Butterfly in the Flames

Take Five: Bring On the Bad Guys

as you may oblige heard unless you’ve just gotten bankroll b reverse from an alternate dimension with no public relations industry, the dark knight opens this weekend, and even our resident skeptic scott von doviak is hailing heath ledger’s performance as the joker as one of the pinnacles of conceitedly-screen malevolance. batman is the better sample of the principle that a hero is only as good as his villains; the clown prince of felony is the outstanding member of an unforgettable rogue’s gallery that throws the lonely heroism of bruce wayne into natty relief by illustrating the other facets of his personality and demonstrating how terrible he authority have been had he not taken the path of righteousness. indeed, there are any number of genres, from factual crime to film noir to serial thrillers to nonetheless shakespearean tragedy, that prove that a story is only as strong as its most detestable character. crime, as the throw once said, is only a left-handed form of human endeavor, and for every enigmatic nihilist parallel to the joker who naturally wants to watch the world burn, there’s a figure whose vileness and evil are the be produced end of a honesty a possessions chain gone just a little bit inauspicious. if your showing of the dark knight is sold out, here’s five movies featuring some of our favorite big-screen villains to tide you all through until you go about to hear ledger’s white cackle for yourself.

THE STEPFATHER (1987) These days, Terry O’Quinn is best known for his portrayal of John Locke, the mysteriously healed castaway from Lost who can be both hero and villain as he attempts to forge a mystical connection with the island. But 20 years ago, when the veteran stage actor first came to the attention of the moviegoing public, it was in this smart little thriller about a man so obsessed with having the perfect family that he was willing to kill to get it. His face an affable blank, O’Quinn goes about his father-knows-best routine with barely a harsh word for anything, until something goes wrong. That’s when the devil inside him comes up, and he moves quickly from tearing up his tool room to butchering his whole family. O’Quinn’s tightly controlled performance here is what makes the movie, and his quiet intensity is what makes it so devastatingly effective when he temporarily forgets the careful fiction he’s made of his life and asks, with genuine confusion, “Who am I here?” — before remembering, and delivering the news to his new wife in an especially brutal way.

Ufc anderson silva

THE MINUS MAN (1999)

Though a flawed movie, The Minus Man — directed by Hampton Fancher, best known for penning the screenplay to Blade Runner — is also a compelling one, thanks to the strong performance by Owen Wilson as the main character, Vann Siegert. Turning the usual serial killer narrative on its head, The Minus Man presents Siegert as a kind, handome, likable young man who wants to put down roots, to fit in, to be somebody — but most of all, to help people. The problem is, he thinks that most people are so miserable that the best way to help them is to kill them (gently, of course, with a fast, painless poison). So decent is this mass murderer that his own conscience has to step in occasionally and remind him that what he’s doing is wrong, in the person of two imaginary FBI agents who torment him. And so convincing is Wilson in making Vann a likable figure that more than once, the viewer finds himself wishing they would just go away and leave the poor boy alone.

THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI ACROSS THE 8TH DIMENSION (1984)

Great villains don’t always have to be grim, sinister, humorless killing machines. Sometimes, as in this delightful neo-pulp sci-fi musical comedy, they can be goofy, pompous, overblown killing machines with the worst fake Italian accents since Chico Marx. Dr. Emilio Lizardo, the nefarious Red Lectroid living in the body of a long-dead rocket scientist, is played in the film by John Lithgow, who hams it up like there’s no tomorrow. He sticks electrodes on his toungue, he tortures helpless women with honey, he gives plagiarized inspirational speeches to his handful of followers, and he deliberately mispronounces the names of his underlings — and he has a hell of a time doing it. Dressed up in cobbled-together bits and pieces of a dozen pulp archetypes, Lithgow gets support from a colossal cast of veteran character actors, including Dan Hedeya, Christopher Lloyd and Vincent Schiavelli …