Bond Villains

   7.3  

Canadian actor Joseph Wiseman is the half Chinese, half German villain Dr. Julius No, the very first villain in the very first Bond. Memorable if only by that, but the mystery around him is huge, people talk about him all the time, like he's a super being, an urban legend; that only increases the curiosity of the spectator. Maybe not the best villain of the series, but deffinetely the ideal villain to begin it all. His visual is also great with the led gloves and the anti-radioactive suit.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   6  

Anthony Dawson plays Professor R. J. Dent, an emplyee of Dr. No, a very important peice in building the mystery around the title character, who is unfortunate enough to meet Bond half way through the film.

Dawson also played Blofeld in Thunderball, but we never see his face.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   7.5  

Already in the second film of the series, we have a female villain. And what a villain. Rosa Klebb is cold, meticulous and precise. Her poisonous blade hidden in her boot is one of the highest points of the film.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   7.4  

Robert Shaw is also one of the best villains in the series. He plays Red Grant, a spy hired by SPECTRE, through Klebb to kill Bond. His fight with Bond on a train and the dialogue that precedes it are memorable.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   6.4  

Considered by many the best villain in the series, personally I don't agree, though he is among the greatest. German actor Gert Fröbe, plays Frenchman Auric Goldfinger, who has a lust for gold. The girl covered in gold is just a demonstration of his power. He is the only man who had Bond cornered in the palm of his hand, seconds away from death. This, I may agree, is the best trap for 007 yet.

It is said that Gert Fröbe didn't spoke a very good English, so he had to be dubbed by a British actor.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   5  

Harold Sakata plays Oddjob, Goldfinger's butler, caddy and hitman. He doesn't say one word throughout the entire film, but he sure leaves his mark. On the neck of his victims.

Oddjob is spoofed in the first Austin Powers film by a character named Random Task. Great joke.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   6.5  

Italian actor Adolfo Celi is Emilio Largo, the #2 member of SPECTRE, only under Blofeld himself, which by now (the fourth film of the series) is very aware of the presence of James Bond and the damages he's been making in the organization. Largo throws Bond in a pool of sharks and fights him in a yatch speeding towards a reef.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   7.3  

Finnaly, after four films and five years of waiting, Ernest Stavro Blofeld shows himself. He's bald and has a scar on the left side of his face. But now, the magic and the mystery are gone. Donald Pleasence is a great actor, but I think he was not the ideal choise to be the face of such a mysterious character. Not scary or threatning enough maybe.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   6  

Teru Shimada plays Mr. Osato, Blofeld's main man in Japan. At first he fools Bond, but not for long.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   6.9  

Bond changes and Blofeld also changes. He's still bald, but loses the scar. Kojak is Blofeld now. In one of the best stories, and with a fairly good Bond, Telly Savalas is way scarier and threatning as Blofeld than Donald Pleasence was. Maybe because he's bigger or maybe because of his deeper voice. I don't know, but no doubt he works much better.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   6  

Irma Bunt played by German Ilse Steppat is a memorable second villain, she's just as evil as Blofeld and is not afraid of doing the dirty work for him. One act of hers leaves a deep mark in Bond that would echo through a few films to come.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   6.2  

This is the second appearece of Charles Gray in the series, in You Only Live Twice, he was Dikko Henderson, a friend of Bond's. In Diamonds Are Forever, he's the third encarnation of Blofeld, since he showed his face, who, now, has hair and is British once again - Telly Savalas was American.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   3.5  

Bruce Glover is Mr. Wint, another villain to stay in the Bond files because of his homosexual leanings (something beyond bold in 1971), but still pretty nasty with his victims. The scene with the scorpion gives quite an idea of how evil he can be.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   3.5  

Putter Smith is Mr. Kidd, Mr. Wint's 'special friend'. They walk away holding hands at a moment. I wonder where did SPECTRE has gone to find those two. But they were quite a findning indeed. They gave lots of trouble to Bond.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   6.6  

The very talented Yaphet Kotto plays another great villain in the series, Kananga also known as Mr. Big. A supersticious man, who has his own fortune teller to follow him everywhere. He's a very powerful man.

Since Roger Moore took the role of James Bond, SPECTRE wasn't seen anymore (unfortunately).

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   5.7  

Tee Hee played by Julius Harris has a very interesting gadget: a mechanical arm with a hook instead of a hand. He does lots of damages with that, but it also gives a leverage for Bond in a fight. He's the one that leaves Bond sorrounded by crocodiles in one of the most famous scenes in the series.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   6  

Baron Samedi is some kind of high priest that works for Kananga and he has a very nasty habit of just not staying dead. His sinister laugh is great.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   7.1  

Another unforgettable villain in the series (though it had potential for MUCH more) Christopher Lee is Francisco Scaramanga, a millionaire hitman hired only by the richest and most powerful people in the world, who has been following Bond's work for some time and decides to have a duel with him to see who's really the best at what they do.

Lee is amazing really. He was in everything: James Bond, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Lord of the Rings, Sherlock Holmes, Star Wars, Sleepy Hollow, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, Gremlins, The Three Musketeers, Alice in Wonderland. He's been around for over 50 years, no other actor nor actress has a curriculum like his. A living legend.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   7.3  

Tattoo on a Bond film... The island look the same... Even his costume looks the same... Weird... Maybe Nick Nack is Tattoo's evil twin. I could never see that coming. He's not scary. At all. Much less when he wants to be scary, that just makes him even funnier. Who did they tried to get to be Scaramanga before Christopher Lee? Ricardo Montalban?

And the scariest part? Fantasy Island came a few years after The Man With the Golden Gun. Though it seems the other way around.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   5.8  

Maud Adams plays Andrea Anders in The Man With the Golden Gun. Not exactly a villain herself, but the villain's girlfiriend, who happens to get involved with Bond, and she pays for it.

Nine years later, in 1983, she would return as the title character in Octopussy, again, initially as the bad guy's girl. And yet again in 1985 as an extra in A View to a Kill.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   7.8  

The amazing German actor Curd Jürgens plays another great villain, Karl Stromberg, a mad man obsessed with the ocean and it's creatures. A very cult man but also very crazy. His stone cold eyes and his grin while talking to his victims, moments before they die, are a great touch. His underwater lair raising from the water is memorable.

The Spy Who Loved Me is without a doubt the best of Moore's Bonds. The closest to Connery's Bonds that he ever got.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   6.4  

Richard Kiel is Jaws. Jaws is Richard Kiel. One of the most recognizable Bond villains ever. His mere presence is enough for anyone to sh*t their pants. Then, he smiles.

Maybe the scariest scene of the whole series is when Major Anya Amasova (Barbara Bach) opens a door and he's on the other side with his 2 meters and his steel teeth, silent, while the train whistles.

He survives The Spy Who Loved Me and returns in the following film, Moonraker.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   6.2  

In the first of many appearences, Major Gogol isn't exactly a villain, though he's Russian and the Cold War was fully functional back then, he thinks the villains that the MI-6 fights are just as harmful for his KGB.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend? Sometimes.

After The Spy Who Loved Me, Gogol would also appear in Moonraker, For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, A View to a Kill and The Living Daylights. Always played by Walter Gotell. Who has also appeared in From Russia With Love, but as Morzeny, the man responsable for the training of Red Grant.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   6.1  

A multi-talented French actor, who had worked with François Truffaut, Luis Buñuel, Jean-Jacques Annaud and more recentely with Steven Spielberg, deserved a much better Bond film to act in. He does what he can as Hugo Drax, but the script just doesn't help. The producers were too busy thinking of different places for Bond to go to (including my country Brazil and the space) that they forgot the most important: the story.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   5.7  

Bond is back to Earth with the second best of Moore's films. Julian Glover (also a villain in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Empire Strikes Back and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets) is Aristotle Kristatos a rich Greek businessman who wants to deal a super secret code encryption device with the MI-6 and the KGB at the same time.

Apparentely recongnizing the excesses of its predecessor, For Your Eyes Only has a much simpler story, with much better results.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   6.8  

Octopussy is deffinetely not my favorite Bond, but that's not a bad thing, because it is for sure one of the most fun to watch. Coming after the huge success of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Louis Jordan does a fine job as Kamal Khan and his plans of blowing a nuclear device in the US Air Force Base in India. Yes, not the most original plot, I agree, but it is still a fun ride from beginning to end. Even good old Q gets a peice of the action (and of the girls too).

This is the closest that Bond got of Indiana Jones - not phisically I mean, obviously, that would be for Connery playing Henry Jones Sr. :)

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   6.5  

Indian Kabir Bedi is very well as Gobinda, Khan's assistant, he even fights Bond outside a plane DURING a flight.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   7.8  

Academy Award winner Christopher Walken is another huge talent wasted in a weak Bond film (like Christopher Lee and Michael Lonsdale). The plot is exactly the same as Goldfinger. Lazy writers!

Max Zorin, in spite of the weak story, is explored by Walken exactly the way he's good at. Being crazy.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   5.6  

Another unusual choise by the producers, though not as unfortunate as Hervé Villechaize in The Man With the Golden Gun. Jones' May Day is a bad girl turned good by Bond's charms.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   5.7  

Alison Doody makes her debut in A View to a Kill as Jenny Flex the hostess in Zorin's French chateau.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   4.8  

Can anybody spot Dolph Lundgren in A View to a Kill? I can. He makes a cameo, because at the time of the film, he was dating Grace Jones.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   4.7  

Brad Whitaker is a different Bond Villain, and different is always welcome.

During a training operation, a "00" agent is unexpectedly murdered. When British agent James Bond organises the defection of a top ranking Soviet general, the general divulges a plan by the KGB to kill all its enemy agents. Bond is suspicious of the plot, but nevertheless is ordered to kill the officer masterminding the operation.

Nothing is what it seems in The Living Daylights and that solely is a very welcome change in the usual plots.

Later, in GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies, Joe Don Baker returns, but this time as Jack Wade, a CIA agent allied with Bond.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   4.6  

Jeroen Krabbé is General Georgi Koskov who's initially helped by Bond and the MI-6, but that later reveals himself to be something else.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   5.4  

In Licence to Kill, Bond loses his, to fight Brian de Palma's Scarface.

Robert Davi is Franz Sanchez a drug dealer who was caught in an opperation by the MI-6 and the CIA, but who shortly after his arrest, escapes and goes after the people who got him. Felix Leiter is dangerously wounded and Bond leaves the MI-6 to avenge his friend, by infiltrating in Sanchez's gang.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   7.5  

An almost unrecognizable Benicio del Toro is Dario, one of Sanchez's men.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   6.8  

Sean Bean (again, an actor whose speciality is playing villains) is Alec Travelian, former agent 006, who's left behind by Bond in a mission (who thought he was dead) and has a grudge against him for that. To get the attention of the MI-6, and subsequentely, Bond's attention, he plans to steal the GoldenEye, a device that can generate an electro-magnetic pulse and destroy all electric devices around it.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   6.7  

Famke Janssen is Xenia Onatopp, Travelian's ally, helps him to invade a Russian station, kill everyone, steal the GoldenEye and erase their traces after everything.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   6.3  

General Ourumov is the inside man, who makes possible the invasion for the theft of the GoldenEye.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   6.3  

Boris Grishenko was supposed to be the only survivor on the invasion to steal the Goldeneye, and in exchange he would hack inside the targets chosen for the GoldenEye to work its magic.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   6.6  

Tomorrow Never Dies has another great villain, Elliot Carver is a media mogul, some kind of Charles Foster Kane of the present, who makes the news to broadcast them later.

A very interesting villain for the end of the XX century and beginning of the XXI.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   5  

Mr. Stamper is Carver's man to make his news come true.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   6.2  

Paris Carver is the wife of Elliot, who in the past, had a relationship with Bond. She's a victim of the circumstances more than properly a villain. She's one of the biggest reasons this is my favorite of Brosnan's Bonds.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   6.1  

In a very short cameo, Vincent Schiavelli as Dr. Kaufman, has one of the best moments, not only in this film, but in the entire series.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   5.8  

Henry Gupta is just one more dispensable peice in Elliot Carver's manufacturing of news.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   7.2  

Initially, shown as a victim, and for that, protected by Bond himself, Elektra King later reveals to be a someone completely different, in a plot twist cliche and predictable.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   6.7  

Renard has an interesting detail, a few years before The World is Not Enough, Bond had put a bullet in his head, meaning to kill him, but he didn't died, and according to M, he now doesn't feel any pain, so he can push himself harder and longer than any other man.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   6.3  

Maria Grazia Cucinotta's character has no name. She's known simply as the cigar girl. She appears in the pre-credit sequence, the longest so far, and one of the most exciting.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   5.9  

So far I said it is difficult to know which is the best villain, and which is the best film. But one thing I can say with all the confidence. Die Another Day is the worst Bond film, Gustav Graves is the worst villain and Jinx (Halle Berry) is the worst bond girl.

Everything in this film is wrong. The pre-credit sequence is quite decent, Bond is caught by his enemies, tortured, something that had never happened before, but from then on, the film only goes downhill.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   6.4  

An MI-6 agent who's really working for the villain, ha-ha, big surprise.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating:

   4.1  

Zao's visual is interesting, but that's all. I don't like to spend much time discussing Die Another Day.

diabolical dr voodoo's rating: