The Halloween season movie focus is justifiably on horror screamfests, tis the season after all. But movies don’t need bloody knives and chainsaws to have terrifying characters. There are plenty of vintage movie villains that are scarier than some guy in a mask every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Presented in no particular order, this highly opinionated list includes some of the most frightening characters ever to appear in non-horror movies.
The Flying Monkeys
Say what you want about the Wicked Witch of the West, there is nothing more fear-inducing than those flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz (1939). They fly down and grab Toto for heaven’s sake. Sweet innocent Toto! They unstuff the Scarecrow. They have no purpose on earth other than to commit dastardly deeds.
One reason they were scary back when The Wizard of Oz was only on TV once a year was that you had 364 days to forget how horrible those damn monkeys are. And there was no way to pause it until you stopped screaming. Your only choice was to bury your face in the couch cushions until they went away. They still provoke a fear response in me and I’m 60 something or other. The rest of the list is in no hierarchical order, but the monkeys have a firm grip on first place.
Norman Bates
Anthony Perkins portrayed Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). No spoilers here. He’s just a nice boy who is very good to his mother. Well, a boy’s best friend IS his mother.
Nurse Ratched
Winning multiple Academy Awards, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) is an unsettling trip into an asylum. Most unsettling is the head nurse, Mildred Ratched, who raises passive-aggressive to a horrifying art form. It’s a more unsettling movie than any slasher film. Unsettling, unsettling, unsettling.
HAL-9000
When you’re on a mission to Jupiter, the last thing you need is for your ship’s AI to start behaving strangely. If you’re already suspicious of AI, you might want to give 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) a pass.
Annie Wilkes
If you sit down to watch a movie based on a Stephen King novel, you know there is going to be a scary movie villain. Even reading a Stephen King book is enough to make you afraid to go to sleep because his characters are so alive, even the undead ones. Does that constitute horror? Sometimes. But Misery (1990) isn’t supernatural and it’s not horror. It’s about accidents, opportunity and obsession, the stuff that you routinely hear on your favorite true crime podcast.
Hannibal Lechter
Hannibal Lecter is an obvious choice for a list of scary movie villains, so obvious he almost wasn’t included. But how can you have a list of bad, bad baddies and not include him? Watch The Silence of the Lambs (1991) to find out why. Then tell me. He scares me so much I’ve never watched it.
Cruella De Vil
She may be animated (or not depending on what movie you are watching) but the Cruella De Vil from Disney’s One Hundred and One Dalmations (1961) is an absolute terror. Her plan for the puppies is a fashion nightmare. Her name should have been a tip-off, but who looks at names? In fairness, it was hard to choose just one scream-inducing villain from the Disney oeuvre because there are some exceptionally foul characters. Ursula the Sea Witch, Jafar, just about every character from Pinocchio…it’s a really long list.
Judge Doom
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) mixed animation with live action in a fasten-your-seatbelts adventure. If this were a list of the sexiest screen sirens, we would be writing about Jessica Rabbit. But it’s not. So we’re calling out the evil Judge Doom. You’ll never say you’re going for a dip again.
There are a lot of movie bad guys. Just about every movie has a villain of some sort. But these are the guys without axes that scared the pants off us in non-horror vintage movies. We know what guys with axes are capable of. We know you aren’t supposed to open the door or go to the basement by yourself and we definitely know the call is coming from inside the house. But these vintage movie villains give you goosebumps because you aren’t quite sure what horrors they might inflict. Inquiring minds want to know…
…who scared the pants off you the first time you saw a film?
Need something to calm your nerves after reading this post? Quick! Read our post of cute fluffy vintage chicks!
