Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Accountability, motherfuckers.

We’re not going back!

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

‘Museums aren’t America’s attic for its racist shit.’

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

I also would like a pony to improve my balloon juice experience.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

The new republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

Let’s show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Dead end MAGA boomers crying about Talyor Swift being a Dem is my kind of music. Turn it up.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

Books are my comfort food!

You are here: Home / Medium Cool / Medium Cool – Heroes and Villains!

Medium Cool – Heroes and Villains!

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Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture, mostly film, TV, and books, with some music and games thrown in.  We hope it’s a welcome break from the anger, hate, and idiocy we see almost daily from the other side in the political sphere.

Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools un-suffered.  We’re here every Sunday at 7 pm.

Tonight, let’s talk about heroes and villains!

This topic doesn’t need any more introduction than that, right?

Note: for those new to Medium Cool, these are not open threads.

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145Comments

  4. 4.

    Melancholy Jaques

    Judge Holden in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian.

    He never sleeps, he says. He says he’ll never die. He bows to the fiddlers and sashays backwards and throws back his head and laughs deep in his throat and he is a great favorite, the judge. He wafts his hat and the lunar dome of his skull passes palely under the lamps and he swings about and takes possession of one of the fiddles and he pirouettes and makes a pass, two passes, dancing and fiddling at once. His feet are light and nimble. He never sleeps. He says that he will never die. He dances in light and in shadow and he is a great favorite. He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.

    Please, dear Hollywood, please do not make film or series out of this novel.

  6. 6.

    mrmoshpotato

    I’m Batman!

    (They must’ve had a blast filming the ridiculousness that was 1960’s Batman.

    Joker and Mr. Freeze are excellent villians.

  7. 7.

    kalakal

    So many to choose from. Iago, Steerpike, Uriah Heep…

    I’m a fan of the over the top James Bond supervillans, my favourites being Goldfinger (Gert Frobe) and OddJob (Harold Sakata)

    Special shout out to Jack Lemmon & Peter Falk as Professor Fate and Max

  9. 9.

    NotMax

    George Sanders didn’t often get the opportunity but when a script called for it he excelled in playing the suave, urbane villain . See, for example, 1941’s Man Hunt.

  11. 11.

    kalakal

    Richard Attenborough was absolutely chilling as Pinkie in Brighton Rock and Christie in 10 Rillington Place

    And of course Orsen Welles as Harry Lime

  12. 12.

    mrmoshpotato

    @kalakal:

    Richard Attenborough was absolutely chilling as Pinkie in Brighton Rock and Christie in 10 Rillington Place

    And of course Orsen Welles as Harry Lime

    Yes, yes, and yes.

  19. 19.

    khead

    “You see, Mr. Gittes, most people never have to face the fact, that in the right place, at the right time, they’re capable of ANYthing!” – Noah Cross

  20. 20.

    lowtechcyclist

    Bogie was a great ‘knight in tarnished armor’ sort of hero in movies like The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, and To Have and Have Not.

    And I love the roles Peter Lorre played in Bogart movies, especially as Rocky Rococo Joel Cairo in Maltese Falcon. Less a villain than a “slimy weasel” as Dan Catherwood put it.

  21. 21.

    NotMax

    Must mention Henry Fonda in Once Upon a Time in the West.

    Moving down to B-level, Shelley Winters in Bloody Mama.

    And at C-level, Tura Satana in Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

  22. 22.

    BellaPea

    I’m into familiar territory here , but I always liked the chemistry between Thor and Loki in the Marvel movies. There’s a kind of sadness with Thor that he just can’t reach his brother to make peace, and Tom Hiddleston’s Loki comes close but never totally gives in. It’s a really brilliant portrayal by both of them, they really look like real brothers who share a history.

  28. 28.

    Baud

    I think the post body initially said villains, not heroes and villains.

    Anyway, not really a traditional villain, but the first thing that came to mind was Yul Brenner in Westworld.

  29. 29.

    Kristine

    Michael Nyqvist as Viggo Tarasov in the first John Wick movie. The epitome of the charming thug

    Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger in Black Panther.

  30. 30.

    Melancholy Jaques

    All of the villains on The Wire were great: Avon, Stringer, Omar, Marlo, the Greek, Maurice, and in his own way, Rawls. In fact, most of them were so well played, it’s hard to think of them as villains.

  31. 31.

    NotMax

    Going in a completely different direction, Snidely Whiplash as well as Dick Dastardly & Muttley.
    ;)

  32. 32.

    kalakal

    He usually played a cad rather than a villain but I always loved Terry Thomas

    I once read an interview with Jackie Chan where he said his biggest regret was he couldn’t play a villain, as he was one of the few Chinese international film stars at the time he had to be the good guy

  33. 33.

    geg6

    I loved Paul Newman and Robert Redford in their roles when they played a pair of heroes who were sort of villainous.  I can watch Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid or The Sting over and over and never tire of them.

  36. 36.

    NotMax

    Ooh, ooh! James Cagney in White Heat, Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar, Paul Muni in Scarface.

  38. 38.

    hueyplong

    Don’t want to get all repetitive about the great ones listed above (Szell, Harry Lime, Noah Cross, the 2 Franks, et al), but I’ll add a few:

    Angela Lansbury in The Manchurian Candidate

    Both Kirk Douglas and Jane Greer in Out of the Past

    Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight

    Charles Laughton in The Big Clock (if you haven’t seen this one, you’re in for a treat)

    Margaret Hamilton in The Wizard of Oz

  39. 39.

    The Red Pen

    I thought The Suicide Squad was a fun movie and the follow-on Peacemaker series was also fun.

    One thing I never see mentioned is that Peacemaker (in the movie) is an anti-villain. Pop culture is rife with anti-heroes (people love them) but anti-villains are really rare.

    An anti-villain is a character who has all the makings of a hero, but does evil things anyway.

  40. 40.

    geg6

    @kalakal:

    Can’t disagree with that.  Snape, who is also a villain/hero (which is sort of my favorite kind of character) is also masterful.  Rickman was the best!

  44. 44.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: Actually, the title said Heroes and Villains. After the post went up I realized I had left heroes off in the (very short) text of the post.  So i remedied that!

    Then got a phone call before I could mention that in an early comment.

    Kudos to you for careful reading!  :-)

  46. 46.

    SFBayAreaGal

    Spike in Buffy the Vampire Slayer

    Star Trek the Next Generation from an episode called The Drumhead, Admiral Norah Satie played by Jean Simmons.

    Deep Space Nine: Kai Winn Adami played by Louise Fletcher

    Nurse Ratched also played by Louise Fletcher

  48. 48.

    CaseyL

    Thinking about the heroes and villains of my childhood, because those left the deepest impressions.

    I watched the TV series Batman as a young girl, and Julie Newmar’s Catwoman fascinated me. A “baddie” who was witty, and reveled in being Bad, and beat the good guys? She was my hero.

    I was also enamored of Professor Loveless in the original Wild WIld West, as played by Michael Dunn. Wild Wild West also had one of my favorite Good Guys: Artemis Gordon. Even as a tween, I realized James West was supposed to be the hero heart-throb, but – even as a tween – I preferred Gordon for his inventiveness, intelligence, and sarcastic wit.

    A villain who scared the young me was Rosa Klebb, in From Russia With Love (I can’t remember when or how I watched it; surely I was too young to see it in theaters when it was first released?). The knives in her shoes, activated with a click of her heels, scared me silly.

  53. 53.

    mvr

    @khead: Yes, I thought of that movie right away. Hero (who is whom I actually thought of first) is pretty messed up but still does the job.

  55. 55.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    Don’t know who the actor was but since we’re in the tail end of the year with Christmas not far off, Mr. Potter from It’s A Wonderful Life is a pretty good villain. Also  Jeff Bridges in The Jagged Edge. 

  56. 56.

    scav

    For complex villains, there is the pair Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont (Glen Close & Alan Rickman en plus) in Dangerous Liaisons.

  57. 57.

    Gloria DryGarden

    Kenneth Branagh as the “friend ” in othello.

    Winona Judd , I think in the age of innocence, across from Daniel day Lewis, and Michelle Pfeiffer. She was so conniving.  My neighbor talked to  about her character, the Steele under velvet gloves.

  58. 58.

    hueyplong

    I get fixated on movies, but it’s possible the best villain ever was in a TV series– Gus Fring in Breaking Bad.

  60. 60.

    NotMax

    All the leads (excepting adorable Katie Johnson) in The Ladykillers.

    Also too, Alec Gunness in Kind Hearts and Coronets.

  62. 62.

    prostratedragon

    Hank Quinlan in Touch of Evil. Serges Bauer in Gaslight (Either Boyer or Walbrook, but the former has a deliberate obtuseness that ignites me).

    @NotMax:
    There’s a fine Elsa Lanchester film festival out there to be compiled.

  63. 63.

    Splitting Image

    This is a Beach Boys thread, right?

    Heroes and Villains

    Robert Mitchum in Night of the Hunter is a great villain.

    Charles Boyer did a good turn in Gaslight.

    Ozymandias in The Watchmen (comic book) is pitch perfect.

    Hitchcock deserves his own category, especially because it’s not immediately obvious in many of his films who the villain is, or even exactly what crime has been committed. Vertigo and Psycho are particularly good examples of that.

    Michael Palin starred in a politcal drama series in the early ’90s called G.B.H. which has an entire collection of evil bastards to choose from. It’s hard to track down, but it’s your only chance to see Michael beating someone nearly to death with a tennis racket. Tom Georgeson is in it, which reminds me that A Fish Called Wanda (which he was also in) also has an entire collection of evil bastards to choose from.

  66. 66.

    prostratedragon

    @scav:  Malkovitch played Valmont opposite Close. Colin Firth played him opposite Annette Bening in another version. I’d say their movie was good, the one with the former two great.

  67. 67.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Baud:

    I love this scene

    Richard Benjamin has this “Oh, shit!” reaction as he realizes his friend has been shot for real by the Gunslinger and he’s in danger, while the Gunslinger has that menacing, amused smile on his face

  68. 68.

    prostratedragon

    Laura Palmer’s killer. He’s drawn so that he gives indications almost immediately and early in the second season gave me a moment where, if I’d been in the room, it would have taken everything I had not to knock him off his chair. Things go downhill from there.

  69. 69.

    WV Blonde

    @Brant Lamb: Agree wholeheartedly! He agonizes constantly whether the blackened denarius has begun to corrupt him (or the Winter Knight’s mantle), but still strives to do the right thing.

  70. 70.

    NotMax

    @Kristine

    Before anyone pops in with a correction, it’s Dennis Price as the nefarious one in Kind Hearts and Coronets but the Guinness name is more recognizable (he plays eight roles!)

  72. 72.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Burt Lancaster in Seven Days in May. He and Kirk Douglas played off each other brilliantly.

  78. 78.

    zhena gogolia

    @Splitting Image: Oh, yes, Charles Boyer in Gaslight! Boyer seems to be largely forgotten today, but he was a very great actor. See also Love Affair (hero in that one, although a playboy).

  79. 79.

    Polish The Guillotines

    Hero: Hardy Krueger in “Flight Of the Phoenix.”

    “But James Stewart…” you say. I say, “Nope. Hardy Krueger.”

    Villain: HAL 9000.

  84. 84.

    Just look at that parking lot

    The Shakespeare play Titus Andronicus was made into a movie in 1999 with Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lange. There are plenty of villains to be found ,but the worst was Aaron played by Harry Lennox. Toward the movie’s end , when Aaron is to be hanged, he gives a speech that ends with

    “ I have done a thousand dreadful things

    As willingly as one would kill a fly,

    And nothing grieves me more heartily indeed

    But that I can not do ten thousand more”.

    I believe that qualifies him as a villain.

  90. 90.

    prostratedragon

    @Polish The Guillotines:  It certainly was the engineer who knew how to get them out of their predicament. But the pilot’s slowly dawning realization of how that knowledge was acquired is also worthy.

  91. 91.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    @NotMax: … any of the Number 2s in The Prisoner

    Leo McKern for sure. Can we also count Clang, the High Priest (Help).

  94. 94.

    moonbat

    A fun one would be Gary Oldman as Zorg in The Fifth Element.

    One of my favorite exchanges in the film:

    Father Cornelius: “You’re a monster, Zorg.”

    Zorg: (after an almost coy pause) “I know.”

  96. 96.

    moonbat

    @kalakal: Agreed. I saw the film in Edinburgh almost by accident in 96 and he was absolutely chilling. Of course the Nazi-ish getup helped some.

  98. 98.

    Gloria DryGarden

    Ok, so heroes

    Frodo, Samwise, Gandalf, and Aragorn.

    Also, in A Discovery of Witches, especially the book trilogy, I think of Diana and Matthew as heroes. There’s a whole range of folks , imperfect humans and beings, a whole mixed bag, who end up having each other’s backs with such fierceness, they are all heroes, in a way. Although it appears to be a book about vampires, witches and creamy creatives, I think it’s really a book about ethics, history, medicine and law.

    queen Elizabeth is almost a villain in this book.

  100. 100.

    moonbat

    So for a hero I’d throw Clive Owen as Theo Faren in Children of Men. A completely disillusioned man who suddenly finds hope and mission in the child of another woman. He’s tops.

  102. 102.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @CliosFanBoy: Can’t disagree.  One of the things that Silver Age Marvel did was shake up heroes but good, making them much more multifaceted.  Tony Stark had an alcohol problem, Bruce Banner had an anger problem, Peter Parker had girl trouble.

  103. 103.

    Tehanu

    @zhena gogolia: ​
    James Mason in North by Northwest.

    You beat me to it. James Mason is my favorite actor all-time because he was great in everything – hero, sidekick, terrifying villain, pathetic old man, whatever.

    @kalakal: Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast is really nasty

    Oh yes, I’d forgotten how scary he was!

  105. 105.

    prostratedragon

    @kalakal:  the one Hoskins played is kind of interesting, though still definitely a villain. If the one in Sexy Beast had been met by a well-timed stopping kick when he charged up that staircase it would have been much easier. “I thought he was a burglar.”

  106. 106.

    Gloria DryGarden

    Did anyone ever see Jean de Florette? Incredible movie. French w subtitles, at the Indy theaters. No heroes, but the two brothers were definitely villains, in an ordinary way, that was painfully relatable.

    I was warned to have someone to talk to right after, and not to drive right away. And so it was.

  111. 111.

    Annamal

    Recency bias but Agatha Harkness of Agatha All Along (I completely understand Marvel burnout but this was a really entertaining campy watch) came into her series as a genuinely interesting villain (how she emerges from the series would be spoilers). She chews scenery like it’s going out of style, has her own theme song, has a long and complicated history of wrong-doing and an awesome swishy coat.

    Having a female character occupy this particular moral space isn’t particularly common.

  116. 116.

    WaterGirl

    Am I right in thinking that this whole thread has been about heroes and villains in film?  And not a single book has been mentioned?

    I can’t decided whether we should have another of these about heroes and villains in books, in fiction, or if this means there is no interest in discussing fiction.

  119. 119.

    billcinsd

    Heroes: Flaming Carrot, The Tick

    Real Life Heroes: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Raoul Wallenberg

    Villains: Pigboy/The Deadly Bulb, Peter Lorre’s murderer in M

    Real Life Villains: Reinhard Heydrich, Josef Mengele

  120. 120.

    Chris

    I think Sean Connery and Michael Caine’s characters in The Man Who Would Be King are probably the best done villains of all time, simply in terms of making you feel for the villains.

    Lots of movies make you sympathize with the villains, but they almost always do that by pulling their punches.  Oh yes, they’re villains, because they’re (gangsters, thieves, assassins, wev), but they never hurt anybody who’s innocent.  Oh yes, they’re villains, but everybody they’re fighting is even worse than they are.  Oh yes, they’re villains, but they were forced into it by circumstances.  Oh yes, they’re villains, but sometimes a villain’s what the world needs, huh?

    By comparison to most of Hollywood, The Man Who Would Be King goes all-out.  They’re really bad people, according to almost any moral code you care to mention.  They’re colonialists.  They’re rapists.  They’re thieves.  They’re deserters.  They’re blasphemers.  They’re killers.  And there isn’t some colonial pulp villain like the Thuggee cult around to serve as the Greater Evil and make them look good.  And there isn’t any compelling reason why they would have had to do anything they did.  They’re just the worst.  They absolutely deserve to be strung up from the nearest tree as much as any fictional characters that ever lived.

    And yet somehow the scene where Connery realizes that he’s fucked up everything and asks for forgiveness, and Caine grants it to him wholeheartedly, and Connery just says “everything’s all right then” and goes out to his death singing “The Song Of Man” still manages to get me like few moments in film.

    I’m really not sure why, and I’m tempted to put it entirely down to the fact that Sean Connery and Michael Caine are simply two of the most charismatic actors ever to grace Hollywood with their presence, and their chemistry with each other is first rate, too.

  121. 121.

    RevRick

    @WaterGirl: When I saw the post, my first thought was Captain Ahab from Moby Dick.*

    *Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder called Moby Dick the missing book of the Bible.

  122. 122.

    Chris

    As far as the heroic side;

    This doesn’t say much about any of the actors’ individual characters, but I do believe there’s a position of Ultimate All-American Hero Actor that was occupied first by Humphrey Bogart, then by John Wayne, then by Harrison Ford.

    Really can’t say who takes up the mantle after Ford, though.

  123. 123.

    wjca

    Unlike the folks who get serious here, I’m going with Blazing Saddles.  The heroes (Bart, the Waco Kid, and, IMHO, Mongo) are silly but fun.  But what makes it for me are the villians: Territorial Attorney General Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Korman), Taggart (Slim Pickens), and Governor William J. Le Petomane (Mel Brooks).  They aren’t super scary.  But they are like real life villains: not real bright and laughable inept.  They remind me of the bozos around Trump.  They can do a lot of damage, but mostly are unable to get out of their own way.

  124. 124.

    Chris

    @kalakal:

    I’m a fan of the over the top James Bond supervillans, my favourites being Goldfinger (Gert Frobe) and OddJob (Harold Sakata)

    James Bond villains are just fun when they’re done right, which is why Goldfinger is the very best of them.  A close and more recent second is Elliot Carver from Tomorrow Never Dies.  Jonathan Pryce is clearly having the time of his life.

    @A Ghost to Most:

    Elmo deserves a suitably Bond-villain-esque ending.

    The world is definitely screaming out for another Bond villain in the tradition of the most over-the-top Roger Moore era villains like Stromberg and Drax.  The insane capitalists who’d risen so far they didn’t even want money anymore, they just wanted to destroy the whole world so they could reign over what was left of it as gods.

    Even without Musk, the fad of lavish post-apocalyptic bunkers for nervous billionaires, who keep asking whether they should use shock collars or something more exotic to make sure their servants don’t turn on them, would be enough to justify this.

  125. 125.

    Chet Murthy

    Villain: How about Tyler Durden ?  In the  spirit of @Chris:’ comment, he just wanted to  burn it all down and rule in the ruins, eh?

  126. 126.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @WaterGirl: I definitely mentioned 2 book series that were also made into movies.
    And mostly one begins by reading “lord of the rings”

    and “a discovery of witches” seems way more accessible in book form.

    #98. But you may have the pie filter on me, so I don’t really exist.

  128. 128.

    Chris

    @lowtechcyclist:

    Nobody’s mentioned Darth Vader yet?

    I love Darth Vader on his own merits (and how could I not, the Star Wars originals will always be my three favorite movies of all time), but I kind of dislike the fact that he started the fad of villains needing a tragic origin story.

    Which eventually came around full circle to poison the Star Wars sequels, IMHO.  Not that there wasn’t plenty wrong with these things.  But pretty much the only way you could make Kylo Ren interesting was to not give him a tragic origin story, and make him a contrast to his grandfather rather than a total rehash.  And that was what the middle movie was at least trying to do, going through the motions of a redemption arc before pulling it out from under you and showing that this isn’t that kind of movie and he isn’t that kind of villain.  But then the next movie hastily backtracks on all of that, to recycle the same plot beats as Vader.

  131. 131.

    Chris

    @Gloria DryGarden:

    Did anyone ever see Jean de Florette? Incredible movie. French w subtitles, at the Indy theaters. No heroes, but the two brothers were definitely villains, in an ordinary way, that was painfully relatable.

    I was warned to have someone to talk to right after, and not to drive right away. And so it was.

    No, but I’ve read the books, originally as a teenager and a few times again since.

    What strikes me in the age of Trump is how much Pagnol really captures that small-town combination of parochial, mean, and apathetic that turns these places into breeding grounds for Trumpism.  The entire story is about a guy working himself to death whose problems could’ve been solved in a moment if anybody in the community had bothered to tell him just six words, but they don’t, because 1) he’s an outsider and you don’t help outsiders, 2) the guy who wants his land is an institution in the local community, and 3) mind your own business.

    Take the same shitty mindset, turn it completely rancid and turbocharge it with a media apparatus that’s screaming an up-to-eleven version of it into everybody’s ears, and oh yeah, that’s the modern red states all the way.  (All over the West, too, not just in America).

    I never would’ve remembered them if you hadn’t brought it up, but oh yeah, those guys are prime villain material, and tragically topical for this day and age.

  134. 134.

    Chet Murthy

    @Gloria DryGarden: I saw both Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources.  My memory is that Daniel Autueil and Yves Montand were the baddies in the first film.  And there’s a twist involving Autueil’s character and Depardieu’s, at the end, but I won’t give it away.  And in Manon des Sources,  Autueil is again the baddie.

    They were -lovely- films.  Just lovely.

  135. 135.

    Chris

    @Chet Murthy:

    Oddly enough, Tyler Durden has somehow gotten both less and more relevant over time.

    On the one hand, his world is completely unrecognizable even from the point of view of a mere ten years later.  Is there anything more First World Problems than a guy whining that his white-collar middle-class well-paid job is just empty and he doesn’t know what deeper meaning to give his life, maaann?  Everybody who entered the workforce after 2008 wants to break that whiny asshole’s nose.

    On the other hand, is there anything more 2024 than “I’m a white guy experiencing a crisis of masculinity and I’m going to satisfy it by celebrating the beauty of violence and wrecking the whole world until it’s forced to acknowledge me?”  That guy is a Trump-voting Proud Boy incel two decades before that was even a thing.

  137. 137.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @Chet Murthy: d’accord! Yes, I saw both, and I Do remember that twist.. it made it all the more chilling. I loved these films. But such personal villainy.

    and of course, naturellement, I am a Gerard depardieu fan.

  138. 138.

    bjacques

    Missy (Michelle Gomez) from Dr. Who! Basically the same hilarious wigged-out character from The Green Wing but with super powers.

  140. 140.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @RevRick: Citing Captain Ahab makes me think of Charles Durning as Doc Hopper. His quest is a lot like Ahab’s, if you can recognize that his white whale is a frog who just wants to go to Hollywood and sing and dance and make millions of people happy.

    (Which makes The Muppet Movie the first movie to tell the story of Moby-Dick from the point of view of the whale. The second, of course, being Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan.)

    Durning obviously knew that his character was supposed to be cartoonishly reprehensible, and he was apparently a good sport about it.

    And while I’m on the topic, how about Tim Curry as Long John Silver in Muppet Treasure Island?

  141. 141.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @Chet Murthy: oh no¡! I seem to have missed this. When you’re a star, you might get away with it… shit.

    he was in Hamlet, with Kenneth Branagh, I think, wasn’t he one of rosecrantz and guildenstern?
    did he get prosecuted? Merde.

    this is like hearing that Neil gaiman was doing stuff, and also when we heard Marion zimmer Bradley- god i loved her books- was doing heinous things to children, some sort of sexual abuse and trafficking. Real life villains.

  144. 144.

    Tandem

    @SFBayAreaGal: You are so right about Kai Winn.  Louise Fletcher made her so chilling and creepy that even all these years later, I still have to force myself to watch the episodes in which she has a large role.  I did enjoy watching her get duped by Gul Dukat towards the end of the series though.

  145. 145.

    Chris

    @Chet Murthy:

    I don’t follow him that closely, but the last I heard of him was in the Hollande administration when he announced he was giving up his French citizenship and becoming Russian.

    Yeah.  He’s one of those guys.

    The rape revelations are all but inevitable when you see him in that light, really.

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