The character: Major Toht The actor: Ronald Lacey The movie: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) You don’t have to know a lot of German to know that “Toht” gets you real close to the German word for “death.” In a movie where the cheese reverberates as gloriously as it does in Raiders, that’s fine.… Read More Better than AFI’s Heroes and Villains: Villain #30
The character: Heathcliff The actor: Laurence Olivier The movie: Wuthering Heights (1939) Here’s how Nelly Dean tells it, after Heathcliff has fled from Cathy’s room and returned to find her dead: “May she wake in torment!” he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. “Why, she’s… Read More Better than AFI’s Heroes and Villains: Hero #30
The character: Cal Hockley The actor: Billy Zane The movie: Titanic (1997) There are four villainous characters (or at least four who are actively against the idea of Jack and Rose) in Titanic. When I think of each one, here’s the look that comes to mind: Haha, I kid. Anyway, here’s Frances Fisher as Rose’s… Read More Better than AFI’s Heroes and Villains: Villain #31
The character: Divine, AKA Babs Johnson The actor: Divine The movie: Pink Flamingos (1972) I like to think that we here at Seeing Things Secondhand generally edge away from the Randian. The Nietzschean we will go hang out with sometimes as long as we have a chaperone, but Rand, not so much. On the other… Read More Better than AFI’s Heroes and Villains: Hero #31
The character: Rocky Gravo The actor: Gig Young The movie: They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969) I’m not an expert on shooting things, nor on euthanasia, so I went to the Internet to find out why we shoot horses when they break a leg. First off, we don’t shoot horses anymore, but we use one… Read More Better than AFI’s Heroes and Villains: Villain #32
The character: Ethan Edwards The actor: John Wayne The movie: The Searchers (1956) I know. He’s not a hero. At least not in 2026 he’s not a hero. (To think he was some kind of cut-and-dried hero in 1956 is naive, but whatever.) A Confederate veteran, a proud racist who never comes close to recanting… Read More Better than AFI’s Heroes and Villains: Hero #32
The character: Candyman The actor: Tony Todd The movie: Candyman (1992) “Hurt people hurt people” suffers from its brevity. I don’t think the phrase, if used honestly, is meant to excuse the abuse that the abused do to others. It’s axiomatic, in my home, to say that just because we feel bad doesn’t mean we… Read More Better than AFI’s Heroes and Villains: Villain #33
The character: Ernst Toller The actor: Ethan Hawke The movie: First Reformed (2017) In 2019, Joker came out and quickly won the title of “most obviously plagiaristic movie of the decade.” Who can forget the flood of reviews of the film which pointed out that it was clearly borrowing from The King of Comedy, as… Read More Better than AFI’s Heroes and Villains: Hero #33
The character: Old Scratch The actor: Walter Huston The movie: The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941) Within ten minutes of Faust, F.W. Murnau puts the image of Mephistopheles above and around an unsuspecting, celebrating town, with one wing rising to blot out the sun itself. It is, quite possibly, the most spellbinding film image of… Read More Better than AFI’s Heroes and Villains: Villain #34
The character: Son of the Hunter The actor: Francis Kee Teller The movie: Navajo (1952) Navajo was sold to audiences as a documentary when it was released in 1952, and it was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 25th Academy Awards. It is not a documentary, and it’s weird that anyone was willing to… Read More Better than AFI’s Heroes and Villains: Hero #34
