There are probably as many types of villains as there are types of heroes, but, to me, villains have to abide by certain fixed rules.
1. Villains must be smart, ruthless, cunning, and respectful of the hero (or at least his/her/its ability to capture said villain; ditto for the hero).
2. Villains don’t necessarily have to be explicitly evil. The smart, amoral villain might be the best of all.
3. Villains have to be competent; otherwise they are clowns or paper tigers. They have to give the hero a run for the money. Villains can even win.
So who are my favorite villains of all time and why?
Iago in OTHELLO is Shakespeare’s all-time best villain. He’s so bad and such a handful that he unbalances the play--tilts it in his favor. Give this role to a really good actor, and he can tilt it even further. Iago’s goal is to destroy Othello, and he does by playing on Othello’s weakness and insecurity. He runs the Serpent in the Garden of Eden a close second for worst snake in the grass. Both are liars and traitors, and they never any repent. They exist to destroy.
Edmund in KING LEAR is Shakespeare’s next best villain. He’s a bastard (a comment both on his lineage and his character) who cannot legitimately inherit his father’s estate. Okay, Edmund can fix that--and does by killing first, his older, legitimate brother and then his father. To get the goods, he allies with Lear’s two older daughters (the Duras sisters before there were Klingons). Talk about scorpions mating. If Iago and the Serpent are fiends of Hell who poison every ear, then Edmund is Chaos and Discord who overturn the natural order. The difference between Iago and Edmund is a little bit of repentance on Edmund’s part. Sorry, not buying, Will.
Lord Henry in Oscar Wilde’s THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY justifies amoral behavior with seemingly cogent, logical arguments. Lord Henry says everything so elegantly that Dorian, who is so inexperienced in the ways of the world, is easily duped. The reader can be, too, unless one pays close attention to, not just what Lord Henry says it, but how he says it. Lord Henry’s sibilant epigrammatic speech entices Dorian to engage in all sorts of indifferent evil. The portrait allows him to do it without repercussion--until he repents. Like the Serpent and Iago, Lord Henry does not repent.
Milton’s Satan in an odd character. He’s nothing like Dante’s Satan at the bottom of the Ninth Circle of Hell. He’s not even like the Lucifer who wars against God in the Bible--though that is Milton’s take off point in PARADISE LOST. Milton’s Satan has got all the best lines and asks all the best questions, and he does it with such gusto that he fair leaps off the page. By comparison, God is utterly detached and Jesus is Casper Milquetoast. What has to be has to be, and Satan doesn’t get that message. He does what he wants; he attacks humanity through its weaknesses, but that very susceptibility to evil is what Christ needs to be Christ, to give sacrifice meaning. Satan here is a stupid villain, a villain who falls into the trap laid for him by his own hubris. He dared to strive with God, who isn’t as disengaged as he appears.
I almost forgot this villain, and would have done had it not been for the 1935 edition of TALE OF TWO CITIES with Ronald Coleman. For the record, he made a great Sidney Carton. But the villain in there stands out--and stood out in Dicken’s novel, too--Mme. Thérèse Defarge. She has excellent cause for hatred; she has a good target for her revenge--the system that allows aristos to do as they will with anyone they wish without repercussion. Is it justice to take out revenge on anyone or anything associated with those aristos? She crosses the line between justice and revenge to become Nemesis, and she is destroyed for that overreach--by Love willing to sacrifice itself. There’s not one ounce of repentance in this woman, nor should there be. She’s a warning to the next ten generations there are limits to power and to powerlessness.
One of my favorite villains is Caspar Gutman (THE MALTESE FALCON), so polished and urbane that we can’t help but appreciate him. Sidney Greenstreet did such an admirable job with this character. (Peter Lorre did likewise with Joel Cairo; I can’t imagine a smarmier villain.) Gutman is so charming and sophisticated we get distracted from the fact he’s a killer. Fortunately, Sam Spade’s been around too long for that. Gutman wants something tangible, but we’re almost sorry he doesn’t get it. A highly sophisticated personification of Avarice and Gluttony.
Saruman the White (THE LORD OF THE RINGS) betrays his own calling and his own order, the Istari, by his thirst for knowledge and power. He’s a great modern villain, particularly of the political world, for he is thoroughly corrupted by power. Worst of all, he believes his own propaganda; he believes he’s providing benefit to Middle Earth. Yeah, right. From a villainous standpoint, he’s one of the best because, even when offered redemption, he refuses it. I can’t imagine a better voice than Sir Christopher Lee’s for this villain--
--except for James Earl Jones who gave voice to Darth Vader. Do I have to point out he’s from STAR WARS? Vader is the “good” villain. He was seduced by the Emperor to the Dark Side, but there is still an understanding of and loyalty to the old Jedi ways. He recognizes the strength of the Force in Luke. Vader in the end is redeemed by Love. He’s the kind of villain who brings home the uplifting notion of Redemption and the idea that Good can win.
Jack the Ripper in the movie TIME AFTER TIME scared the pants off of me. David Warner played the character as the most cold-blooded, calculating hunter imaginable who then jumps time to prey afresh. H. G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell) also jumps time and only just manages to defeat Jack. The Ripper is an unrepentant sociopath; he does what he wants--kill--not only because he can, but because the normal rules of the Universe don’t apply to him. He’s better than all of that. There can be no attempt to redeem this guy--just stop him at all cost.
Veda is another one like that, but what makes her so nasty, besides her “Me, Me, Me” attitude, is her deliberate, callous indifference to her mother. Veda doesn’t care if she hurts, maims, or kills her mother. She walks off stage, head held high, consistently superior to the end. The kicker in MILDRED PIERCE is that James M. Cain doesn’t flinch from the inevitable conclusion--Veda wins.
Milady de Winter (THE THREE MUSKETEERS) is one of the great, hateful, duplicitous connivers of all time. It is questionable how much of a Catholic ideologue she is--c’mon, this is Dumas, it’s an adventure--unless you want to count realpolitik as an ideology. Milady works for Cardinal Richelieu as his agent, and as his spy and agent provocateur, she is a rousing success. Of course, she’s also an agent of revenge on men. She uses sex as a weapon as skillfully as the Musketeers use their rapiers. She escaped Athos’s clutches once, but, finally, after killing Constance and setting up the murder of the Duke of Buckingham, D’Artagnan and the Musketeers catch up with her and execute justice upon her. The Cardinal shrugged; c’est la vie.
My all-time favorite, scary villain is Mrs. John Iselin in the movie THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE. She's played to perfection by Angela Lansbury. (Funny, but both she and David Warner are blond, British, and capable of playing both heroes and villains. I wonder what that says.) Her hardness of ideological commitment, her willingness to sacrifice her son to her cause (Communism? or pure power?), and her incestuous attraction to her son make Eleanor Iselin unbelievably creepy and scary. Talk about the antithesis to the Virgin Mary.
So what does this list tell me about how I like villains? With villains, their reach should exceed their grasp. Otherwise, there is something wrong with them. If villains do repent, that repentance should come too late to stop the evil forces they themselves have set in motion. It is better, however, if the villains are unrepentant.
I don’t want my villains saved or redeemed. Either I want them smote into little pieces because that’s the Puritan in me, or I want them to come back to fight another day because evil never really goes away. It’s always here. It’s always seeking to corrupt and to enslave. The hero must be ever mindful of that or get blasted.
Evil is many things. Stupid it is not--not if it’s real evil.