Something Wicked this Way Comes

What makes a hero great?  Sure its powers such as flying or one’s ability to do battle.  What makes a hero truly remarkable?  It’s villain.  With the month dedicated to trickery and deceit its always fun to look at some of the most memorable bad guys in film.

The following are my favorite film villains and bad guys:

Dr Hannibal Lector in The Silence of the Lambs. 

Though the Buffalo Bill character claims the title of the films antagonist can you picture this movie without Anthony Hopkins chilling performance?  Hannibal Lector has a terrifying past and uses his intelligence to match wits with hero Clarice Starling.  He uses her and those around him to advance his own agenda.  He does all this with a clever since of villainy.  The character is impossible to forget and is one I believe that changed the game for bad guys in years to come.

The Joker in The Dark Knight.

What Heath Ledger did with the Joker character will never be seen again in comic movies and I fear in movies in general.  He took a truly strange individual and gave him a defining and unique sense of the bizarre.  Heath Ledger created a villain that truly overshadowed the hero.  The performance earned its actor a well deserved Academy Award and for a career cut tragically to short the penultimate movie on Heath Ledger’s resume is one for the records

Ernest Blofeld in You Only Live Twice, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Diamonds are Forever, and For Your Eyes Only*.

Bond has yet to face a greater foe.  For the first four films the character is heard and seen, only in part and never is the face shown, lurking in the shadows.  Blofeld’s arc against bond lasts three features and he cameos once more a few film later.  The villain hands agent 007 his greatest defeat and the effects of these battles are lasting through the franchise.

Darth Vader in Revenge of the Sith*, A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi.

If you watch the Star Wars films in the order they were released (IV, V, VI, I, II, III) then you’ll understand why Darth Vader reveals the greatest twist in the history of cinema with only four words.  As a villain he is relentless in his pursuits across the galaxy.  Being part human and part mechanical makes him all that more mightier of a villain.  

*indicates a cameo performance.

Trick R' Treat!

Fall has kicked off.  Leaves are turning colors and coming down from their tree top hideaways, the weather - even for the briefest of moments - turned cool, and pumpkins have started appearing almost everywhere.  

I do love October.  Recent tradition has turned it into the start of the Oscar bait releases and I do love those movies.  In recent years as well I have developed a fandom for horror movies and with halloween approaching at the end of the month I do try to gobble up as many as I can.

Until about five maybe six years ago I didn’t have my full appreciation of them as I do now.  That means I had seen the basics: Halloween, Friday the 13th, some sort of Dracula adaptation, The Shining, and maybe one or two others.   As my fandom has grown for the genre so has the number of flicks seen.  In honor of the month of October I have assembled my five favorite horror movies in one list and no particular order. 

The Shining (1980)

It’s impossible not to include Stanley Kubrick’s brilliant adaptation of the Stephen King novel.  To exclude it would be like going to church and not talking about God.  Jack Nicholson’s performance is one for the ages and there are moments that still give me a chill every time I see it.

Frankenstein (1931)

There is something classy about James Whale’s movie.  Though it has its moments that are cheesy I still watch Boris Karloff come alive with wonder and aw.

An American Werewolf in London (1981)

Some movies are just plain fun and this flick is one of the granddaddies of those.  Its cheesy and filled with stupid one liners, which I love.  It also features werewolves and those are always something to enjoy.

Rear Window (1954)

One of two movies I call a perfect movie.  (Close Encounters of the Third Kind proudly sits as the other book end with that title).  Alfred Hitchcock did it right on so many occasions - Psycho, The Birds, Vertigo just to name a few.  What I love about this one is  that the movie all takes place in one location and still keeps me on the edge of my seat.  In a world of Iphones, youtube, & social media I wish any filmmaker luck in trying to accomplish the same task a fraction as good as what Alfred Hitchcock did with this one.

The Haunting (1963)

After I first saw this movie I refused to allow my hands out of the covers for a week.  No other movie in the genre has had that affect on me.  I have a love affair with black & white cinematography and this movie uses it to create some playful, scary moments.

Honorable mentions go to George Romero’s 1978 zombie movie Dawn of the Dead, the 90’s thrillers The Sixth Sense & The Silence of the Lambs, Hitchcock’s Psycho, Dario Argento’s breathtaking Suspiria, The Exorcist from 1973, the H.P. Lovecraft adaptation Re-Animator, and the timeless slasher flick Halloween by John Carpenter.