Ralph's getting his monocle ready and training this cat for lap-stroking. I think they'll do well.
Dennis Hopper passed on today, and when I heard this (on Twitter, where I hear just about everything) the first thing that came to mind was his performance in Blue Velvet as Frank Booth, the alcoholic, violent rapist imbued with an impressive case of Danger McScarypants. His performance was one of the most scene-chewing bad guys I’ve witnessed in a film but somehow? I forgive the histrionics because I wanted to go with that particular roller coaster. In fact the “Candy Colored Clown” scene where he smears lipstick on Jeffrey Beaumont (as played by Kyle MacLachlan) and violently threatens him, kisses him, then tenderly serenades him* – this scene deeply moves me, scares me, and makes me feel nostalgically sad and a bit aroused, all at once. Frankly there wasn’t much else Hopper did I much related to but Blue Velvet is one of my favorite films and in no small part due to Hopper’s potrayal.
I think in the final analysis I like bad guys. It’s not because I want to excuse their behavior – my favorite films that take their subject matter seriously are the ones that don’t attempt to explain or even rationalize sociopaths – or because I glory in violence and misery for the sake of violence and misery. I think it’s because most good bad guys are self-validating, and people who are self-validating fascinate me. As well there are the bad guys (like a handful named below) who are great camp – or perhaps up against forces they can’t overcome and it’s a rather serio-comic affair. The below list is hardly exhaustive and is in no particular order; just a handful of characters I enjoyed muchly in the world of film.
On that note and without further ado… I give thee Film Feministe: Villains I Feel In My Hip Pocket Edition!
Captain Frank Ramsey from Crimson Tide
You know what, probably lots of people who’ve seen this film don’t even think of Ramsey (as played by Gene Hackman) as a “bad guy”. No, they take the Monday morning quarterback position of the Jason Robards cameo at the end who mansplains it: “You gentlemen were both right… and you were both wrong.” No. Frakkin’. Way. Ramsey was wrong, and he was a sneaky, smug, arrogant asshole (however charismatic, compelling, and hardworking as a Navy man). Perhaps the reason I find him such a delicious Bad Guy is that whole charismatic/compelling bit he has going on and also: I can think of no greater personal Hell career move than having to puff a cigar and alternatively ass-kiss and one-up-dick this guy on the deck of a nuclear submarine. In any case, he and Denzel Washington’s stand-off (which comes in fits and roils of mental chess matches and later, shouting matches) was a great exercise in tension. I think there’s also a scene of Viggo Mortensen doing some ironing.
Mugatu from Zoolander
No seriously? How often can you cite a villain who’s every line is quotable awesomeness? Will Ferrell is great at lampooning characters we wouldn’t think we’d want to watch and making them a sugar-gooey treat. Favorite line? The oft-repeated, “That Hansel, he’s so hot right now!” Favorite scene? Probably the moment he’s supposed to be monologuing and instead he has a sweaty and earnest breakdown at the seemingly completely-unrecognized buffoonery of our title hero. “Doesn’t anyone notice this? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!” he cries out in helpless rage.
The Joker from The Dark Knight
By the time the film came out we (whether saddened or indifferent) had heard much hype regarding the penultimate performance of our departed actor – talent and beauty – Heath Ledger. Easy to build up expectations and come away feeling a bit cotton-mouthed, but no. Ledger brought it enough to send delighted little shivers up my spine in each scene he commanded. Jack Nicholson did well enough in ’89′s Burton-directed effort but Ledger’s joker didn’t steal or borrow a mote of the elder actor’s performance. His Joker was scary but he was riveting; he was troubled and homicidal but he was a social critic of great acumen who never got boring. I’ve watched the film about three times and in the final analysis it’s a bit overblown and heavy-handed but most of the actors’ talents were not wasted (and I loved the Joker’s sartorial leanings). It’s hard to come by a truly creepy bad guy these days and I take what I can get.
May Day from A View to a Kill
What can one say about Grace Jones’ performance given that amongst a fair number of decent Bond Girls (and a whole gaggle of mediocre or offensively-procured ones) she stands out in a class of her own? I didn’t care for her exit from the film as I thought she’d likely have said, “Fuck this,” and continued on caring for Numero Uno rather than heroically sacrificing herself after her treacherous boyfriend’s scheme failed. I did like just about everything else about her: her style, her Don’t-Mess-With-Me, her line right before she beds Roger Moore’s Bond, and the fact she totally outshone not only the Good Bond Girl played by Tanya Roberts in an implausibly-fitting jumpsuit but the Actual Bad Guy as well (whats-his-name played by whozit? Oh yeah, it was Christopher Walken, another scene-chewer who usually has no problem getting noticed). I’m a Bond fanatic and I hope we’re seeing more of May Day’s ilk in future installments.
The Thing from The Thing
Last year my daughter entered the room while I was watching this film. It was the opening scene: merely a beautiful dog running silently through pristine white snow. Phoenix said to me, “This is a scary movie, isn’t it?” and she was right. It’s a scary fucking movie. Loosely a remake of 1951′s The Thing from Another World, this film is a more faithful adaptation of the novella Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell, Jr. which inspired the 1951 film as well as 1979′s Alien, another great white-knuckler.
The Thing itself is very … Thingy. It isn’t like creatures we’re used to on this planet. The special effects are notorious and either scoffed at or much admired; for myself, I loved knowing in the thrashing and tentacle-ing and screeching flappy stuff there wasn’t so much as pixel travelling across my screen. The whole paranoid-group-of-people-on-some-form-of-a-submarine bit works nicely for me in bringing the suspense, as well as Kurt Russell’s MacReady was easy on the eyes in his mountain-man beard and Keith David as Childs brings the perfect balance of intensity and a kind of harassed, Jesus, I can’t believe we have to deal with this shit attitude that I found entirely relatable. The Thing itself really freaked me out (oddly, the wire-in-the-blood scene being the most shocking) and stayed with me days after I saw the film. It was savage, relentless, destructive and absolutely not something one could reason with.
Adrian from Descent
This movie is so Not For The Squeamish that by even mentioning it I run the risk a reader will go rent it or Netflix it and watch it and then come back and tell me I’m a Terrible Person for enjoying the film. It is, however, an amazing piece of work and I’ll wager the low ratings evidenced at imdb.com are less due to the quality of the film and more due to the extreme discomfort many will feel with the subject material and plot events in this female-written-and-directed effort. Ostensibly about a rape by a creepy frat boy and the resultant damage done to and revenge procured by our heroine Maya (played with a fragility, ferocity, and tenderness by the always-riveting Rosario Dawson), in the final analysis I think the whole thing was about Sadism. No, not the for-fun Sadism that people willingly engage in with rules and safe words as an agreed-upon sport. The film is about a sadist who thinks he can get away with his stuff but sometimes in one’s travels we run across a Foe who is Beyond Us. With regard to Adrian, he isn’t the only villian in the film but he’s the biggest one on the block. He’s powerful and charismatic and beautiful and terrifying and he can do things many of us wouldn’t ever want to do, even if we believed in our bones our target “deserved” it.
Captain Barbossa from the Pirates of the Carribbean series
Look, I’m going to say it. I like the Pirates franchise. First off, I got kids and these movies have been fun little blips during the raising of such kids. Go into a theatre and I get to eat popcorn and watch a bunch of hunks and a sexy lead female Pirate King all jumping around and blowing things up and there are monsters and tongue-in-cheek jokes and Johnny Depp’s very fun Captain Jack Sparrow – not to mention as a sewist I experience excessive drooling over the bigger-than-life piratey costumes (which seem to get better and better).
But Geoffrey Rush as one of the bad guys/anti-heroes? He plays it perfect pirate with an earnestness and a wink that somehow doesn’t get to cringey levels of camp. Plus, and I have to say it, I find the man sexy. Yes, even when he voiced a pelican in the Pixar classic Finding Nemo, which was a bit disturbing but I kept it to myself (until now. Don’t judge). Hell there is barely a non-sexy pirate in the whole business (and I most emphatically am including creepies played by Bill Nighy and Chow Yun-Fat). Back to Rush: he also gets a hat tip for his turn as Casanova Frankenstein, the pleasantly psychotic villain in the oft-ignored comic treat Mystery Men.
And I swear I was going to eschew a Pirates 4 because please, let’s let a good thing not go to ruin. But Ian McShane as Blackbeard? Color me hells yes.
Shiwan Khan from The Shadow
Maybe I’m just writing with my hormones today because John Lone is another drool-inducer. I liked The Shadow and sometimes I feel like hardly anyone else did. Lone, Alec Baldwin, Penelope Ann Miller and Peter Boyle played it with a hip pocket of Smartass (and again, the costumes; loved ‘em!) that serves a comic book/superhero flick well. Lone as Khan was certainly Evil and bloodthirsty and after World Domination but he was also simultaneously urbane and prone to material pettiness: “In three days, the entire world will hear my roar, and willingly fall subject to the lost empire of Shan Kahn. That is a lovely tie, by the way. May I ask where you acquired it?” Baldwin at the title character gave as good as he got; the two were well-matched.
Body Heat
OK, if you haven’t seen this 1981 neo-noir pleasantly-smutty fable starring William Hurt and Kathleen Turner you need to stop reading this moment as there is no way to discuss the film without revealing some major spoilers. No seriously: go watch it. ESPECIALLY if you like noir (or sex, or both). OK, just us chickens now? Good. Because of course if you’ve seen the film you know the villain I’m talking about is Matty as played by Turner. Matty is in so many ways the typical Femme Fatale in that you kind of know she’s the one with the murderous ideas and she’s not laying her cards on the table and Ned Racine (Hurt’s character) is weaselly and desperate and superiority-complex’d enough to think he can still play and survive. Knowing all this and having seen plenty of noir films I still fell for some of her ploys, at first thinking of her as a passionate and impulsive woman with a half-assed Bad Idea instead of the passionate and calculating woman with Quite The Plan. Perhaps the best thing about the film finale is that Matty doesn’t get thrust on the sword of slutty-female-who’s-going-to-die (like almost every other woman of her ilk gets done down in these kinds of films… actually ANY kind of film). She plays Racine exactly to get what she wants and she gets a lot of fabulous boning in the duration and not once is her conscience disturbed. The last we see her she’s on an island drinking a fancy drink and taking in the sun. Well-played, m’lady.
Mentioned:
Blue Velvet (1986)
Frank Booth quotes
* “Love Letter” on Youtube
Crimson Tide (1995)
Zoolander (2001)
Zoolander‘s finest moments at Youtube
The Dark Knight (2009)
Batman (1989)
A View to a Kill (1985)
A James Bond cinematic music primer at Wikipedia
The Thing (1982)
Alien (1979)
Descent (2007)
Pirates of the Carribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
Mystery Men (1999)
The Shadow (1994)
Body Heat (1981)