There have been some truly shocking movies over the last 100 years or so. A great film can be ruined by a terrible villain. Movie villains need to be convincing, they need to seem like they are really up for the job of being a bad guy. But there are so many films we can point to that feature… just… the worst movie villains ever. Sometimes the bad guy being silly is a good thing because it adds comic effect (even sometimes it wasn’t intended that way). A prime example of this would be Manos, which we will get into shortly. What I’m trying to say is that there is something I love about seeing the worst movie villains ruin films that would otherwise have been good. Here are my 10 favourite of the worst movie villains ever.
The Master In “Manos: The Hands Of Fate”
When I first watched this movie, I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was so bad and so bizarre that it went far enough down on the list of badly produced films that it’s actually enjoyable to watch. Many film critics genuinely believe this movie to be the worst of all time. And the master didn’t help this. He was awful. A sort of cult leader/ powerful god who likes to enslave women and has the most useless minion on the face of the earth. That’s what we’re dealing with here. That’s why the master is among the worst movie villains ever.
Bullseye In “Daredevil”
In comics Bullseye seems like such a badass but in the 2003 movie he was just awful. He was just awful. He was cheesy and he wasn’t as cool as I thought he would be. This is partly due to the bullseye symbol carved into his forehead, which made him look like Charles Manson on steroids. He really was an overly dramatic creep. Someone needs to tell him that killing someone with a paper-clip isn’t as badass as it first sounds. Also, he keeps missing his shots at daredevil. Now, that defeats the whole point of Bullseye. He gained his name because he supposedly never misses his targets.
Ivan Ooze In “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers”
I really loved this film when I was a child but it’s not good. I can see through my adult eyes how much it really does suck. I hate this guy, with his weird purple face and tentacle hair – he should have never been included in the film. His corny one-liners always flop, and he just ends up embarrassing himself. The film is like a strange relic from the 1990s: a time when they insisted on creating terrible films with the worst movie villains ever. I used to really love it though.
Pennywise In “It”
This is a really bizarre film in which a demonic clown kidnaps and eats children. He is called Pennywise the dancing clown, and he lives deep in the sewers for some reason. The film features several scenes when he creeps up on children while holding balloons and waving at them. They’re so creepy that I thought he was meant to be a child-molester. The reason he is one this list of the worst movie villains ever is that he is ultimately defeated by a group of children. But these are not normal children. They’re pretty bloody dumb.
Mother Nature In “The Happening”
The happening is one of those movies that start off well but soon trail off into being a bit awful. At the start of the film, most people in major cities start committing suicide. No one knows why they are doing this but it turns out to be some kind of airborne toxin. It turns out the toxin is being released as mother nature wants to rid the world of humans. Throughout the film, the main characters to escape this fate. That’s right, they try to escape nature. I had to stop watching the movie half way through it. It’s okay… but it’s not exactly Manos.
Jack Frost in “Jack Frost”
This film is about a convicted serial killer who somehow is turned into a snowman. A live snowman with the mind of serial killer and the will to murder again. He wants to murder the people who caused him to be arrested back when he was human. But he doesn’t just go after the people who caused his arrest. He seems to just go on a random killing spree. The murder scenes were awful, as you’d expect from a snowman. A snowman can’t be scary. It just can’t happen. Any snowman or paedophile clown is always going to be one of the worst movie villains ever.
Gill-Man In “Creature from the Black Lagoon”
Gill man is great. He’s an underwater monster who lives deep in the Amazon jungle. A group of researchers attempt to capture him for study, but he’s not going down without a fight. It’s not a good movie villain, the fight scenes are awful. He is constantly trying to abduct the female scientist who is part of the group. At the end of the film they kill him by simply shooting him about 10 million times. It’s a great film because of how ridiculous it is. And it was so successful that they made 2 sequels.
The Hands In “The Hands of Orlac”
This is an Austrian film about a piano player who loses his hands in a train accident. His hands are lost forever, but they are able to give him a transplant – a new pair of hands. At first, the hands seem fine. But after a while he learns that the hands once belonged to a murderer who was executed after being found guilty of his crimes. With his new hands, the piano player soon realises that he is feeling strong urges to murder innocents. So the hands are the evil villain of the film. Hands are even worse than snowmen on the scale of the worst movie villains.
Thulsa Doom In “Conan the Barbarian”
Conan the Barbarian is famous as the ridiculous film where the terminator guy plays some kind of crazy barbarian. They took a really good comic book series and completely ruined the whole thing. Thulsa Doom killed Conan’s parents when he was just a boy. He is the leader of a cult that used the symbol of a snake. He enjoys giving people riddles, like in the video above, and they are almost always dull and a bit cheap. Also his voice sounds so weird – like someone trying too hard to pronounce his words like an evil villain. On top of all that he keeps trying to convince Conan to accept him as his father. In doing so, he let’s his guard down and is beheaded.
Mr. Freeze In “Batman & Robin”
This is yet another film I enjoyed during my childhood. Why are all the worst movie villains characters I grew up watching?
This was very successful film in which George Clooney played batman and Arnold Schwarzenegger played Mr Freeze. The classic tactic of combining a brilliant actor with a terrible one! Mr. Freeze keeps making terrible puns throughout the whole movie, I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. When he kills people, he tells them to “chill”. I don’t like that one bit.