NIGHT NIGHT, NURSE RATCHED, YOU BRILLIANT BADDIE
LOUISE FLETCHER died this week, aged 88. She was never a household name, yet she won a richly-deserved Academy Award for her unforgettable performance as Nurse Ratched, the flint-hearted matron in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (1975). For my money, Mildred Ratched is one of the greatest screen baddies, and Fletcher’s death has inspired me to list my top ten. Here they are in reverse order . . .
10. JACK WILSON, SHANE (1953). Westerns have yielded some of the most memorable screen baddies and I can’t think of a more forbidding one than Jack Palance’s ruthless gunslinger in George Stevens’ masterful Shane.
9. BILL SIKES, OLIVER! (1968). I should think most people, in listing their scariest screen villains, turn to their childhoods. My own kids would pick Voldemort, every time. But I found Oliver Reed’s murderous bully more menacing than almost anyone.
8. HANS LANDA, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (2009). There aren’t many more chilling opening scenes in cinematic history than the one that starts Quentin Tarantino’s revisionist war film, nor more chilling fiends than Christoph Waltz’s urbane SS officer.
7. THE WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST, THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939). In real life, actress Margaret Hamilton was a Sunday school teacher, yet her most famous character cast a terrifying shadow over my own boyhood.
6. SHERE KHAN, THE JUNGLE BOOK (1967). My children also tell me they’d pick Sid from Toy Story. But no animated baddie has ever captured my own imagination like this merciless Bengal tiger, gloriously voiced by George Sanders.
5. HANNIBAL LECTER, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991). Anthony Hopkins has accomplished so much in the cinema that it’s almost unfair for this to be considered his career-defining performance. But has any fictional character ever been more petrifying?
4. NURSE RATCHED, ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST (1975). I re-watched this a few nights ago, in honour of Louise Fletcher. She’s sensational, the more so because she makes vindictive, controlling Mildred seem so human.
3. ANTON CHIGURH, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2007). Javier Bardem was arguably the best Bond villain I’ve ever seen, in Skyfall (2012). But I’m not sure anyone will ever play a deadeyed assassin better than he did in this classic thriller from the Coen brothers.
2. THE CHILD CATCHER, CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG (1968). Robert Helpmann was a great choreographer and brought joy to many, but I bet he scared the wits out of even more, as surely the most sinister, spine-chilling character ever to feature in a children’s film.
1. NORMAN BATES, PSYCHO (1960). For my money the creepiest screen baddie of them all, superbly played by Anthony Perkins in Hitchcock’s masterpiece. Never mind Darth Vader and all the fantasy film villains. This felt like the real thing.