Top 10 Baddest Movie Villains of All Time
Karate Kid Villain!
No crime can be committed without a bad guy perpetrating it. But who are the top baddest movie criminals of all time? Read below to see the bad guys who made us almost wet ourselves. We ruled out scary aliens and animals (i.e. Godzilla) who are simply misunderstood creatures and not pure evil like the dudes on this list.
Wicked Witch of the West, The Wizard of Oz
This was one of the first villains we encountered as a kid, and even if the Witch doesn’t do THAT many terrible things, she really did scare the crap out of us. She was green, she flew and she wanted to get Dorothy’s little dog too! We mean, who wants to do harm to a little dog?! Only the worst and scariest villains, that’s who. Also, she straight up drugs Dorothy Gale from Kansas and her friends, which just isn’t cool. Plus, she has to melt to die. That’s wicked intense. And then all of Munchkin Land creates a happy little song to mark her death as a celebration. You gotta be insanely mean for people to cheer your death.
T-1000, Terminator 2: Judgment Day
As if Arnold Schwarzenegger isn’t scary enough in the original Terminator flick, Robert Patrick takes the new breed of robot assassins up a whole other level. He runs crazy fast; he can melt and reform into anything he wants; he speaks very scarily. He’s totally one bad dude. And he just will not give up and die.
Lord Voldemort, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Um…he has the face of a snake! Voldemort is incredibly scary. In the first couple of flicks, we only hear of the evil things He Who Shall Not Be Named does. He does the Unspeakable Curses. He kills people. He gets other people to kill. He is one bad dude who has extraordinary powers. You don’t want to mess with him or his cohorts. So when Voldemort actually appears in The Goblet of Fire, the anticipation is very built up—and we’re not disappointed. He kills Harry’s fellow Quidditch teammate and is intensely terrifying. See below for proof.
Jack Torrance, The Shining
While Jack doesn’t start off bad, he slowly becomes evil due to the creepy and supernatural powers of the haunted Overlook Hotel. The ghosts of the hotel convince him he must kill his (slightly creepy) son and wife, so, of course, he tries to. Cue scary chase scene with an axe. It doesn’t help that Jack Nicholson is super creepy in his own right, so when you combine his creepiness with the evil of his character and the scariness of Stephen King, you get a trifecta of terrifying.
Cruella de Vil, 101 Dalmatians
Again, any villain that wants to harm animals is just not okay in our book! Even her name implies evilness. From her hair, to her crazy eyes and down to her fur coat, she not only terrifies small children but even adults. She’s not a very subtle villain, mind you, as she goes full on whacked out by the end, but we can’t help still being scared by her badness.
Darth Vader, Star Wars
Don't mess with Darth
Perhaps one of the most misunderstood villains in cinema history, Darth Vader is still quite terrifying. He can kill people without even touching them! And when he kills Obi Wan in A New Hope, we couldn’t help but shudder from his evil as a kid. It doesn’t help that the voice is booming and he’s dressed in head-to-toe black vinyl. Maybe he became evil because he was so aggravated from sweating profusely in that getup? No matter, it was the greatest insult to Luke when he found out Vader was his poppa. And then he cut off his hand. Cold, dude, very cold.
Hannibal Lecter, Silence of the Lambs
Hungry, Hannibal?
Lecter is probably one of the bad guys you actually root for, in a weird way. He’s so mild mannered and polite—you know, before eating people—that he doesn’t seem that scary, especially compared to wacko Buffalo Bill. That is, until he overpowers a couple of guards in his cell and escapes, stringing one man up in his cell—leading us to believe that Lecter has some sort of super human strength. Also, the whole face thing was way disturbing.
Hans Gruber, Die Hard
Why are the Germans always the bad dudes?
Not only does Gruber have a scary accent, but he’s a thief, a terrorist and a cold-blooded killer. Need we say more?
The Joker, The Dark Knight
While Jack Nicholson portrayed a fun and wild Joker in the original Batman, Heath Ledger’s Joker was unpredictable and uncontrollable. He did evil things just to mess with the good folks of Gotham, not to gain fortune, but just to be a menace. Is there anything scarier than someone who does things without reason? Throw in his offbeat outfits and sloppy makeup and the Joker could scare anyone. And, who can forget his pencil disappearing trick?
John Doe, Se7en
Scariest.Dude.Ever.
The scariest of all villains, however, would have to be John Doe in Se7en (played by Kevin Spacey). This dude shaves his fingertips down to not have fingerprints! How terrifying is that? This movie is one of the most frightening movies of all time, with all the murders of a serial killer coordinating with the seven deadly sins. What’s creepy about Doe is that nothing is known about him—there is no evidence in his apartment regarding his identity whatsoever. And there is no explanation for his crimes—he is just disgusted by the world. Who can’t be emotionally scarred by the ending?