Great villains


I first watched this when I was 14 and just re watched at 41. I hate Elkanah Bent and Justin Lamotte just as much as always. Great performances by Philip Casnoff and David Carradine. Maybe a bit over the top, but North and South wouldn't be nearly as good without them.

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Don't forget about Ashton. What's great about her is that she's evil just because. Also Isabel, that hateful, power-hungry beyotch. I love how she keeps poor Stanley under her heel.

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I didn't like the Godfather, so what?

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I'm watching it again now too after many years. I'd forgotten how good David Carradine was as Justin LaMotte. The scene where Madeline finds him messing around with a slave at All Saints chapel is great. Not only is he not the least bit embarrassed or apologetic, he berates her for "spying" on him and beats her with his whip. One of the all-time great baddies. His accent is great too!

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Yes, Carradine was awesome. I love the scene right before Orry arrives at Resolute in book II. Justin is trying to make Madeleine eat. "I have been damn good to you, Mrs. LaMotte. I have tried to court you."
So, damn good and courting means rape, beating, drugging, adultery and imprisonment to him. Yet, he seems astounded that Madeleine doesn't love him and it's all her fault. What a biotch! :)

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GREAT villains in this movie. Bent (his name fits), LaMotte (Carradine GREAT as usual), Virgilia (lost her mind although she, technically, was on the right side), and Ashton (psychotically and hilariously EVIL). I enjoyed these four characters much more than the "good guys."

We'll see whose the filthiest person alive! We'll just see!

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About "damn good and courting"...I know, the guy had a v-e-e-r-r-y warped idea of what those meant. (If THAT'S his idea of being "damn good" to a woman and trying to court her...then I'd hate to see what his idea of abusing her meant! )

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David Carradine's birthday was yesterday, according to IMDb. He would've been 76 if he were still alive.

R.I.P. David Carradine. Great actor. (Kind of weird that I happened to remember him on his birthday...without even knowing that it was his birthday. Strange. )

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I agree. I especially loved him on Kill Bill.

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To the original poster: I'm your age, haven't rewatched in a while, and just discovered last night that I still remembered David Carradine in this...but had forgotten his character's name...so I came here to look it up. (You know. Madeleine's horrible husband. Played by David Carradine. To perfection. Yeah, THAT guy. Can't forget him no matter how hard you try...even if after a decade or so, you start to forget that the character's name was Justin LaMotte!)

To debiler: Ashton was probably my favorite villain in this. ^_^ I think I loved how she acted almost like an evil witch in a fantasy saga...except that she was in a Civil War saga instead. ^_^ The other villains were more...warped and twisted and disgusting...maybe not exactly "evil", just plain mean and cruel and gross...which may be worse in some ways...but she was just so...into being pretty and conniving and evil. More appealing to watch, if you ask me. (There's something about some cute young girl...just deciding to be evil for fun, or selfish for her own pleasure...that can be actually kind of charming...if she's supposed to be one of the prime villains. The girl you love to hate. ^_~ Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind was sometimes almost equally spoiled, bratty and selfish, even though she was supposed to be the heroine, for pete's sake. Ashton...we were not supposed to approve of her behavior...which made it easier to just sit back and enjoy watching it. ^_~) But Justin was unforgettable also, even if I did forget his name eventually. ^_~

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Ashton was kind of like the little girl in "The Bad Seed." At first, I tried to tell myself that her Daddy had just spoiled her, but as the miniseries went on, it was clear she was a sociopath.

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I have only watched the first half of the first mini-series and browsed through the first book, but yeah... I have to say that the villains in this story are almost too good at being evil ***holes. Elkanah Bent should have been locked up in some mental asylum, and as for Justin LaMotte, he should have been killed already after he whipped Madeline (and I know that there is an even worse scene coming up in the next episode).

Ashton might be the one out of the villains, whom I can tolerate the most so far, but she too is a really awful bitch and a nasty slut. Virgilia has been mentioned in this thread, but I just can't see her as a villain, even if she was a crazy fanatic. There is too much to admire about her. Isobel was an awful bitch though, but I can at least be glad that she never seemed to get what she wanted.

Intelligence and purity.

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Yeah, a lot of the villains aren't really complex. I can assume book Bent is crazy because he's bitter about his looks and lack of popularity, but I'll never understand why Justin, who had a beautiful young wife who probably would have loved him had he been good to her, would be such an ass to her.

I find Ashton worse in Book 2. The way she treated James was absolutely disgusting. The movie softened it up a lot. Book Ashton never would have said "I care about James", that is so opposite of how she was! She despised him, for no other reason than she didn't think he was hot enough for and that he didn't end up being a big political star and make her one too. She encouraged Lamar to murder him (Lamar is the sexy part of movie Bent, movie Bent is a combo of the two characters), and even though Lamar would be considered a villain too, I adored that character for my own personal reasons and I'm so disappointed he was wasted on a nasty character like Ashton, and that Jakes told mostly everything from her POV instead of his. No way did Ashton deserve to have four fun years with him after what she caused for Forbes and most especially, how she treated her husband. James might not have been a saint, but he did love her and treat her good.

The only time I like Ashton at all is in Book 3, she was actually a little human in her interaction with Will Fenway, and comical in her interaction with a guy named Villers who doesn't appear in the movie.

Yep, Isabel is supposed to be another ambitious, ruthless female. She's not focused on as much as Ashton though.

I agree about Virgilia, she's no villain in my book. She's a gray character, she has good intentions which can't be said for the villains, she's just confused about the correct way to go about it and lets her passion make her make poor decisions at times. At least she feels remorse for her mistakes, unlike Ashton, who never did. That scene at the end of the 2nd movie where she confesses all her sins? Never happened in the book and was extremely out of character, just like her saying, "I care about James, I just don't understand why I have to be married to him." Even after James was dead in Book 3, she still trashed him verbally.

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