Bond Villains

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.

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.

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.

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.

Vladek Sheybal plays Russian chess master Kronsteen an agent for SPECTRE, who doesn't please Blofeld too much.

Sheybal also appears as one of Le Chiffre's Representatives in the 1967 version of Casino Royale.

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.

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.

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.

His eyepatch gives him a very badass look. Very cool.

Philip Stone, a face well known for those who are fans of Kubrick's The Shining and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, has a cameo in Thunderball as SPECTRE member #5.

Finally, 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.

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

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.

Irma Bunt played by German actress 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.

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, the scar is still gone and is British once again - Telly Savalas was American.

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.

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.

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).

Tee Hee played by Julius Harris has a very interesting gadget: a mechanical arm with a hook instead of an arm and 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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 in the fire truck chase scene.

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.

Stromberg's underwater lair raising from the water (helped by some great soundtrack) is one of the most memorable scenes in the series.

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

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.

Naomi is a delight to the eyes. She's Stromberg's assistent, and makes the bad choise of going after Bond's car in a helicopter.

Milton Reid, an Indian-born English professional wrestler played in The Spy Who Loved Me, Sandor, a huge man who works for Stromberg and tries to kill Bond in Egypt, while he's looking for Aziz Fekkesh. But this nuisance is resolved quickly on the rooftop of a Cairo building.

An interesting trivia: Reid wanted the role of Oddjob in Goldfinger, so he suggested fighting Harold Sakata (who also was a professional wrestler) to decide who would get it. But since he already had a role in Dr. No, the producers opted for Sakata and the fight never took place.

Sergei is Major Amasova's lover, who goes after Bond in the most famous ski chase scene in the series.

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.


*This picture is from For Your Eyes Only.

Michael Lonsdale is 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.

Chang, an assistant to Drax, meets Bond twice. Once, at the simulator at Drax's mansion, in which he has the upper hand, and again in Venice, where Bond has.

A great moment of the film is when Chang sends his master's dogs at a poor lady who had shown Bond some of Drax's plans. A very cinematic scene, mastefully executed.

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.

Locque is a cold and ruthless killer who works for Kristatos. A great addition to the rogue list. Him and Bond have a great duel at about one hour and a half into the film with an awesome finale.

A Cuban killer for hire, who shoots down Melina's parents before they could find the wreckage of a sunken ship.

In the last appearence of Blofeld in the series (it is him, eventhough his name is never mentioned) he's simply thrown in the pre-credit sequence as a silly comic bit straight from the end of On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

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. :)

Indian Kabir Bedi is very scary as Gobinda, Khan's assistant. He doesn't talk much, but he doesn't need to. His mere presence is intimidating enough. He fights Bond outside a plane DURING a flight. Now that's a bad ass villain, not even Oddjob nor Jaws had such balls.

After General Orlov fails to convince his comrades and General Orlov that they are bargaining away their superior might and should attack Europe, he joins forces with Kamal Khan.

Their plan is to detonate an atomic bomb on the premises of an American Airforce base in Germany, leading to nuclear disarmament allowing Orlov’s forces to move in and take control of Europe.

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

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

Look at that grin in his crazy face. You know that he's up to something, like throw someone from a flying blimp.

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.

As a former Nazi scientist, researching with DNA to build the perfect soldier, he is also, Zorin's "father" and mentor, Willoughby Gray is Dr. Carl Mortner also known as Hans Glaub.

The monocle and his German accent give a nice "Bond Villain" touch to the character.

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

Can anybody spot Dolph Lundgren in A View to a Kill? I can. He makes a cameo as a KGB security guard working for Gogol. At the time of the shooting, he was dating Grace Jones.

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.

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.

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.

An almost unrecognizable Benicio del Toro is Dario, one of Sanchez's men. And a pretty nasty one. Del Toro did very well here, in spite of his short screen time.