Everyone likes a good list article: top 10 martial arts movies, top 10 Pedro Pascal movies from 2026, top 10 movies to stave off crippling depression and the good old, often-used top 10 villains article.
That’s what brings us here today. If I see one more top 10 villain article with Darth Vader at number one, I’m going to blow my stack. Darth Vader is a perfectly iconic villain, but I’d argue that about 95 percent of his villainy is carried by the suit.
Then you have the other villains who continue to show up on such lists: the Wicked Witch, Hans Gruber, Anton Chigurh and Hannibal Lecter. Maybe writers will sometimes throw on Annie Wilkes, Nurse Ratchet or that guy from that black-and-white movie who pushed that old lady in the wheelchair down the stairs…
All those characters are great, but let’s give some other villains their due. These are in no particular order because I can’t count. It’s my secret shame…
Red Leary
QUOTE: “Look, kid, go f@#k a duck.”
Red Leary (George Kennedy) appeared in the Clint Eastwood film Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974). He is part of the crew of bank robbers that include Eastwood, Jeff Bridges and Geoffrey Lewis.
In his latter years, Kennedy became known as the bumbling, lovable Captain Ed in The Naked Gun franchise. Playing friendly characters proved no big stretch for Kennedy. He could effortlessly tap into a teddy bear-type personality. Yet, that teddy bear-type personality could turn frighteningly ogrish when Kennedy flipped the switch to mean. And flipped it he did in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot.
Red Leary is the last guy you’d want on your crew if you need to perform a calm, cool heist. He will play along until the chance for a double-cross presents itself. Then his paranoid, brutal nature rears its ugly head, and he might kick your skull into new and interesting shapes.
Asa Watts
QUOTE: “I’m gonna come to you some night when it’s real dark. I’m gonna come to you on tip toe so you ain’t ever gonna be able to hear me.”
Asa Watts (Bruce Dern) showed up in the John Wayne film The Cowboys (1972). He is a cattle rustler who commits the great cinema sin of killing Wayne onscreen. This was so bad it led to real life ramifications. For example, Laura Dern reported that some of her friends’ parents cancelled play dates with her because of her father’s role in The Cowboys. Wayne saw this coming and told Dern that he would be hated by audiences.
Dern replied, “Yeah, but they’ll sure love me in Berkeley.”
Dern is an interesting actor. He is basically the human equivalent of dandruff, yet totally watchable. The Cowboys (and maybe Black Sunday and that episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents) sees him at his most Derns-y.
Vera
QUOTE: “Shut up – you’re makin’ noises like a husband.”
Detour (1945) sees a down-on-his luck nightclub musician (Tom Neal) hitchhiking to Los Angeles. Since this is a noir film, things go awry. Neal picks up a fellow hitchhiker named Vera (Ann Savage), and things get tricky for him.
Wait, you might be saying, how does a hitchhiker pick up another hitchhiker? Hitchhikers don’t have cars!
Good observation. That is all part of the problem…
Detour was the proverbial little film that could. Shot on a miniscule budget and a bit shoddy with technical errors and a ham-handed narrative, it has nevertheless endured as a cult classic of film noir. A lot of that is due to Ann Savage’s performance as Vera. She’s a witch looking for a broomstick, but she’ll take whatever ride comes along in the meantime.
Bob Larkin (and Earl)
QUOTE: “A man worth shootin’ is a man worth killin’.”
Firecreek (1968) is a forgotten western that is a better version of High Noon. It stars James Stewart as the peaceful sheriff of a small town. One day a bunch of bad guys, led by Henry Fonda, appear and the town’s soul is forced to decide if it is cowardly or brave.
Fonda’s portrayal of Bob Larkin is a man whose vileness has been softened by cynicism. When he shoots people, he almost regrets it — not for the life taken but for the energy it costs him. Fonda is not alone in carrying the villain load. The rest of his gang is made of up the great googly-eyed Jack Elam, James Best (The Dukes of Hazzard) and Morgan Woodward (Cool Hand Luke).
But the real secret sauce of Firecreek is a surprising Gary Lockwood as Earl. Lockwood plays Fonda’s right gun-hand man, and he achieves a degree of cocky sleaziness that pretty much steals the film from Fonda and Stewart. That is quite an achievement.
Great film. Great villains. Check it out.
Mikhail Rostov
QUOTE: “NNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!”
You could really throw any Richard Lynch character into this slot from films like The Sword and the Sorcerer, Bad Dreams and even Star Trek: The Next Generation.
In Invasion USA (1985), Lynch plays a terrorist leader named Mikhail Rostov, who battles Chuck Norris to the point of a rocket launcher showdown.
That is soooo Cannon Films…
The reason this Lynch performance makes the list is solely for a single sequence. First, Lynch smashes a hooker’s face down on the steel straw she is using to snort cocaine. Then he sticks his gun down Billy Drago’s pants and pulls the trigger (Drago is also no stranger to great villain lists with his role in The Untouchables). Then, for whatever reason of villainy we may never understand, Lynch throws the hooker out the window.
Absolutely vile and surely a bridge too far…
One wonders if Nolan got the Joker’s “disappearing pencil trick” from this scene.
Debbie Jellinsky
QUOTE: “I don’t wanna hurt anybody. I don’t enjoy hurting anybody. I don’t like guns, or bombs, or electric chairs. But sometimes people just won’t listen. And so, I have to use persuasion. And slides…”
Addams Family Values (1993) is a sequel better than the original. This is because it is carried by two character actors who operate at elite levels. First, Peter MacNicol absolutely nails it to the wall in a frame as a camp counselor who takes his job way too seriously. Next, Joan Cusack steps up as a pastel-wearing black widow named Debbi Jellinsky, who is out to marry and murder Uncle Fester.
Cusack seems to channel Cruella de Vil at times with her campy performance as a femme fatale. She makes psycho women genuinely look fun to spend time with. Modern liberal white women could learn a thing or two from Cusack’s performance if they had interest in making themselves palatable to normal human beings.
Jan
QUOTE: “Sure, boss…”
Is Wrath of Man (2021) the greatest Guy Ritchie/Jason Statham film of all time? It is to me. I’ve watched it like twelve times. Before you get too judgy — remember, I prefer Conan the Destroyer to Conan the Barbarian, so I have mental issues that require a degree of sensitivity and understanding. Respect my cinematic identity.
Yet, Wrath of Man is a fascinating mashup of a revenge film and a heist film. It is one of the last great man films. Statham manages to turn grunting into an emotional masterclass. All the supporting characters are solid. The dialogue is gold. The soundtrack bangs.
Yet, these types of films are only as good as their villains. In this instance, we get an unexpectedly great villain performance from Clint Eastwood’s son, of all people.
Scott Eastwood plays a member of a criminal gang of former special forces soldiers who make a living by robbing armored trucks. Eastwood is pure slime in the role. He is cold and always looking for an angle to get more of plenty-to-go-around. While he waits, he is more than happy to pretend to be on your side, and you believe him because he’s charming and handsome enough to make you think he respects you.
And his comeuppance is perfection…
Eric Qualen
QUOTE: “Don’t bother to buckle up – you may not want to survive this.”
A normie once said to me that they could not stand watching Cliffhanger (1993) because John Lithgow’s performance as villain Eric Qualen was “unwatchable.”
It was at this point in my life that I realized some people simply cannot mix. I stopped interacting with that person. I don’t need that kind of negativity in my life.
If anything, Lithgow’s performance in Cliffhanger cannot be watched enough. His turn as intelligent, sociopathic heist leader Qualen is basically Hans Gruber from Die hard with the moustache twirling turned up to ten and the charm turned down to zero. Watching him battle Sylvester Stallone on a snowy mountain is fun from start to finish. Their final battle was basically copied by that Mission Impossible movie with Cavill in it, so you know it’s good.
Lithgow is a weird duck. His face and physicality do not read “successful actor,” but he has carved out a nice career. He is probably best known for his role as the kooky alien leader in the TV show Third Rock from the Sun. Yet, Cliffhanger is not his first turn as an over-the-top villain. He played multiple unhinged roles in De Palma’s Raising Cain, which is a lot of fun due to the director’s lurid style.
Cliffhanger is also of note because it seemed like director Renny Harlin said to himself, “what if the main bad guys were bald?” Rex Linn plays Lithgow’s very angry partner and is equally challenged in the hair department. Maybe it is because bald men are often accused of not being virile, and Lithgow’s icy psychopathy and Linn’s rage stem from them trying to overcompensate for lack of hair follicles. Meanwhile, Stallone sports thick black locks. That’s why they hate him.
Eleanor Iselin
QUOTE: “But now, we have come almost to the end. One last step. And then when I take power, they will be pulled down and ground into dirt for what they did to you. And what they did in so contemptuously underestimating me.”
I have seen Angela Lansbury as Eleanor Iselin on various top villain lists, and rightly so; the lady is a monster! For my money, Eleanor Iselin would chew Darth Vader up and spit him out. Nasty, nasty woman.
Eleanor Iselin is the mother of Laurence Harvey’s character in the Frank Sinatra political conspiracy thriller The Manchurian Candidate (1962). How vile is she? She sacrificed her own son to brain-washing communists to gain political power. Throw in vague hints of incest, and this woman should be prescribed a stake and a fire as soon as possible.
Angela Lansbury seemed like she was seventy-five years old from 1985 onward, even though she only recently passed away in 2022 at 96 years of age. Maybe she looked old so early because playing the character of Eleanor Iselin corrupted her soul…
Alan Raimy
QUOTE: “You got a fine bitch there! There’s a lot of mileage on her, but she still cooks!”
When I think of John Glover, I usually think of a comedic actor. Perhaps this is because of his role as Mr. Clamp in Gremlins 2. There, Glover plays a Trump figure with such a sincere level of goofiness that one shakes their head with bemusement every time he speaks.
Yet in 52 Pick-Up (1986), an adaptation of an Elmore Leonard Novel starring Roy Scheider and directed by John Frankenheimer (who coincidentally also directed The Manchurian Candidate), Glover plays the ultimate sleazeball, Alan Raimy.
Raimy is into pornography, blackmail and murder. Glover also adds a Baltimore accent to the character that brings an odd congenial smarminess to his depravity. Part of the fun is simply listening to him speak.
Glover is assisted in his plan to blackmail Scheider by Clarence Williams III (Tales from the Hood) and Robert Trebor (Universal Soldier). Clarence provides the scary muscle, and Trebor provides the pathetic soul, to complement Glover’s nasty brain. Together, the three of them cook up a scheme that turns in their hand like a razor, much to the harm of a painfully young Kelly Preston.
So, Raimy does what a nasty villain needs to do to salvage a bad plan: whatever it takes. Glover’s performance makes a person want to take a penicillin shower when it’s over.
So Bad, They’re Good
You know you’re watching a good villain when you love to hate them. The above characters, and the performers who brought them to life, deserve recognition for accomplishing that feat. Too often the same villains are listed over and over when it comes to best villain lists. It’s good to go off the beaten path once in a while and find some hidden gems.
Can you think of any other lesser-known villains that still bring the goods? Or in this case…the bads?
