Born to Be Bad

Look out! It's a meme! This guy made all the cool kids starting talking about their 5 favorite movie villains. Or, at the least, five solid movie villains. Movie nut that I am, I couldn't resist throwing my hat in the ring.

1) "John Doe," played by Kevin Spacey in Seven. You never even learn this guy's name. His entire identity is the acts he commits. The chilling, disturbing, horrifying acts. And he's fiendishly intelligent; he would not even have been caught had he not turned himself in to complete his master plan.

2) Teddy KGB, played by John Malkovich in Rounders. You could argue that more scenery gets chewed than Oreos in this character's two bookending scenes. But they're the best scenes in the movie, and the character has made an indelible impression on anybody even slightly interested in poker.

3) Hannibal Lecter, played by Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs. I admit, this isn't a surprising choice. In fact, it was #1 on AFI's List when they did their Top 50 Heroes and Villains. You could also argue that Buffalo Bill, not Lecter, is the true villain of this film. But you can't deny what a powerful character and iconic performance this was. Before subsequent sequel and prequel movies and books ran it all into the ground.

4) Khan, played by Ricardo Montalban in Star Trek II. You can tell what an impression this performance made on movie villainy by how often it was imitated in later films (both further Star Trek films and film/television in general), from the spouting of Melville to the driving the hero to scream his adversary's name into the camera. And of course, because of Khan, Spock was killed.

5) Michael Myers, aka "The Shape," from Halloween. Another character whose power is clear from the influence he would have on later films. Michael was the first of the "unstoppable, unfeeling killing machines" that would dominate horror films for decades. And he had the most memorable and recognizable "theme music" of any villain in all of cinema (with the possible exception of Darth Vader, who I'll discount for: a) not having actually had his theme until the first sequel, Empire; and b) sharing his theme with the pretty much all Imperials).

Honorable Mention: Ed Rooney, played by Jeffrey Jones in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. One of the most entertaining villains in any movie, but I couldn't really put him on my list because he never really seemed worthy of the hero. (Though I suppose he did actually catch Ferris in the end, but for sister Jeannie's intervention.)

Second Honorable Mention: Elmer Fudd in "What's Opera Doc?" With the aid of his spear and magic helmet, the determined hunter actually succeeded in "killing da wabbit" in this famous cartoon. Killing Bugs Bunny? Evil indeed.