lack of subtlety is pretty much the main issue here. Watching the film is like undergoing a pretty serious sugar overdose, so here's ten minutes of it instead. The shiftiness of the villain (in this case, the robot, Chitti) comes down to many things: his hair, his weird clothing, and his general demeanour. But it's also got to do with the fact that he KILLS EVERYTHING. A good villain is evil. A good, compelling villain plans, and schemes, and lets horrifying plans sneak up on you; even the most brutish of memorable villains can surprise you. Chitti, however, is like a badly dressed pensioner kicking over a sandcastle and taking a dump on the child who built it. Sure, it's evil, but there's villainy, and then there's assholery. And yes, that's a word. It's a word I just made up.
2. Watermelon ball thing - Drunken Shaolin
I went through a massive vintage martial arts movie phase a couple of years back, and at some point I saw a hunk of the film this guy appeared in. Sometimes, how crap a villain is boils down to their appearance and production values. Observe the cheapest, crappiest villain ever to grace the screen.
1. Christian Klingons - Star Tracts
It's easy to mock supposedly hip Christians for trying to use pop culture, which they clearly have a firm grasp on. For an idea of just how firm that grasp is, think of a wet bar of soap. Now, imagine you have no thumbs. Try and grasp the soap. You get the idea. Whilst this clip is painful on a myriad of levels, it's also illustrative of just how badly these jackholes have depicted Klingons. These, incidentally, are actual Klingons:
YES. PERFECT. Now, watch what happens when these morons RUIN EVERYTHING.
Klingons, the perfect fusion of villainy and nobility, of honour and raw emotion, have been reduced to COCK SANDWICHES.
Here ends the lesson on what makes a villain truly shit. I hope you've learned something.