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Top 10 List of Classic Horror Movie Villains

When it comes to the horror genre, victims—and even heroes, for that matter—are a dime a dozen.

Who can remember everyone Jason has killed throughout the Friday the 13th series or how Michael got his comeuppance in, say, Halloween 4? Sure, everyone knows that Van Helsing has defeated the most famous vampire of all in countless versions of the story, but how many recall who dispatched the monster at the end of House of Frankenstein? Who were the people that Godzilla stomped? Who was it that exterminated the giant ants in Them? Did anyone manage to escape the House of 1000 Corpses? It’s hard to remember!

But the villains—oh those amazing villains!—will live on for all of eternity in horror cinema.

While the long history of cinematic horror has offered innumerable villains worthy of celebration, some stand out as more sinister, more dangerous, and simply more memorable than the rest. But rather than pit the masked stalkers of the 1980’s against the evil apparitions of the 1990’s or the most sinister scoundrels of the silent days of cinema, let’s just focus on that magical era of classics that we call the Golden Age of Horror…and see if we can’t count down the Top 10 List of Classic Horror Movie Villains.

Before getting started, however, it is worth noting a handful of exclusions and clarifications.

While certainly among the greatest monsters of the age of horror classics, iconic creatures like Frankenstein’s monster and The Wolf Man do not have a home on this list, primarily because they are as much victim or tragic hero as they are villain (which connotes something more sinister, more evil). In addition, there is no place on this list for unforgettable villains like The Wizard of Oz’s Wicked Witch of the West or Robert Mitchum’s sociopathic killer in The Night of the Hunter, but only because this space is reserved for proper horror films, and they simply do not qualify.

Also worth noting up front is that several of the villains to earn a place on this roster appear in multiple films, often across multiple eras, and with a wide variety of portrayals and characterizations. With that in mind, we will note that generally speaking (and unless otherwise noted) each villain’s inclusion on this list stems from its debut film, though some of the analysis might certainly apply to subsequent sequels, remakes, and/or reboots!

So, without further ado, here is the Top 10 List of Classic Horror Movie Villains!

  1. The Blob

Though it really wouldn’t qualify as a villain of the Golden Age itself (1958 is stretching it a bit, certainly), the eponymous villain of The Blob is such a classic horror villain that it deserves to rank among the greatest of the period, if only for its sheer mindless, unyielding march of destruction. The cinematic forebear of all-time great latter-day horror villains like the shark from Jaws and Halloween’s Michael Meyers, The Blob is simply a killing machine: rolling forward relentlessly destroying and consuming everything and anything in its path. Seems like a good place to start!

  1. Dr. Wells

As it turns out, the maniacal villain of 1932’s highly underrated horror-thriller Doctor X is not, in fact, the Dr. Xavier who lends his name to the film’s title, but another one of his shady and sinister colleagues. When the faculty of a prestigious medical academy come under suspicion for a series of brutal murders, it is left to the institution’s founder, Lionel Atwill’s Dr. X, to discover which one of his staff members is the monstrous “Moon Killer”. Unfortunately, they are all highly suspect. Is it the perverted voyeur Dr. Haines? The angry and volatile Dr. Duke? The one-armed Dr. Wells, whose study of cannibalism raises red flags? Or the moon-obsessed Dr. Rowitz? Ultimately, Dr. Wells’ interest in cannibalism turns out to be much more than academic, and it is revealed that he has invented a type of synthetic flesh that not only allows him to temporarily replace his amputated arm when setting out for a kill, but also turn him into a grotesque and fearsome monster. Dabbling literally or figuratively in perversion, murder, cannibalism, rape, and more, Dr. Wells (played by Preston Foster) may be the least known but most perverse villain on this list.

  1. Dr. Gogol

In 1935’s Mad Love (also released as The Hands of Orloc), Peter Lorre portrays the insane surgeon Dr. Gogol, who falls obsessively—madly, one might say—in love with a beautiful actress starring in the ‘Théâtre des Horreurs’ on the Paris stage. Alas, though, she is married; and, as they say, hijinks ensue. In this case, the extent of the character’s villainy has less to do with the heinous acts he commits, which are decidedly run-of-the-mill, and much more to do with the genius of Lorre’s portrayal. Lorre’s Gogol—with his bulbous shaved head and wildly bulging eyes—is relentlessly scheming, conspiring, and plotting his evil deeds. And, late in the film, when he eventually dons his crazily-overdone disguise—including metallic hands, head and neck brace, hat, glasses, and cloak—rather than looking absolutely ridiculous, Lorre manages to transform himself from a creepy stalker into a terrifying man-monster.

  1. Dr. Phibes

When it comes to classic villainy, The Abominable Dr. Phibes could theoretically qualify for special status based on his visage alone. Disguised under a waxy, rubbery full-face mask that looks remarkably like Vincent Price (and for good reason), when the vengeful doctor emerges from behind the facial prosthetics there is nothing there save a fearsome, rotted skull. His gruesome outer appearance, however, only reflects the twisted, malignant villain inside. Disfigured by a car accident that left him consumed by flames and driven mad by grief and anger when his wife dies on the operating table, Dr. Phibes dedicates himself to single-minded revenge. One by one he hunts down the members of the surgical team that he blames for his beloved’s death, dispatching them brutally and ingeniously in ways that mimic the ten biblical plagues of Egypt.

  1. The Mummy

Buried in his crypt for centuries just waiting to unleash his curse on an unsuspecting world, The Mummy—first introduced to audiences in the 1932 Universal film—is discovered during an archeological expedition in Egypt and inadvertently revived via the reading of a magical scroll. In bringing this villain to life (pun intended), legend Boris Karloff has the advantage of portraying three different incarnations of the character:  the ancient Egyptian priest Imhotep, whose sacrilege triggers the curse; the traditional, bandage-wrapped, slow-creeping monster that emerges from the tomb; and Imhotep’s present-day alter ego: the malicious, conniving Ardath Bey. It is as Ardath Bey that Karloff elevates this role to among the best screen villains of the era, imbuing his mummy-in-disguise (who poses as an expert Egyptologist in order to search for the magical scroll) with all manner of sinister affect. With his dead gaze, parchment-like skin, and menacing monotone, Karloff’s Ardath Bey represents hundreds of years of broiling villainy ready to unleash its fury on the world.

  1. Mr. Hyde

The character of Mr. Hyde is—literally—evil incarnate. The product of experimentation by Dr. Henry Jekyll to isolate and repress the wicked and malicious compulsions that haunt him, Mr. Hyde takes over Jekyll’s body upon consumption of a secret potion and indulges all the impulse of which the good doctor is so ashamed. Mr. Hyde is the dark side of man given free reign, and the character is such a compelling villain that even in the relatively brief Golden Age of Horror, he appears in no less than four separate film versions of the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde story:  the 1920 silent original starring John Barrymore; the Oscar-winning portrayal by Fredric March in 1931; the 1941 version with Spencer Tracy; and an Abbott and Costello Meets… version in 1953 starring Karloff.

  1. Count Orlock

Though a bit out in front of the Golden Age, the ground-breaking 1922 German silent classic Nosferatu—an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula—features certainly one of the most memorable screen villains of all time: the decrepit vampire Count Orlock. Whereas Mr. Hyde is the personification of evil, Count Orlock—who is not a person in any reasonable sense of the word—is an anthropomorphic expression of corruption, decay, venality, and disease. Unlike the more traditional incarnations of Stoker’s legendary vampire, Orlock is as much animal as man, a festering, savage creature of the night that exists only to feed on the living. He is not elegant. He is not sophisticated. And he is not romantic. Count Orlock is simply death itself.

  1. Dr. Richard Vollin

Take Bela Lugosi at the peak of his powers. Mix in a brilliant-but-mad surgeon with a God complex. Add an unhealthy obsession with torture and the writings of Edgar Allan Poe. And what do you get? Dr. Richard Vollin, the deliciously wicked villain of 1935’s outstanding horror film The Raven. In a rare pairing with cinematic rival Karloff, Lugosi sparkles as the insane surgeon with a Poe fixation who inflicts pain and suffering onto others in order to assuage his own inner demons (“I will not be tortured!” he screeches to one victim. “I tear torture out of myself by torturing you!”). Madness—whether organic or from a laboratory bottle—is a common denominator among many of the villains on this list. It is Lugosi’s Dr. Vollin, though, who most masterfully and delightfully embodies the villainous affliction. Though The Raven is not an actual adaptation of the epic poem, the deranged and dangerous Dr. Vollin would certainly be at home in any number of classic Poe tales.

  1. Hjalmar Poelzig

While Lugosi dominated the meeting of horror cinema heavy hitters in 1935, it was Karloff—one year earlier in 1934—who got the better of the pairing in the extremely entertaining The Black Cat, which has even less to do with the Poe tale it’s named after than the aforementioned The Raven does. Karloff plays the mad architect (now there’s one you don’t hear every day!) Hjalmar Poelzig, who traffics in such a diverse array of malevolence– necrophilia, kidnapping, Satanic ritual, torture, mass murder, and more—that he can’t help but rank among the most awesome of villains. Every utterance, every glare, and every towering pose he strikes oozes with menace, treachery, cruelty, and malice. Mr. Hyde may have become the personification of evil through chemistry, but Hjalmar Poelzig got there all on his own.

  1. Dracula

It would not be fitting to suggest that the marriage of Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi and the title character of Dracula in the 1931 Universal classic was one made in heaven—for obvious reasons—but if the perfect match could be forged in hell, this is it. The intersection of Lugosi and Bram Stoker’s legendary vampire resulted in the single greatest screen villain not only of the Golden Age of Horror, but perhaps of all time. Though the production itself is somewhat stagey and slow moving, everything about the title villain in Dracula is absolutely pitch perfect. Sometimes regal and aloof, as when he strolls the streets of London, and sometimes savage and fierce—lunging like an animal at Van Helsing or recoiling in anger from the empty reflection in a mirror—Dracula embodies centuries of terror, murder, violation, and sin. He may be equal parts poetic (“Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make!”) and cool (“I dislike mirrors. Van Helsing will explain.”), but at his core he is a vile, sinister creature of the night. He terrorizes villages full of peasants like a murderous feudal lord. He feeds on the blood of the living in order to extend his own unholy existence. He condemns the luckiest of his victims to a savage, brutal death…and the unluckiest ones to a soulless eternity of repulsive cravings and relentless hunger. The Golden Age of Horror produced a wealth of brilliant villains who have delighted generations of genre fans with their own unique version of iniquity or malice, but none can match the pure, delicious evil of Bela Lugosi’s Dracula.

One comment

  1. Francis Torchio

    Include the creature from ‘The Thing from another world’; the original version not the remake.

     

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