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Hitchcock's Ten Greatest Villains -- PART ONE

posted 4 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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"The better the villain," Hitchcock said to Truffaut, "the better the movie."

A number of movies NOT made by Hitchcock have had some great villains -- Hannibal Lecter, Annie Wilkes, Harry Roat, Jr come to mind (you could look them up), and you've got those legends like Dracula, Frankenstein...Darth Vader and The Joker(ESPECIALLY these days, The Joker) on the list, too.

I daresay that Hitchocck only put one villain on that list who was as famous as The Joker or Hannibal the Cannibal. But I can name at least nine others(for a list of ten) who certainly made the most of their mid-century movies in the 20th Century and stand as the reasons why so many Hitchocck movies were so good.

I can/will duplicate this list at the Hitchcock board, but since(SPOILER ALERT) Norman Bates is at the top, it should be here too.

Also, to properly make my point, I won't work up TO Norman...I'll start with Norman and work DOWN.

For my "top five Hitchcock villains include Norman, or lead to him and away from him in some ways.

The "bottom five" of the Top Ten are more arbitrary and less connected to Norman. But interesting on their own terms.

So here goes:

NUMBER ONE: Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates/Mrs. Bates in Psycho, 1960.

Norman is as famous as Dracula before him and Hannibal Lecter after him -- and directly related both to The Wolf Man(or werewolves in general) and Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in his personality split of nice and murderous. (But IS it a split, really?)

Norman Bates is a "trick" villain, however: For most of the running time of Psycho, he is NOT the killer(to us.) He is a sympathetic accomplice to his mother's murders, and hence clearly OF "the bad guys," but not entirely(to us)...a bad guy. Famously cast with handsome young (but "odd") heartthrob (and Oscar nominee) Anthony Perkins, Norman was famously portrayed as a sweet, nervous, lonely young man whose best friend is his mother. Less famously, Norman gets nastier and nastier as the story goes along -- the true monster within is slowly hinted at, and then fully revealed in the cell at the end. Perkins work -- particularly in his final expressions in the cell at the end -- earn him a top slot on the "snubbed Best Actor nominations" list -- and on the "snubbed Best Actor wins list."

But wait there's more: Norman may not seem the killer for most of Psycho's running time, but MRS BATES sure is. Norman Bates is a "twofer" as movie villains go, because long before Michael Myers wore his William Shatner mask and long before Jason wore his hockey mask and long before the "Scream" killer(s) wore their art scream mask...there was Mrs. Bates, she of the shadowy face and obscene strength and truly scary tendency to stay off screen only until she emerged to kill people most bloodily with a big knife.

Mrs. Bates the Monster Mother preceded by decades the more constantly seen Myers and Jason...and in some ways, that works better for the suspense and terror in Psycho. For over a half hour after she kills Marion in the shower, Mrs. Bates is never seen(except once in a window by Arbogast) and hovers over the proceedings as we fear when next we will see her "in action." When she FINALLY emerges(so fast, so vicious, so robotic) to attack Arbogast on the stairs, we sceam hard because she is STILL just as bad as we feared her to be. Then, a long wait begins again as Lila explores the house and Mrs. B makes her fruit cellar move.

Yes, with Norman Bates we get "two, two, two villains in one": a monster to haunt our nightmares(Mrs. Bates in killing mode) and a man to haunt our lives(the sweet inscrutable Norman.)

NUMBER TWO: Robert Walker, as Bruno Anthony, in Strangers on a Train(1951.)

On a "standard" list of great Hitchcock villains, Walker as Bruno should be Number One -- because he clearly IS the villain of his film from practically our first glimpse of him -- his SHOES. They are flashy, overdone -- in constrast to the hero's most no-nonsense shoes. The shoes are on feet that are moving with purpose into a train station, onto a train and to a "brief bumping"(instigated by the hero, not the villain) and we're off! Barely two minutes into the film, and our villain is HERE. (It takes 30 minutes to get Norman into Psycho, yet another reason Bruno should be Number One.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

9 years before Hitchocck famously cast "sweet nice handsome boyish Anthony Perkins" against type as a psychopath, he did pretty much the same thing with Robert Walker, who, in the forties, had been very much the "boy star" (often in military romances like The Clock with Judy Garland.) But there was a darkness to Walker that also attracted Hitchcock to him: he was a young man with very bad emotional problems -- actress Jennifer Jones had dumped him for Hitch's old boss David Selznick; there had been drinking, a second failed marriage (to the daughter of John Ford!) and a brief institutionalization. Walker came to Strangers on a Train as "damaged goods" and some of this manifests in his performance as Bruno -- or at least our PERCEPTION of Bruno. Unlike Norman, Bruno is a villain you HATE , and you want him to get his comeuppance -- hoping for death for him. But at heart you can see Bruno as an outsider, unable to fit in despite his looks and his parents wealth. He's a bit of a loser as well as being a..maniac.

And a maniac is what Bruno is. Guy keeps calling him this : "You MANIAC!" (After Bruno reveals that he strangled Guy's estranged slut of a wife "to clear the decks" for a better marriage.) Guy more "nicely" tries to convince Bruno "You're sick...you need help," but Bruno doesn't respond, ever, to THAT. (We can expect that neither would Norman nor the other great Hitchcock psychos.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Much has been made of the censor-defying gayness of Walker's Bruno -- and the veiled gay courtship of Bruno and Guy(which Guy is having none of , even if its there.) The facts are openly out that in real life, Walker(Bruno) was straight, and Farley Granger(Guy) was gay -- but they were evidently "flipping personas" for the film in another little Hitchcock trick.

To which I say, yes, SOME of what Walker does as Bruno looks and sounds "stage gay"(for the 50s), but he is also a fairly macho character(thrown out of college for driving fast and drinking hard; and he's a cool smoker)...and when he sets out to seduce Guy's slutty wife at the fairgrounds. she goes for him as "a real man" compared to the mere boys she is out on a date with. There is one long shot, from the wife's POV, of Walker standing with his legs apart which to me seems borderline porno for 1951, and "all man." (Eh..already the problems in discussing gay characters against straight stereotypes. I'm on shaky ground here, but I thnk this is the 1951 presentation of the situation.)

Rather than gay or straight, Bruno comes off as "otherworldly" -- a madman in a world of his own, with plots of his own, and no conscience -- or DOES he have one? Unlike the serial killer maniacs in other Hitchcock pictures, we get the feeling that Bruno's killing of Miriam the slutty wife just might be his FIRST one. And it haunts him for the rest of the movie --he walks a blind man acorss the street, and he ALWAYS sees Miriam in the face with eyeglasses of Pat Hitchcock.

Bruno not only murders Miriam, he torments Guy's "next wife" (Ruth Roman as the Senator's daughter) with his glee at framing Guy for the murder. You HATE him. And his last act before dying at the end is to try -- one last time -- to frame Guy. Bruno leaves this world with a murderer's lie on his lips. You wonder if there is a hell.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Whereas Anthony Perkins played Norman Bates at age 27 and spent decades either exploiting or trying to live the role down, Robert Walker pretty much died young with Bruno as his epitath. He didn't even finish his next film -- My Son John -- before drying at 33(so YOUNG!) because studio doctors gave him a drug injection while he was drunk (homicide? Never ruled such.) My Son John was released with footage of Walker's death scene editied into it to kill him off in the second film.

To the good, I have found 1951 interviews with Walker that found him KNOWING how great he had been as Bruno(the movie was Hitchocck's biggest hit in years) , knowing that he had been Hitchcock's first choice for Bruno, and knowing that he had a new career path as a villain when he wanted it.

And this: Walker died young, but Jennifer Jones gave him a son -- Robert Walker Jr. -- who had a minor movie career himself(he played Ensign Pulver in a sequel to Mr. Roberts and did a John Wayne movie) and was the EXACT DUPLICATE of his famous father. Robert Walker Jr. lived into his 70s I believe, and gives an interview on the Strangers on a Train" DVD where you can see exactly what his father would have looked like ...in his 50s. A gift.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

NUMBER THREE: James Mason, as Phillip Vandamm, in North by Northwest (1959)

The first "non-psycho" on the list and the only non-psycho of the Top Five.

Which is another way of saying that four of Hitchcock greatest villains WERE psychos -- carefully spaced out once a decade to allow Hitchcock to explore psychopathy with the ever-relaxing censorship of each successive decade(the 40s, the 50's, the 60s, the 70s.)

That Mason's spymaster -- and thus part of Hitchcock's large collection of spy thrillers -- makes the top five is reflective of a number of things:

ONE: Just as North by Northwest is the clear forerunner to Bond and Indy and Die Hard and The Matrix, Vandamm and his henchmen are clear forerunners of the "villainy template" for all of those successors. One Boss Man(usually, but not always elegant -- the Bond spymasters were rather crude), One Main Advisor(Leonard), One Brutal Killer(Valerian the Knifeman, paired for awhile with Licht before the latter dies in the crop duster.)

Hitchcock said that he (and scenarist Ernest Lehman) "subdivided" Vandamm's villainy so that all he had to do was "give a nod"(which he does at the Glen Cove library) and his henchmen would do the dirty work. This allows Vandamm(and Mason) to remain witty and erudite for the body of the film(right up to his last funny line -- "Not very sporting, using real bullets" and a justifiable love interest for Eve Kendall versus Grant's Roger Thornhill(not the case, with, say, the obese Goldfinger in that Bond movie.

TWO: Though I suppose this made Vandamm rather 'easy to write," he always has the most eloquent speeches in the film, such as "What makes you think that my affection for Miss Kendall would have deteriorated to the point that I would trade her in for a little piece of mind?" or "With your expert play acting, you make this very room a theater," or "What little drama are we here for today?"(and he's RIGHT -- there is one: Roger's shooting.)

CONT

[–] Otter (24464) 4 years ago

Norman isn't a villain, he's an anti-hero!

Seriously, a villain is someone who opposes a hero character, in a film made about a hero. There is no hero in "Psycho", it's just about Norman and his life and his monstrosity, and the odd sympathy we feel for him even after he's brought to what may or may not be justice. It's all about Norman.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Hello, Otter...

I've been toying with this list for some time, and one thing that lists are for is: argument.

It will likely take me some days -- in between other posts -- to finish it, so we will see where it goes. Then I will move a post on each villain to his/her board.

But uh oh...my FIRST choice...my "Number One" gets immediate static.

And that's OK by me.

I'll likely circle around to this as time goes on, but I certainly think that there is villainy in what happens to both Marion Crane and Arbogast. We can say that it is a sad issue of circumstance how Norman comes to this point -- but he -- as Mother or not -- is a truly savage killer.

Plus -- and this may be for another time -- it seems pretty clear that Norman's "bad ways" manifested in childhood. HE killed his mother and her boyfriend.

That said, Norman's anti-heroic and likeable qualities make Psycho major(he's far more sympathetic than the other Hitchcock villains on this list) and carried the sequels...I can see both sides of this. Literally.

But speaking of sides, I think it was New York Times critic Bosley Crowther who said that the key to the terror of Psycho was the "female demon" that is Mrs. Bates. SHE'S scarier than hell and never sympathetic. Well, maybe at the end.

[–] Otter (24464) 4 years ago

Ecarl, you're a doll and I love your insignts, but I can't promise to devote "days" to this issue.

Yes, Norman is a monster, a psychotic serial killer, a danger to society and anyone who triggers him or who gets in his way. I was speaking purely in filmic terms, and in filmmic terms, Norman is best described as an "anti-hero" rather than a villain, because there's no hero. The whole film is about Norman and the dark depths of his psyche, and the best term we currently have for a main character like Norman or Patrick Bateman is "anti-hero".

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Ecarl, you're a doll and I love your insignts, but I can't promise to devote "days" to this issue.

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Ha...no one should. I intend the "post per villain" to get shorter as it goes along. And I'm done for the day on this thread. There is a method to my madness. I'll lift the individual posts and move them to their boards but...all roads lead TO Norman...and one leads AWAY from Norman(Rusk, with maybe a little of Arthur Adamson thrown in.)

Anyway, I'm putting this stuff up and...it gets read or it doesn't...or maybe it gets read over days.

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Yes, Norman is a monster, a psychotic serial killer, a danger to society and anyone who triggers him or who gets in his way.

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Well, there you go..

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I was speaking purely in filmic terms, and in filmmic terms, Norman is best described as an "anti-hero" rather than a villain, because there's no hero.

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I think this is a very good insight on why Psycho works so well. So many other villains...you want them to fail, you want them to go to prison...often you want them to DIE. But something about Norman kept him interesting and sympathetic.

None other than Anthony Perkins son Osgood, noted that his dad got cast as some really bad bad guys in later years(see: fflokes) and that "this totally misunderstood his work as Norman Bates."

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The whole film is about Norman and the dark depths of his psyche,

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This is true. Despite her "long back story," Marion Crane is most important when she interacts with Norman, and then Norman becomes the star(Marion's dead) and is "viewed" through the prism of Arbogast, Lila, Sam..and the psychiatrist(and US, in the cell.)

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and the best term we currently have for a main character like Norman or Patrick Bateman is "anti-hero".

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I can't recall: does Patrick Bateman actually KILL anybody? Or is it all in his head. (SPOILER WARNING invited.)

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[–] Otter (24464) 4 years ago

Whether what we see in "American Psycho" is reality or not, Bateman is despicable in every way a human being can be, and is in every frame of the movie. He's a protagonist who is not a hero, and I do wish we had a better term for that than "anti-hero", which sounds like a Bogart character who's redeemed in the last act.

Anyway, am going out.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Good analysis...and have a good time!

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

And back to Vandamm(Number Three)

Reasons his villainy is great, continued:

THREE: James Mason ended up being the most major movie star ever to play a Hitchcock "spy villain." Paul Lucas in The Lady Vanishes might come close, and Herbert Marshall was a very sympathetic Nazi sympathizer in Foreign Correspondent. Claude Rains in Notorious had roughly the same part to play as Mason...but he was never going to be REAL romantic competition to Cary Grant(even marrying Ingrid.) But James Mason WAS competition to Cary Grant, and we end up with a "matched male pair" more middle-aged than Guy and Bruno but just as "doubled." Two middle aged, lightly gray haired, handsome, elegant men -- and both with incredible "movie star voices to die for." Just listening to Grant and Mason trade lines in NXNW is part of its great entertainment value. And when the men sit across from each other in the Rushmore cafeteria..you can SEE the doubling.

FOUR: Sometimes, Mason gets one-liners that BEST Grant's. That's practically unheard of(or WAS: see Hans Gruber in Die Hard.)

Examples:

Grant; I suppose the only role that will satisfy you is when I play dead.
Mason: Your very next role. You'll be most convincing, i assure you.

(This in lieu of "You're DEAD Kaplan! You hear me? DEAD!)

Grant: Suppose I told you that I know the latitude and longitude of your meeting, and your ultimate destination?
Mason: I don't suppose you'd care to carry my bags, would you?

And so it goes for the length of NXNW. By films end, all three of Vandamm's henchmen are dead(one in a crop duster; two at Rushmore) but he lives wittily on. You almost wish there was a sequel...

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Vandamm, cont:

PS. Closest in my estimation to Mason's vandamm as a great Hitchcock spymaster -- though Hitchcock himself did not like the actor -- was Otto Kruger as Tobin in Saboteur. Kruger's evil toothy smile makes him a dead ringer for Mrs. Bates in the fruit cellar and he plays his pro-Nazi American rich man as ...sympathetic to the BUSINESS cause of Nazism. Tobin gets all the great lines and even predicts his own fate: he's gonna hide out in the Caribbean until the war's over and he can see if his side won.(It didn't.)

PPS. NXNW and Vandamm have a direct connection to Psycho. Psycho immediately follows NXNW in the Hitchcock canon, and together the two big hits set the course for all thrillers, ever after. They are perfection personified and "the perfect templates" for action thrillers and horror thrillers.

Not to mention..Vandamm and his men are rather psychos themselves. The only way they solve problems are...kill them(the agents who came before Kaplan; the UN diplomat) and all they want to do for the whole movie is KILL Cary Grant. Psychos. Vandamm is the head psycho -- never believing a word that Roger says.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

FOUR: Barry Foster as Bob Rusk, in Frenzy (1972.)

In the Hitchcock literature, Bob Rusk isn't much mentioned as one of the great Hitchcock villains, but I think he very much is, and for a few specific reasons.

First of all, however devalued Frenzy is today, in 1972 with critics at least, it was a BIG deal, not only a comeback for Hitchcock, but a refutation of the idea that he was too senile(after The Birds/Marnie/Torn Curtain/Topaz) to ever make a good movie again, let alone a great one. This penultimate Hitchcock hit set the old man up as "relevant and with it" right on through Family Plot to his death.

And one of the reasons that Frenzy was such a big hit is that it had a GREAT villain. Hitchcock's rule in full force: "The better the villain, the better the picture." Consider: The Birds were villains, but also just birds. Marnie HAD no villain(the mother was more pathetic than evil.) After Gromek dies, the remaining Commies in Torn Curtain are faceless bureaucrats, with no real leader. And Topaz rather keeps losing its villains along the way, as Castro lieutenant Rico Parra gives way to some scared French traitors. (In 1969, Castroites were not even villains, to some.)

Against all that, Bob Rusk was, truly and really, a VILLAIN who committed the most atrocious murder in Hitchcock(a rape murder of a woman shown, many more referenced) and yet.in the classic Hitchcock tradition -- was quite the pleasant cheery guy the rest of the time.

Rusk is the most dangerous of the Hitchcock psychos because..he's everybody's friend in Covent Garden. ("Bob's Your Uncle.") Uncle Charlie was brooding and angry a lot of the time; Bruno Anthony aggravated people with his nutty ideas as soon as they met him; Norman Bates was a shy and lonely young recluse who didn't participate in society. But Rusk -- EVERYBODY's pal (Blaney's, the police, fellow pub drinkers) and so his victims never see him coming.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Pitted against the earlier Hitchcock psychos -- Uncle Charlie, Bruno, and Norman -- Rusk is also different in this specific way: he's Hitchcock's first "Technicolor Psycho." And Hitchcock exploits that. Rusk has a head full of curly bright "red butterscotch blonde hair" -- it stands out in any shot Foster has. And after we learn that Rusk IS the Necktie Strangler, Hitchcock puts the man in a purple shirt and BRIGHT purple tie -- he is broadcasting his guilt and his weapon at the same time. (For the earlier rape-strangling of Brenda, Rusk wears a tan leather jacket and Scottish patterned Tartan tie that matches his red/blond hair.)

(The "wobbler" of the Rope killers as psychos might make them the first Techniclor Hitchcock psychos, but I'm still not sure that they are.)

And of course, Rusk differs from the other three great Hitchcock psychos because they are American...and he is British, and thus very much a direct tie to Hitchocck's roots and early career. (Not to mention: his Cockney charm -- remember, Hitchcock first offered Rusk to Michael Caine.)

Each Hitchcock psycho was shown to be killing in more graphic ways than the psycho in the decade before. We never see Uncle Charlie kill anybody(the forties.) Bruno Anthony commits one strangling and it IS fairly brutal for its time, though quickly enveloped in a "trick" shot that blurs the killing(the fallen eyeglasses distort the killing.) Norman Bates (or Mrs. Bates) committed the two most horrific murders(bloody knife murders) in screen history to date(the sixties.) But only Rusk with Frenzy had the "benefit" of an R rating, so Hitchcock added rape to Rusk's modus operandi...and lost some thriller fans with the graphicness, no doubt.

One can shuffle the Hitchcock psycho deck any way you wish(or reject Norman as a villain), but Rusk rises in my estimation among both Hitchcock villains and Hitchcock psychos. He is certainly in a great Hitchcock film -- perhaps the last one.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

NUMBER FIVE: Joseph Cotton as Uncle Charlie in Shadow of a Doubt(1943)

(NOTE: My PC always autocorrects Joseph Cotten's last name and gives it the wrong spelling -- well I guess if I don't write Joseph Cotten's....)

Critic Richard Schickel wrote that Joseph Cotton was "Hitchcock's first full scale psychopath," and I think that's fair enough. There is a psycho roaming The Lodger, but he's not much of a character as I recall. And which of the 1930's British villains MIGHT be a psycho(they are mainly spies), I dunno (Peter Lorre, maybe?)

So..Schickel's right. The once-a-decade line of Hitchcock psychos begins with Joseph Cotton. Cotton got the role of Uncle Charlie only after William Powell had to turn it down(he wanted to do it, but the studio wouldn't loan him out), so we got a younger, more virile man in the part, if a less entertaining one. Upon hiring him, Hitchcock took Cotteon (hah) to Rodeo Drive to look at men walking around and asked Cotteon "which of those might be a psychopath?" Cotteon couldn't tell, of course, and that was the point, of course.

Yet for all of that "prep," Cotton as Uncle Charlie is a pretty cold fish, you ask me. And a mean one, from the get go. YOUNG Charlie may idolize his suave, charming ways, and his sister(Young Charlie's mother) is practically in incestuous love with her brother. But to everyone else, Charlie is pretty much a cold, condescending bully. He lords over the rather ineffectual men of Shadow of a Doubt (Young Charlie's middle aged dad; Herbie Hawkins next door) and tells Young Charlie: "You're the head of this household."

This being a 1943 film -- alas? -- the script isn't quite sophisticated enough about Uncle Charlie. His murder attempts on Young Charlie are pretty blatant, and his attempts to cover them up are...almost stupid( but then he is fooling foolish people.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Where Cotteon, Charlie, and the script shine are in his two great raging speeches(one of which inspired the "private traps" speech in Psycho):

ONE: His speech at the family dinner table about all the old rich widows he has met in his world travels. "Their husbands kill themselves working so hard for the money," he notes, and their "silly worthless widows" can be found "eating the money, drinking the money, losing the money at cards." Charlie isn't quite the woman-hater that Norman and Rusk will be(and maybe Bruno, too), he hates OLD WIDOWS. And -- as often happens in Hitchcock -- I'll bet some hard working men in 1943 saw this scene and AGREED with it(just not to the point of murder.)

TWO: His truly raging speech in the "Til Two" bar where he reveals his raging madness completely to Young Charlie: "The world is a hell..what does it matter what happens in it?" (That's the tie to Norman's speech later about "private traps" -- Psycho screenwriter Joe Stefano viewed SOAD and other Hitchcocks to prepare Psycho's script.)

Uncle Charlie gets nastier: "Do you know the world is a sty?" "Do you know that if you tore the front off of houses, you'd find swine?" When they remade SOAD as a Hallmark Hall of Fame film in the 90's, they removed some of this dialogue...as if it were profanity. Too much for Hallmark.

Verus Bruno, Norman, and Rusk...Uncle Charlie is the only psycho to get a REASON for it. An accident as a boy, cracked his skull sent him in to a coma ...and returned him to life a "changed boy"(always running around) and a dangerous man(raging, arrogant, murderous.) SOAD makes the sad point that brain damage can make a murderer. Which is true.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Joseph Cotton was young when he played Charlie...but he wasn't boyish like Robert Walker and Anthony Perkins to come. Indeed, Cotton would rather prematurely age into a face of wrinkles and sagging eyelids in later years. Still, in SOAD audiences got Cotton about as handsome as he'd ever be, which allowed him to "seduce" both Young Charlie(who shows her uncle off to her teenage girlfriends as if he were her LOVER) and his sister(who is so, so SAD at the prospect of Uncle Charlie leaving at the end...truly the kind of "in depth" emotion that Hitchcock specialilzed in -- conflicted us.)

Joseph Cotton was a better known star than Barry Foster(Cotton had Citizen Kane behind him and The Third Man ahead of him when he made SOAD), but I still "shade" Foster's Bob Rusk one level higher on the list. Foster is in a more sophisticated and modern movie and he's the only British psycho , which allows for some Cockney charm. And -- for better and maybe for worse -- unlike as with Charlie, we SEE Rusk strangle a victim -- he's more terrifying.

Still, for those who like beginnings more than endings..perhaps Joseph Cotton...and Uncle Charlie...launching the Hitchcock psychos...should be higher up the list.

I will note that -- without fail , and whether they have top billing or not (only Perkins does), the four Hitchcock psychos "run their movies." Norman Bates is more interesting than Sam Loomis. Bruno Anthony is more interesting than Guy Haines. Bob Rusk is more interesting than Richard Blaney. Uncle Charlie is more interesting than Young Charlie...but I'll admit that first-billed Teresa Wright gives the psycho a run for the money. We CARE about her.

So that's my top five, and they are pretty inviolate. The four great Hitchcock psychos(one a decade to the end of Hitchcock's career) -- and the Hitchcock spymaster who beat all of his forbears and predicted all of his successors(Hans Gruber, most of all.)

The remaining five slots are a trickier bit of business. And five won't be enough...

CONT.

[–] christomacin (4655) 4 years ago

Charles Tobin (Otto Kruger). This is my favorite Hitchcock villain - from Saboteur (1942). This scene is particularly relevant today (I'll say no more):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rtlkILRmEQ&ab_channel=Molarkie
Brilliantly written scene

And the ranch scene: "No, those are not for Suzie, those are for the gentleman." LOL, what a creepy, slimy bastard. That scene is also very (darkly) funny. And he GETS AWAY at the end, doesn't he?

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Charles Tobin (Otto Kruger). This is my favorite Hitchcock villain - from Saboteur (1942)

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He's way up there for me...not(at this time) on my top ten, but certainly he paves the way for Vandamm.

The thing of it is this: in the forties, Hitchcock knew that he could NAME his villains as Nazis , or as in Saboteur, American Nazi sympathizers. In their own way, Hitchcock's movies were anti-Nazi propaganda for the war effort.

By the time Hitchcock made NXNW, the Communist witch hunts in Hollywood(and the finding of REAL Communists in the US government) made naming the Soviets as the bad guys a "no no." So they aren't named in The Man Who Knew Too Much '56, and they aren't named as such in NXNW. Only by the time he made Torn Curtain was Hitchcock "free" to criticize Communist governments. And it didn't really "take."

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. This scene is particularly relevant today (I'll say no more):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rtlkILRmEQ&ab_channel=Molarkie
Brilliantly written scene

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Its my favorite scene in the movie, other than the Statue of Liberty climax. Here is Tobin -- powerfully shot with the Eagle above him -- all better lines and more power than "average Joe" Bob Cummings (oh to have had Gary Cooper or Henry Fonda in that role, as Hitchcock wanted.)

Somewhat ironically, political discussions that were par for the course in the 30s and 40s are verboten today.

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And the ranch scene: "No, those are not for Suzie, those are for the gentleman." LOL, what a creepy, slimy bastard. That scene is also very (darkly) funny.

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The presence of the little girl with "Grandpa" as his wide toothy grin starts to reveal evil is another great Hitchcock moment.

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And he GETS AWAY at the end, doesn't he?

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I believe so. He says he's taking off for the Caribbean and we never see him picked up. Rather like the villain in Vertigo.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Trivia: For all my talk of Psycho, I recall that Saboteur was a pretty big deal on 60's TV before the movies from Rear Window and after GOT to TV. I guess with Psycho and The Birds as recent big hits in the theaters but not on TV, for a local channel to have a copy of Saboteur merited a full-page ad in TV Guide(it did) and a big build-up. I remember waiting a week to see Saboteur on my local late show.

[–] christomacin (4655) 4 years ago

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

People who grew up with only the three networks or even very early (and limited) cable and HBO have a very different relationship with films from the past than later generations did (and do). These days you can watch anything on Netflix or YouTube but the COMMUNAL consumption of films of the past isn't the same. It's just random people watching these films on their own time these days.

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Yep. Its what I'm trying to give an "oral history" on with my recollections of "the Saturday Night that Psycho was on" in Los Angeles. (The first time at least -- everybody talked about it in my universe.)

Elsewhere I've quoted Tim Burton -- an LA resident from childhood -- who felt there was an energy in the air as all of Los Angeles watched the same Saturday night horror movie at the same time(well, maybe youths only.)

A different take: perhaps moreso than movies(modernly) sporting events are the communal thing. I was in San Francisco a few years back at night on a residential block of apartments. And in a "Rear Window" moment as I walked down the block, with all the curtains open, I saw TV set after TV set after TV set all set to the SAME Warriors basketball game. I mean, for the whole BLOCK. NOBODY was watching anything else.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Granted, watching films on TV isn't as good as seeing them with an audience in the theater.

---

Truly so. Ironically, my two favorite movies are Psycho and North by Northwest, and the first time I saw each of those was on TV - but eventually I saw them with full house revival crowds and "got the full effect." (Whereas with Psycho there was a lot of screaming, with NXNW there was a lot of laughing -- "with, not AT" -- and a lot of cheers and applause throughout the climax and all the way to the end. People LOVED the North by Northwest experience.

But those two aside, it was seeing Wait Until Dark, The Wild Bunch, MASH, Frenzy, The Godfather, Jaws, Star Wars, Raiders, ET..."and more" at the THEATER that I will always remember.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

There was more anticipation and build up (and dare I say mystique) about older films back then. It seems people had a bit more knowledge (only sketchy perhaps, but knowledge nonetheless) of what went on in the past musically and cinematically. Is it just my imagination?

--

I don't think so. As I've mentioned elsewhere, "back in the day" you didn't get a movie on TV within MONTHS of its original release...it took YEARS. So you got a lot of movies from "years ago" (30s and 40's movies on 60's TV) and you learned about "the old movies and the old time stars."

Modernly, cable and streaming flood with movies from the past five years and "the past is gone." Its sad to watch, but if that's how society is going to be going forward...oh well.

I will here get a little "self preservational" and note that for all the excitements of "Psycho" and other horror movies "on Saturday night TV," in my own personal life, came the 70's , high school and college, I was out on Friday and Saturday nights. Those were party nights. Parties at apartments, houses...dorms. I watched the first years of Saturday Night Live while OUT...taking a break to watch SNL with groups in dorm rec rooms or pizza parlor bars...SNL STARTED the night, which just kept going. Nowadays I'm asleep by then, I just tape it for watching the next day.

I recall keeping up with the movies in those years was done by going mainly to matinees(so the night was free for partying), or on weeknights, or sometimes as "date night" movies on Friday or Saturday nights.

And eventually I settled down, didn't go out so much...went back to watching TV or more to the point...movies on TV.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Back to the greatest Hitchcock villains:

NUMBER SIX: The birds, as the birds, in The Birds (1963)

Though I see North by Northwest and Psycho as the "matched pair of Hitchcock's best" -- I'm pretty sure that the matched pair of Psycho and The Birds are Hitchcocks two most famous movies today. They are his two horror movies(Frenzy doesn't quite count) and the ones that carried forth into the genres of today. Not to mention, I think that TV station anchors are STILL introducing reports of real-life bird attacks with "...in a scene out of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds..."

So if The Birds is THAT famous, those birds have to be part of it. Elsewhere I suggest that Bob Rusk in Frenzy was the best Hitchcock villain chronologically after Norman Bates because(among other reasons) "birds are just birds," but I was being disingenuous. Versus a fascinating psychopath, "birds ARE just birds" but the birds in The Birds aren't just birds. They are PSYCHO birds!

New Yorker critic Dwight MacDonald hated Psycho for, among other reasons, his contention that "a psychopath has no human passion or motives...she just happened to stop at a motel run by a homicidal maniac, could happen to anybody." (Yeah, SO?) MacDonald hated The Birds noting, "birds are even more irrational than psychopaths!" (Yeah, SO?)

One could say that the birds in The Birds are "good" in that they are revenge for humans hunting, cooking and eating them, or perhaps or environmentally sound("Mother nature rebels against man") or perhaps God's punishment against man for its complacency(Hitchcock's own word.) Or against man's sins in general

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

But in the final analysis, The Birds is a THRILLER, and thrillers need villains. And the birds here are IT. These are birds that peck a man's eyes out, leaving bloody holes(its sickening to think about HOW the birds kill their victims...death by pecked eyes is a slow death indeed.) These are birds that kill a perfectly nice and caring woman(Annie, who dies saving her student Kathy - and HER eyes are pecked out, too -- we just don't see them.) These are birds that kill one man trying to seek shelter in a phone booth, and that sneakily(and silently) trap Tippi Hedren in a bedroom and go to work on her(she is saved, but badly injured.)

In short, the birds in The Birds are presented as BAD birds, mean birds, merciless birds...and objects of horror.

But Hitchcock had his standards. The birds in The Birds -- by Hitchcock's edict -- did not include birds of prey like hawks or eagles or owls(damn, Norman's taxidermy could have been avenged.) These are "regular birds" -- the normal birds we see every day all around us, in the trees, on the grass -- and on the telephone lines. Great white sharks are NATURALLY terrifying beasts -- but...birds? That's like being attacked by "a sick old woman."

Hitchcock was a master of style -- and color -- and note that the attack on the school is done by BLACK crows...and the attack on downtown Bodega Bay is done by WHITE seagulls. Later attacks are done by "the gang's all here." As the NBC promo said, "Birds of a feather flock together...to kill!"

There are famously "script weaknesses" in The Birds. Hitchcock seemed to think(he told interviewers) that The Birds had more interesting characters than Psycho, but he was WRONG. Melanie and Mitch are "wrongly written," their characters don't make sense -- she's a rich party girl? He's a criminal defense lawyer? Then why is she so prim? And why does he sound like a law and order prosecutor?

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

The family psychodrama in The Birds(with leftover Psycho mama issues) is good as far as it goes, but everybody came for the birds...and when the birds went mad...the movie got great.

Greatest as a technical achievement and as a directorial achievement. Hitchcock wanted to DIRECT birds to fly, gather, jump, swoop, dive, attack ...and they DID it. No questions asked. Some of the birds were animation(like CGI today) but some were trained, LIVE birds(like the one who knocks out the gas station attendant.) And others were puppets. And Hitchcock gathered these elements together and made screen history.

The shower scene is a masterpiece of montage, but so is the attack on Tippi in the bedroom -- with birds ADDED to the mix of technical challenges -- is historic(it is not as scary a scene as the shower murder -- but it is far HARDER to have filmed.)

The two best technical shots:

ONE: High above Bodega Bay, as white seagulls enter the frame, hover and flap their wings, and then dive down on the town(NBC used this shot for commercials when The Birds had its record-setting airing in 1968.)

TWO: The glorious end: thousands of birds "at rest and waiting" as far as the eye can see in as many types as allowed. CGI before CGI and possibly Hitchcock's greatest shot (though my FAVORITE shot is Arbogast walking up the hill to the house in Psycho._

And for its sheer Hitchcockian wit and cinematic style, I like the shot right BEFORE the final shot. Its several crows on the Brenner front porch fence, all in a row. Classic "Hitchcock slightly low angle." One of them fluffs up his wings and its like he's "struttin' his stuff." "Hey, Brenners, get outta here! We won."

If the birds are great villains, that crow just might be their Phillip Vandamm.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

NUMBER SEVEN: Ray Milland, as Tony Wendice in Dial M for Murder (1954)

I may be wrong, but I think, other than Anthony Perkins in Psycho, Ray Milland is the only other time that the villain in a Hitchcock movie got top billing. (And if you don't see Perkins AS a villain -- then...only Milland.)

That reason alone probably requires that Milland as ex-tennis pro, current layabout, and murder mastermind Tony Wendice should go on the "Ten Best Villains" list -- but wait, "there's more."

Dial M for Murder was a very successful play on the London and NYC stages. Cary Grant saw the play at Hitchcock's request, and at least tentatively agreed to PLAY Tony Wendice, the VILLAIN. (Grant had ALMOST been a villain in Suspicion, but it was never fully clarified up or down in that movie.) Had Grant played Wendice, it would have been historic. Jack Warner evidently stopped this -- either over Grant's high pay request or because Warner couldn't see Grant as a villain. And maybe the cautious Grant would have dropped out anyway.

Grant as Tony Wendice would have been historic because Tony Wendice is a truly EVIL, truly HORRIBLE villain. I'm glad that Grant didn't play this guy. A better (more fun) villain offered to Grant a few years later was the Devil in Damn Yankees(its director, Stanley Donen, was a Grant pal)...that was a lighter piece, with a more fun villain to play. But Grant backed out of that one too.

And so we got Ray Milland as Tony Wendice. Milland had something that Anthony Perkins never got: a Best Actor Oscar(for playing an alcoholic in The Lost Weekend,) and by 1954 was in the last throes of evening BEING a leading man. (American International awaited in the 60s and 70s.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Still, it is stalwart work by Milland. He's charming and elegant and witty -- in the Hitchcock tradition. But his evil comes in ever-revealing layers. Tony Wendice is a CRUEL man. He is cruel when he blackmails -- and then dominates -- the hapless loser Swan into killing Tony's wife Margot (Grace Kelly, gorgeous.) He is cruel in deciding to have Margot killed(rather than divorcing her, but then he loses her family money). He is cruel in agreeing to the MEANS of murder(slow strangulation by scarf.) And when Margot manages to kill the killer(with scissors to the back in 3-D), Tony is cruel in "setting up a frame" to send his wife to the gallows for the INTENTIONAL killing of Swan. As a side-bar, Tony is cruel to his romantic rival, Margot's lover (Bob Cummings)...in letting the guy know indirectly of his plotting.

From its roots as a play, Dial M has a first act in which Tony Wendice invites Swan to his flat and lays out -- in precise, eloquent detail with Hitchcock's camera angles in play -- exactly HOW his murder plot will work. Milland has pages of monologue here -- occasionally letting Swan reply -- that are the heart of the story and his evil. Each step in the "perfect murder" will backfire when things get real.

Side-bar: 15 years later, another play by the same author (Frederick Knott) called Wait Until Dark would reach the screen. Its "Dial M meets Psycho" with more screams and knifeplay, but the opening act is a MATCH for Dial M. Instead of the elegant Ray Milland laying out his plan for Swan the Dupe, we get creepy beat psycho Alan Arkin laying out HIS play for TWO criminal dupes(played by handsome Richard Crenna and plump Jack Weston.) Its the same scene basically -- but more hip and funny and "60's."

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Dial M was good enough to be a hit movie in 1954(with the brutal, sexual attack on Grace Kelly as its sole thrill sequence), but what no one could know was how Dial M would create a template for a much more famous mystery character: Columbo.

The Columbo formula became famous: each episode began with an elegant(usually rich) killer (usually male) implementing "the perfect murder" and killing his victim. About 30 minutes in, shambling, shaggy, absent-minded "Lieutenant Columbo" would turn up and begin the cat-and-mouse game with the killer, slowly breaking down the perfect murder and exposing the killer at the very end.

In Dial M, Ray Milland is the "Columbo killer" and Scotland Yard man John Williams is a rough draft for Columbo -- without the latter's shaggy American personality tics.

The debt owed to Columbo by Dial M was paid by having Ray Milland HIMSELF play a Columbo killer -- a rather ELDERLY Columbo killer -- in the early 70s." Milland also did a second Columbo where he was merely support -- Robert Culp was the Columbo killer in that one.

The actual ROUTE to Columbo was this: it began as a 1959 stage play(likely inspired by Dial M), with Thomas Mitchell as Columbo and Hitchocck villain Joseph Cotton as "the Columbo killer." In 1968, this play became a one-shot NBC TV movie...with Falk(better groomed, less shambling) as Columbo and Gene Barry("Burke's Law") as the Columbo killer.

In 1971, Columbo got a pilot for series -- female Lee Grant was the Columbo killer.

In the 1971-1972 NBC season, Columbo became a series -- but only once a month(7 per year, eventually fewer as Falk became a movie star.) Steven Spielberg directed the first one aired --Jack Cassidy was the Columbo killer.

Note in passing: ANOTHER HItchocck movie helped set the Columbo template: Psycho. Arbogast's amiable badgering of Norman is a letter perfect duplication of how Columbo would badger HIS suspects. Except Columbo never got killed!

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

A bit more on Milland in Dial M:

Cary Grant may have been offered the part, but when Milland makes the fatal phone call to Grace Kelly(she is to be killed AS he calls her, for his alibi) and he HEARS the brutal killing underway, Milland looks..anguished, upset to actually hear his murder plot in motion...and his emotional face is a dead ringer for the face of...JAMES STEWART!

That anguish is a "Hitchocck complexity." We can surmise that Tony is NOT a psychopath/sociopath. He experiences emotion listening to his wife die so brutally(but then, she DOESN'T die.) But the emotion is "of the moment." When Margot survives...Tony plots to kill her via the gallows instead.

And this: its a Hays Code movie and Grace Kelly is clearly cheating on her husband(with..Bob Cummings? Oh well. Costs.) But then Milland cheated on her. Eventually, Milland goes to jail and we can guess that Kelly CAN marry Cummings. The Hays Code allows this cheating wife happiness only if she is almost strangled to death and almost hanged at the gallows.

And finally: Milland being exposed and arrested at the end of Dial M is just like a Columbo episode...and also like the "neat" end of Frenzy. Influential!

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Bump. For adjacency purposes.