Bullet Points: 9 Creepiest Movie Villains

ALL OF THIS WILL BE POTENTIALLY GROSS OR WEIRD. NOT THAT YOU CARE -- ALTHOUGH YOU MIGHT CARE THAT THERE ARE SPOILERS IN THIS SHIT.  

1. Hannibal Lector (Anthony Hopkins) – Silence of the Lambs 

Eating people is pretty high on the list of creepiness; I think we can all objectively agree on that. It would be difficult to befriend a cannibal, take one home to mother, without that pesky little feeling in the back of your mind that he’s planning on gutting your shit so he can eat you later. Like those Looney Tunes where two characters are stranded on a desert island and they start imagining one another as turkeys and hot dogs? Yeah, like that. Only all the time. It also wouldn’t help if your particular cannibal friend likes to talk in an eerily soft voice, make sucking noises after descriptions of human consumption, pick apart your sex life, or be Anthony Hopkins. If there was ever a moment in our culture’s history where we thought, “Hey, maybe cannibals aren’t so bad,” Anthony Hopkins took that notion, broke its collarbone, shat on it, raped its mother, and then killed himself a cop for dinner. 

2. Norman Stansfield (Gary Oldman) – Leon  

Hey boys and girls, do you like Sirius Black? Is he like the wrongfully-accused-ex-con-escapee-magical-godfather you never had? Well, now you can watch him get cracked out and shoot a bunch of kids to the tune of a Beethoven symphony that no one but him can hear. Norman Stansfield, the abnormally punctual, intensely unnerving, classical music loving crazy fuck, is the antagonist of Luc Besson’s 1994 film Leon, and throughout the entirety of the movie he’s essentially the exact same way that he is in the clip above - either hilariously nonchalant, frighteningly batshit crazy, or, you know, screaming: 

His performance is sometimes over the top, but there are moments, such as the scene when he corners tiny-Natalie-Portman in the bathroom, that are less funny and more horrifying. All together, there’s a creepy but sort of hilarious air to Norman Stansfield that makes him memorable, and also makes you slightly terrified of Gary Oldman. 

3. Gollum (Andy Serkis) – The Lord of the Rings (The Fellowship of the Ring for, like, two seconds/The Two Towers/Return of the King) 

Gollum is your garden-variety creepy; not creepy in the way that makes you fear for your life (although he probably would kill you), just creepy in the general sense of the word. He remains relatively sympathetic throughout the course of the movie, but that doesn’t stop him from being altogether discomforting in roughly every scene he’s in. I remember watching The Two Towers with some friends and they made a “would you rather” that had “have sex with Gollum” as one of the options, which is probably the most compelling reason that he’s on this list right now, because the image of that and the associated horror is forever branded into my mind. Generally, though, there’s not anything about stringy hair, missing teeth, bluish skin, schizophrenia and an affinity for fish and rings that is at all becoming or comforting.  

4. Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) – Blade Runner 

Spanish dubbing! What fun! 

In his final confrontation with Deckard (as shown in the video above), Roy Batty does the following things: 

1. Rubs the deceased Daryl Hannah’s blood on his lips
2. Howls like a wolf, numerous times
3. Runs around in his underwear
4. Puts a nail through his hand
5. BASHES HIS HEAD THROUGH A WALL

Sort of like Norman Stansfield, Roy Batty is a mixture of intense creepiness and vague hilarity; of course, there are justifications for numbers one and four on that list (I will never be able to explain away the head-bash with any effectiveness), but that doesn’t stop them from being weird and eerie. Out of anyone on the list, Roy is probably the most sympathetic (I’m somewhat hesitant to call him a villain), and simultaneously, because of that scene alone, he is easily one of the strangest. I’m not sure whose idea it was for him to head-butt the wall, but it’s certainly one of the most memorable parts of the movie (that’s probably not a good thing). Right after the origami-boner-man.  

5. Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) – No Country for Old Men 

If you were to walk down the street and see Javier Bardem walking toward you, and then come back and talk to me about it and tell me you weren’t scared, one, you wouldn’t be able to come back and talk to me about it because you’d be dead, and two, you’d be a lying bastard. There is nothing that isn’t horrifying about Anton Chigurh. One of the first scenes you see him in, he’s strangling a cop with his handcuffs, making the most horrifying fucking face of exertion I’ve ever seen in my entire life. And it doesn’t get any better after that. It’s just coin tossing and mutilation and terror for two hours. Even the scene when he’s treating his wounds after his shoot out with Llewelyn, you figure that would humanize him a bit. Oh, he has to pour shit on his wounds and limp around and pull bits of skin from his limbs like any other person would have to. But no, it makes him even fucking scarier. HOW, I have no idea. Javier Bardem says that it all has to do with his haircut – that a man that has the audacity and lack of regard to sport that kind of coiffure is a force to be reckoned with. I don’t doubt him, nor would I ever doubt him, for fear of my life.  

6. Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) – The Shining 

I’m convinced that Jack Nicholson has never looked like a normal human being. There has been no smooth transition from The Shining to About Schmidt. It’s all been unfamiliar, if not rocky terrain, and it’s all been at least sort of horrifying. Never more so than in The Shining – that scene where he’s stumbling around in the snow looking for his kid nearly gave me a panic attack, and of course scene provided above is no better. (Unrelated: what child would have the ingenuity and foresight to cover up his tracks in the snow? Am I right or am I mentally challenged? I wouldn’t have thought of that. Also, what is it with villains sticking their heads through objects that are meant to remain solid? These are of course the difficult questions intended to be posed by the film) It’s a wonder that Jack Nicholson can be in [romantic] comedies without inducing Vietnam-esque flashbacks to this film. Actually, I’m not sure that he can. Try watching The Bucket List without “I’m just gonna bash your brains in!” ringing in your head. 

7. Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) – American Psycho 

Let it be said that Christian Bale is way too good at everything he does and if I didn’t like him so much it would piss me off. Now that that’s out of the way: on to American Psycho. The clip provided above is one of the instances of creepy-hilarity in the movie, just for the sake of not trying to completely unnerve anyone, because there are a bunch of moments that are just plain unsettling. For instance, the scene in which Patrick hires two hookers and has an orgy with them, all the while looking in the mirror and savagely brushing back his hair. Then, after that’s done, he gets out some knives and wants to cut them because it gets him off. AHHH. Talk about the most uncomfortable five to seven minutes of my life. Christian Bale drives it home with his insanity and severity – it’s one of those moments that you wish would end immediately and therefore feels like it’s a half an hour long. Most of the movie is darkly hilarious, but whenever it involves chainsaws or hookers its bad news bears. 

8. Drugs (Coke, Heroin, etc.) – Requiem for a Dream 

You really need context for this scene to realize how fucking horrific it is, but when this film was over, I literally looked at the ground for about six minutes straight and I felt like my soul had been crushed. It will make you never want to take drugs ever in your life, and if you’re me, the phrase “ass to ass” will always make you cringe, although out of context it is potentially hilarious.  

9. Woo-Jin Lee (Ji-tae Yu) – Oldboy 

Now, when I say, “THERE ARE SPOILERS IN THIS SHIT,” I’m mostly referring to this one, so gtfo if you haven’t seen it already. I’m serious. Get out of here. 

There isn’t a video available for what I want to show you, although it’s probably better that way, because the whole thing is sort of horrifying/unsettling/jaw-dropping/WHATTHEFUCK-inducing/painful to watch (provided that you didn’t guess the twist halfway through like everyone that wasn’t me or my brother). It doesn’t get much creepier than (A), having sex with your sister and then, (B), through incredibly elaborate means, forcing the guy who told everyone you were having sex with your sister to have sex with his daughter. It really, really doesn’t. Oh, and then blowing your brains out after the deed is done -- that’s the cherry topper. Woo-Jin Lee is the disarmingly charming, subsequently grotesque and altogether horrifying villain of Park-Chan Wook’s Oldboy and because of his motives for revenge, as well as the means through which he exacts it, I would probably crown him the king of creepy – because nothing matches up to a double dose of incest.