100 Most Evil Characters In All Of Cinema?

[NoSleep]

44. Carter Burke in Aliens

First one that came to my mind.

[EOLAN]

Who does Bruno Ganz play in Downfall? That guy seems like a bit of a wrong 'un.

Magda Goebbels comes out the worse in that film for me.

[lipsink]

Ben Mendelsohn's character in Animal Kingdom is just pure fucking evil. I haven't seen the film in years but I remembered him having a real quiet calm quality about him and coming across as not that bright which made his evil just more chilling.

[Mr Farenheit]

Connie and Raymond Marble

[Egyptian Feast]

Connie and Raymond Marble

Great choice. The most evil character Mink Stole ever played though was Peggy Gravel in Desperate Living. Vile and grating from the second we meet her, she spends the entire movie spewing right wing bile, teams up with a brutal dictator (Queen Carlotta, also a contender) and attempts to give the population of a small kingdom rabies. When she finally gets what's coming to her

Spoiler alert

(gunshot up the arse)

[close]

, her final words are "A single gunshot can never destroy the beauty of fascism! You're so low you make white trash look positively top drawer!" She makes a lot of the characters in this thread seem like pleasant company in comparison.

[Brundle-Fly]

[Dusty Substance]

"Can we keep this between us? I'd hate to lose my teaching job."

[Noodle Lizard]

I haven't seen Michael Gambon's character in The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover mentioned yet. That's got to be one of the most reprehensible characters ever conceived, surely.

[thecuriousorange]

The Emperor (Palpatine) in Star Wars is incredibly one-dimensional. Even in the prequels, there wasn't any mention of a back story for what "turned him evil". I suppose he was a Devil figure, who turned Vader evil and that was considered all he could be.

[mothman]

Begs the question whether there really is a "dark side of the Force" or if it's "just using the Force to be even more of a cunt than you were deep down already." We didn't really see anything identifiable as the dark side corrupt Anakin, that was just his own issues, played on and manipulated and exploited by Palpatine. When we see expressions of the Force with dark side characteristics, that could just be the Force reflecting the personality of the Force wielder.

That therefore excludes the dark side of the Force as being the source of Palpatine's own moral corruption. We don't know why he is the way he is, and why explain it? We get hints in his story of Darth Plagueis, it's heavily implied in the way he tells it that he was the apprentice who betrayed him...

[Dave The Triffids]

Ray from Nil By Mouth.  A ferocious bully with no redeeming features.
Brett from Eden Lake.  An absolute, utter shitbag.
Vincenzo Coccotti from True Romance.  Justifiably boasts about how evil he is.   

[Mr Farenheit]

Great choice. The most evil character Mink Stole ever played though was Peggy Gravel in Desperate Living. Vile and grating from the second we meet her, she spends the entire movie spewing right wing bile, teams up with a brutal dictator (Queen Carlotta, also a contender) and attempts to give the population of a small kingdom rabies. When she finally gets what's coming to her

Spoiler alert

(gunshot up the arse)

[close]

, her final words are "A single gunshot can never destroy the beauty of fascism! You're so low you make white trash look positively top drawer!" She makes a lot of the characters in this thread seem like pleasant company in comparison.

Just watched this after reading your description and thinking this sounds bloody brilliant- was not disappointed. Lovely stuff. Loads of highlights: Queen Carlotta's pathetic insults to the inhabitants of Mortville, Mole McHenry, the bar toilet scene, the wrestling scene, the 'town' of Mortville itself....    Thanks for the recc!

[Egyptian Feast]

Ha ha, glad you enjoyed it. It's an acquired taste, but it's one of my favourite Waters films. I know some fans who find it a bit too much and even he reckons he was in a really bad mood when he wrote it.

Mole McHenry is one of his greatest characters. She kinda reminds me of Frankie from Prisoner Cell Block H, except she wins triumphantly.

[Dusty Substance]

Was a bit bored so went through the nominations for Most Evil Characters In All Of Cinema, entered them onto a spreadsheet and came up with the following stats.....*

- Having sorted through the list, omitting duplicates, there were 136 nominations.

Took a couple of liberties with the duplicates by assuming the second entry for 'Jaws' meant the one from the Bond films, and the duplicate young men from Funny Games is one for the original and one for the remake :)

- 15 female
- 113 male (assuming the truck driver in Duel was a man, or 114 assuming the owner of Cube was male (HAL 9000 and the doll in Dead Of Night both count as male, right?)
- Three entries for mixed genders (Posh people in Society, white people in Get Out and one couple from Pink Flamingoes
- Three "conceptual" nominations - Alcohol in Wake In Fright, the Overlook Hotel, and Christine the car (who obviously has a woman's name but, y'know, is still a car)
- I don't know what gender the Minions are.
- Nine real life characters:
Joan Crawford (Mommie Dearest), Amon Goth (Schindler's List), John Bunting (Snowtown Murders), Eugene Landy (Love & Mercy), Hitler (Downfall and many others), Matsudaira Naritsugu 13 Assassins, Dick Cheney in W. and Vice), retired film maker George Lucas (creator of Star Wars) and Magda Goebells (Downfall, again).
- Three "inspired by" real people (Tommy DeVito in Goodfellas and Michael Elphick's and Freddie Jones' characters in The Elephant Man)
- The "silly" entries include CaB fave Ollie from The Thick Of It, George Lucas, Kevin from Home Alone 2, Bambi from Bambi
- Two TV/non-film characters who shouldn't really count are Joffrey from Game Of Thrones and Dr. San from On Cinema (unless he was in Decker: Port Of Call Hawaii, in which case he counts
- The single film with the most entries is Robocop, with eight different characters
- And it looks like Jonathan Pryce is the actor with the most nominations (Baron Munchausen, Something Wicked This Way Comes and as Rupert Murdoch Eliot Carver in Tomorrow Never Dies



* - There *might* be some errors as I only spent about 30-45 minutes on it.


Whoever wants to name the next evil character, it'll be number 137.

[Phoenix Lazarus]

Fats, Corky's deranged and malignant alter-ego in the Antony-Hopkins-starring Magic.

[beanheadmcginty]

Have we had Ming the Merciless?

[mothman]

Owen Davian, M:I3.

[Mr Farenheit]

General Woundwort

[paddy72]

Ben Mendelsohn's character in Animal Kingdom is just pure fucking evil. I haven't seen the film in years but I remembered him having a real quiet calm quality about him and coming across as not that bright which made his evil just more chilling.

Aside from Daniel Henshall in Snowtown, this would have been my other shout.

I'm still not quite sure how Mendelsohn manages to be so terrifying while not really doing very much. A genuinely disturbing performance.

[Fambo Number Mive]

The uncle in Possum

[Dr Rock]

[Dusty Substance]

Facebook has reminded me that a year ago today I watched The Nightingale and was close to having a panic attack. So.....

143.  The despicable piece of shit Lieutenant Hawkins

[Phoenix Lazarus]

Donald Neilson, in The Black Panther (1977) about the notorious armed robber who murdered a heiress and a couple of postmasters.

[Fambo Number Mive]

Lt Harris in Police Academy. Just a really nasty piece of work.

[buzby]

- HAL

HAL isn't evil. He was given a conflicting set of orders which involved lying to the human crew about the existence of alien contact and the real objective of the mission, in direct violation of his core order to relay information accurately. This creates a Hofstadter-Moebius loop in his logic functions and he develops paranoia. He comes to the logical conclusion that if there was no human crew, his conflict would be resolved as he would no longer have to lie and could keep the existence of the monolith a secret.

[Dr Rock]

Have we had Lex Luthor? He plans to kill millions in Superman 1. And help Zod take over the world in Superman 2.

[Sebastian Cobb]

The people of Dogville, but also Grace.

[Dr Rock]

Is Evil Superman in Superman 3 very evil? He's more anti-social Superman.

[Dusty Substance]

Is Evil Superman in Superman 3 very evil? He's more anti-social Superman.

There's nothing more evil than flicking peanuts at whiskey bottles.

[Catalogue Trousers]

That therefore excludes the dark side of the Force as being the source of Palpatine's own moral corruption. We don't know why he is the way he is, and why explain it? We get hints in his story of Darth Plagueis, it's heavily implied in the way he tells it that he was the apprentice who betrayed him...

Interestingly (perhaps), the prologue to the novelisation of the first Star Wars film is an extract from a history book which claims that Palpatine was an ambitious but overly-hedonistic man who bullied his way to the top, whereupon he became a feckless wastrel who ended up being easily manipulated by his various advisors, sycophants and boot-lickers who became the real evil geniuses of the Empire. But, presumably, the saga needed a big uber-villain (the Satan analogue, as already suggested by thecuriousorange), and the ensuing films and books quietly swept that characterisation under the carpet and never spoke of it again.