The Bad

It aint easy being bad in a world where everyone is a total a**hole. We're talking about a world in which Clint Eastwood is the very flower of goodness, relatively speaking. So I've always had a special affinity for those guys who strive day and night to rise to the special level of evil reserved for spaghetti western villains. These guys have to come up with ever more shocking ways to attract the attention of the jaded law enforcement. They have to constantly compete with each other to make sure the price on their heads don't fall below the regional average. They have to constantly watch their back so their evil henchmen don't get ambitious and overthrow them to take over the gang. And all this while never getting a chance to bathe. It is definitely a dirty job, but someone has to do it.

This dude here is definitely the most evil one ever. He is known simply as The Bad (of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly). Somehow the legendary Lee Van Cleef managed to play him with such joyful contempt that he has absolutely no saving graces whatsoever. He does not even hesitate to kill young children who cross his path. He is the bar toward which all would-be villains should strive. I definitely want to be him when I grow up:



But I'm pretty sure I will never be that cool so I would settle for being Indio from For a Few Dollars More. He is sort of a tragic villain, misunderstood, guilty of raping some poor girl until she killed herself. And yet somehow you end up feeling a little sorry for him anyway. Although not sorry enough to mourn his death when Lee Van Cleef (this time playing the gloriously vindictive Colonel Douglas Mortimer), blows him away. That poor bastard, Indio, got exactly what he deserves, but we will miss him:



And my third favorite has to be Danny Huston as the eldest of the evil clan of brothers in The Proposition: Arthur Burns. He is capable of acts so savage that you would hesitate to call him a human being, and yet he still manages to posess a heart of gold under it all. There is a point in the film where they are discussing misanthropes, and it is one of my favorite pieces of creepily heartwarming dialogue ever:

Samuel Stote: What's a Misanthrope Arthur?
Two Bob: Some bugger who fuckin' hates every othe bugger.
Samuel Stote: Hey, I didn't ask you, you black bastard!
Arthur Burns: He's right, Samuel. A misanthrope is one who hates humanity.
Samuel Stote: Is that what we are, misanthropes?
Arthur Burns: Good Lord, no. We're a family.



And I can't let this go, of course, without giving an honorable mention to Tuco Benedito Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez, also known as The Rat. He isn't really a villain. He's more of a dirty sidekick to Clint Eastwood. Eli Wallach really puts the Ugly in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. He really wants to be bad, but he's just too damn stupid to pull it off, and when it comes down to it he seems to have a hard time pulling the trigger on people that don't have it coming to them. He might be the dirtiest of them all, but he's just so damn cute.