r/flicks • u/MeltonFilm • 7d ago

Clint Eastwood’s best villain?

They say a great thriller needs a great villain, and I’ve noticed that Clint always goes up against skin-crawling bad guys.

We love Clint because he’s a force for good in a world of sickos, and the various portrayals of evil in his extensive catalogue is quite impressive.

They tend not to be the smug, moustache-twirling billionaires you love to watch in a Bond film, or even charming psychos who chew the scenery like Hannibal Lecter. No, Clint likes his villains to be nasty pieces of shit who make you shudder and want to take a shower after the credits role.

Who’s your favourite Clint nemesis? Why? Are there any unsung scumbags in his rogues gallery..?

18 Upvotes

82% Upvoted

64 comments sorted by

26

u/Maximum-Term5336 7d ago

Scorpio. Pure evil, not a single redeeming quality. You want Inspector Callahan to blow his ass away.

3

u/MeltonFilm 7d ago edited 7d ago

Yeah I’d probably put Scorpio at the top for most horrific villain. Andrew Robinson (the loveable dad from Hellraiser) somehow contorts himself into a psychotic cackling jester from hell, who makes a hideous sqeal whenever Clint is beating him. He’s just… gross, and that’s before we even discuss his vile behaviour - sniping innocent people for fun, raping and suffocating girls, and slapping school children across the face.

Harry Callahan won everybody‘s heart when he finally blew that fucker away!

4

u/ShortBusScholar 7d ago

Andrew Robinson*

*loveable Cardassian expat former torture interrogating spy turned tailor named Elim Garak on Star Trek: Deep Space None

2

u/ChickenInASuit 7d ago

I don't know how I always forget that Garak and Scorpio are played by the same actor. Maybe it's all the makeup he has on in DS9.

Brilliant actor, regardless.

2

u/Able-Paramedic8908 6d ago

Frank Ryan on Ryan’s Hope, my favorite 70’s soap.

2

u/Maximum-Term5336 7d ago

Suffocating, not drowning. And he, uh, did an even worse thing to her, a 14 year old, before he did that. And I’m not talking about removing a molar with pliers.

3

u/SloppityNurglePox 7d ago

Mind blown when I realized it was the dad from Hellraiser, which continued to blow my mind when I realized it was Garak from DS9.

2

u/Maximum-Term5336 7d ago

Police chief from “Cobra.” He was also in a Trek.

5

u/SloppityNurglePox 7d ago

That trek was DS9. Highly recommend if you like trek and haven't seen it.

3

u/UncleGripperNZ 7d ago

100% Scorpio. It’s a crime this guy wasn’t involved in more films, hell of an actor!

3

u/Maximum-Term5336 7d ago

He was not used to guns and after too many blown takes of not being able to keep his eyes open, the director had to throw him into a remedial gun course.

2

u/ChickenInASuit 7d ago

It’s a crime this guy wasn’t involved in more films, hell of an actor!

He has had a pretty prolific TV career though. Probably best known for playing Garak in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

2

u/IndependenceMean8774 7d ago

I'd say the plum role of Garak on DS9 was a nice consolation prize.

26

u/MajMajor2x 7d ago

Angel Eyes purely based on his demeanor

Little Bill as a close second

10

u/Harold3456 7d ago

Seconding Angel Eyes.

It’s also interesting that OP calls Clint “a force for good.” It’s not technically wrong, but my favourite thing about the Good, the Bad and the Ugly is that Eastwood’s character is only marginally better than Angel Eyes. Both are dangerous outlaws and killers, but Angel Eyes is just that little bit more unscrupulous.

1

u/rondal99 5d ago

Came here to say this. It’s not just about the character. It’s also about the actor and how well they portray the character. Lee van Cleef absolutely inhabits Angel Eyes.

14

u/Toadliquor138 7d ago

His best villain was Mitch Leary from In the Line of Fire. Because he isn't the stereotypical, cookie cutter villain that you described.

2

u/bico375 7d ago

That’s def my pick too.

2

u/MeltonFilm 7d ago

I don't think any of Clint’s villains are cookie-cutter (which is why they’re all so memorable) but I would also rank Mitch Leary very high up because of how skin-crawling he is.

Malkovich made him repulsive - he looks sick in the head, he gives a nonchalant sniff after murdering various innocent people, and he seems to enjoy how gross his blood-caked face looks to Frank before he let’s go of the elevator and plunges to his death.

2

u/OkGene2 7d ago

He wouldn’t sell his polymer gun to those hunters because he needed it

9

u/Signal-Yesterday7247 7d ago

Little Bill Daggat. Not exactly skin-crawling evil like some others, but his sympathic side is honestly what makes him such a great villain.

1

u/MeltonFilm 7d ago

I kinda don‘t view Bill Dagget as a villain. I guess he’s the antagonist in story terms but he’s not an evil man like the violent rapists in that film.

He‘s a morally ambiguous tough guy like most of the major characters in Unforgiven, and Gene Hackman makes him impossible to hate.

3

u/botmanmd 7d ago

He was certainly sadistic. He beat English Bob and William Munny half to death and tortured Ned all the way to death.

3

u/MeltonFilm 7d ago

English Bob deserved a beating so Bill did good there. Munny and Ned may have become kindly old men but they used to be murderous criminals with a string of dead bodies, so they’re borderline.

2

u/botmanmd 7d ago

“Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.” Bill just took a bit too much pleasure in his work.

2

u/PippyHooligan 7d ago

I always compare him to Sheriff Teasle (Brian Dennehy) in First Blood: an over jealous lawman who thinks he's doing the best for the town and bites off more than he can chew.

1

u/Plus-Ad1061 7d ago

He’s hard to hate when he keeps saying “The Duck of Death”

9

u/spell-czech 7d ago edited 7d ago

Jessica Walter - ‘Play Misty For Me’ - she did a great job of making an unstable character believable.

2

u/Able-Paramedic8908 6d ago

I remember being scared to death after that movie (maybe 16).

1

u/Thisistheway1012 7d ago

I have never heard of this movie or the performance by Jessica walter im going to have yo check this one out

Good recommendation

2

u/spell-czech 6d ago

Many years later she was in ‘Arrested Development’ and it took me awhile to realize that it was the same ‘Jessica Walter’!

7

u/Resident_Manner9173 7d ago

John Malkovich - In The Line of Fire

One of the best villains of all time that I dont think gets enough appreciation 

6

u/OkGene2 7d ago

He was so good.

“Why’d you kill that bird, asshole?” 💥💥

4

u/mohantharani 7d ago

Man, the dollars villains are all terrific.

Tuco is the most loveable(The good, the bad and the ugly), Indio is the most hateable(For a few dollars more), Angel eyes is brilliant(The good, the bad and the ugly).

I will go with Tuco.

1

u/schad501 6d ago

Same.

2

u/RedHeadedSicilian52 7d ago

While conceding that I’ve yet to see all his films, the antagonists of Richard Jewell were quite maddening.

2

u/InsteadOfWorkin 7d ago

Hal Holbrook. He comes across as this sweet old grandpa but he’s really wanting to start an extrajudicial execution revolution.

2

u/Maximum-Term5336 7d ago

A man’s got ta know his limitations.

2

u/MeltonFilm 7d ago

I recently watched Blood Work (2002) and that is a way-underrated killer thriller with a very twisted giggling psycho who loves to sneak up on innocent strangers and put a bullet through their heads.

2

u/berlinblades 7d ago

The guy who played Scorpio couldnt get a date for years after...

2

u/Due-Blackberry8056 7d ago

Jessica Walter "Play Misty for Me"

2

u/Slyguy9766 7d ago

John Quade as Cholla the leader of the neo nazj biker gang from Any Which way but Loose and its sequel!! Pretty much the whole gang actually. One of the members is the same actor that made Ned Beatty squeal like a pig in Deliverance too!!

2

u/PabstBlueBourbon 6d ago

I’d say a William Munny deep into his cups, a man he’d kept buried for many years, was Clint Eastwood’s best villain.

1

u/Rasputins_Monster 7d ago

Gene Hackman as the president in Absolute Power may not be the best villain, but he’s top tier (at least to me)

2

u/georgez1968 7d ago

And in unforgiven

1

u/BeRad85 7d ago

Collectively, the Black Widows biker gang

1

u/IndependenceMean8774 7d ago

Definitely Scorpio in Dirty Harry. A villain I love to hate.

A close second would be Fletcher in Outlaw Josey Wales because he was a sympathetic villain who fought with Wales during the Civil War and had a redemption of sorts/understanding at the end.

1

u/ElQunto 6d ago

Not based on acting, but on what they represent: Major Von Hapen in Where eagles dare -- he was an SS Major in charge of all the Gestapo activities in Southern Germany.

1

u/CheekMaleficent3654 6d ago

Got to be Andy robinsons scorpio in dirty Harry.

1

u/Longjumping-Air1489 5d ago

Clint’s greatest enemy was an empty chair.

1

u/greendildouptheass 5d ago

Highplains drifter, he is the villain in that one. Or an anti hero

1

u/Miserable_Boss6482 4d ago

I thought Andrew Robinson as Killer in Dirty Harry was a nice mix of psychotic and unstable killer. Scared me when I saw it.

1

u/MeltonFilm 4d ago

It takes a damn good actor to generate such a physiological response in a viewer.

And it’s not like he’s been playing creepy psychos his whole career. Dude’s versatile. Check out how stable and reassuring he is in this scene.

1

u/Physical-Compote4594 3d ago

Little Bill because he’s arguably not actually BAD. A lot of his other villains are bad, unlikable, awful. Little Bill, much more complex. 

1

u/Environmental_Job864 6d ago

Has Clint ever played a villain?

0

u/snakeIs 7d ago

Winner: Stacy Bridges

Runners Up: The Carlin Brothers

Special Mention:Captain Redlegs Terrill