Last Friday night I went to see; ‘The Dark Knight Rises’, which to say the least was a fantastic film, and has definitely rounded off my favorite film trilogy of all time. What particularly caught my imagination was the villain used in the film, who really stole the show. This got me thinking about some of my favorite villains & bad guys from the big screen. Although there are many that could be picked, spending some time watching movies and browsing IMDB, I could probably come up with a more comprehensive list, I wanted to really pull these off the top of my head to see what I could come up with and what they’ve meant to me.
In no particular order:
The Terminator – Terminator
Probably one of the earliest, and scariest, bad guys I can think of. Who would want to come up against an unstoppable killing machine?!
The Terminator – Movie Poster
The Joker – The Dark Knight
I’ve always been intrigued by The Joker ever since I started getting into Batman as a child. However I don’t think there are as many as chilling and mystifying as the one portrayed in The Dark Knight; “Some men just love to see the world burn” – the scariest crimes are the ones without motive.
The Predator – Predator
Its armed, its invisible and its hunting you. Only Arnie can save our lives!
Predator – hunting humans since 1987
Jaws – The Jaws Films
I cannot even let my feet touch the floor when watching this film! The first time I saw the Jaws film I was off to a water sports day at the lake the next morning. I went boogie boarding, in fear, I tried to water ski, in fear, I went on a banana boat, and refused to sit at the back…because of fear. Don’t even get me started about when I got caught in the seaweed!
Jaws
Bill ‘The Butcher’ Cutting – Gangs of New York
They don’t call him the butcher because he cuts up animals for a living…well he does, and they do…but he will also stab you if you cross him.
Scar – The Lion King
This guy literally killed his own brother and blamed his nephew just to become king. If that’s not evil I don’t know what is. Also surely being the Kings younger brother gives you all the benefits without the work, he obviously didn’t think that through…we all saw what happened to the land when he took over. Lazy S.O.B.
Scar – one bad cat
Velociraptor – Jurassic Park
Clever girl…
Apollo Creed – Rocky
Probably the least ‘bad guy’ on the list, but at the end of the day I was cheering for Rocky!
Apollo Creed – he’s living in America
Blair Witch – The Blair Witch Project
I don’t care what anyone says, I watched this film on my own, in the dark, for the first time, and refused to walk up to my room to go bed. Simply…this film scared me shitless. To anyone who didn’t agree and needs the gore of a film like ‘Saw’ to be scared, all I say is: You need a better imagination!
Blair Witch Project
Bane – The Dark Knight Rises
This character is truly terrifying. Take the cool, calm collected nature of a master criminal and mix with the stature and unstoppable power of the largest grunt and you get Bane. He will break you.
Bane – Warner Bros. Pictures
Soapbox Sox 
He sounded like Sean Connery meets Yoda meets Darth Vader, so I couldn’t find Bane that scary.
‘ard as ‘owt though, and a bloody brilliant film.
I would say a big element of fright is not knowing; like with your example of Blair Witch (autocorrect just changed witch to artichoke, obv) you can really compare that to the Joker. His motives aren’t fully explained and he constantly tells different stories about his past, his whole character is a mystery and it’s frightening to think of someone doing terrible things because they enjoy it you’d rather they had a really good reason. But then when you compare a character like Bane, who as you said is truly terrifying and who I thought to be an unstoppable evil – I didn’t feel his past or motives were important; they weren’t the threat compared to his brute force. When we learn more about him and I realised he had been a mystery which was now clear he wasn’t so scary anymore.
I don’t think Scar can be blamed for the drought though.