//

15 Famous Movie Psychopaths

This is a rogues gallery that runs the gamut from clingy patient to schizo serviceman.

Seven Psychopaths
Photo: CBS Films

Martin McDonagh (In Bruges) returns to theaters this week with Seven Psychopaths, the sophomore feature from the Irish multihyphenate and a good source for onscreen nutjobs. Colin Farrell leads the cast of not-quite-sane characters, who include two dognappers played by Sam Rockwell and Christopher Walken. Still, we’re thinking this new septet of psychos has nothing on the filmic crazies that have come before, particularly the lot we’ve assembled for this list. You could repeatedly scour cinema history and return with a new batch of lunatics every time. For now, here are 15 that linger strongly in the memory, a rogues gallery that runs the gamut from clingy patient to schizo serviceman.


Sexy Beast

Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast (2000). Lodged somewhere between Ben Kingsley’s prestige projects and his penchant for crude comedy, Sexy Beast casts the veteran actor as Don Logan, a bona fide sociopath who ultimately forces retired ex-con Gal (Ray Winstone) to take part in a sketchy London heist. Kingsley’s electrifying histrionics, including the famed, shrill insistence of “Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!” helped to land him a lot of Supporting Actor awards love, but his character doesn’t meet so handsome a fate. After a retreat that only builds his rage, Don returns to Gal’s Spanish villa, but his vicious intents are thwarted by Gal and company, who off their unwanted guest.


Fatal Attraction

Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction (1987). If you thought Albert Nobbs was scary, get a load of Glenn Close’s stinkface in Fatal Attraction, the movie that notoriously serves as a cautionary tale for married men with wandering eyes. Close is free-spirited and crazy-headed Alex Forrest, whose tryst with Michael Douglas’s Dan Gallagher leads to a full-blown, unreciprocated obsession. Y’all know where it goes from there—rabbit stew a la Close and a lot of butcher knife swinging. This gal will not be ignored (that is, except when it comes to winning Oscars).


Ichi the Killer

Nao Omori in Ichi the Killer (2001). In Takashi Miike’s Ichi the Killer, the famed Manga series from Hideo Yamamoto is brought to life, particularly by Nao Omori, who scarily embodies the titular assassin. Manipulated by the devious Jijii (Shinya Tsukamoto), Ichi is harmless until he becomes enraged, which leads to homicidal—and crazily sexual—tendecies. Ichi is implanted with painful memories and used as a killing machine, and from there, the death toll in this grizzly thriller keeps climbing.


Psycho

Anthony Perkins in Psycho (1960). Soon to be portrayed by James D’Arcy in Fox Searchlight’s Hitchcock biopic, Anthony Perkins will always be remembered as a gentlemanly nutcase, playing Norman Bates as a meek mama’s boy who’s ostensibly harmless. Even when slaying his prey, he hides his pretty face behind the guise of an old woman, placing a buffer between him and his savagery. Of course, that changes nothing about his atrocious capabilities, which range from masturbatory spying to knife-happy outbursts. Repression is the path to madness, you might say.


Advertisement

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer

Michael Rooker in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986). Michael Rooker got the role of his career when he took the lead in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, John McNaughton’s thriller about Henry Lee Lucas, a real-life madman who murdered scads of women in the 1970s. Known for its benchmark status as a horror film with scarily realistic violence, Henry boasts a turn from Rooker that’s decidedly unironic, as eerily cold as the bodies left behind. At one point, Henry and his murderous sidekick, Otis (Tom Towles), break into a home and kill a whole family, with Otis threatening rape before doing away with the wife. Henry, meanwhile, simply likens the act of offing people to hunting and bleeding deer.


American Psycho

Christian Bale in American Psycho (2000). One man who would have certainly wept at news of Whitney Houston’s death is Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale), the hyper-obsessive, yuppie murderer in Mary Harron’s American Psycho, whose ’80s music collection is as pristine as his haircut. If Norman Bates is a killer gentleman, Bateman is a killer poster boy, perfect in all ways but for his need to shed blood. The decay of Bateman’s tony facade is the greatest part of this film, as vain sex sessions in view of a nearby mirror lead to not-so-secret chainsaw chases in an apartment building’s stairwell. All that murder, and Bateman still has time for 1,000 crunches.


What About Bob?

Bill Murray in What About Bob? (1991). In What About Bob?, Bill Murray plays the titular, fear-stricken patient of celebrated psychologist Leo Marvin (Richard Dreyfusss), who’s aghast to find that Bob has crashed the Marvin family vacation. Everyone loves Bob’s buoyant worldview except for Leo, who can’t shake his demented, dependent client. Eventually, Bob unwittingly turns the tables, and drives Leo nuts with his endless antics. The process is truly maddening to watch, and it’s always fun to learn which character gains each viewer’s sympathy.


Peeping Tom

Karlheinz Böhm in Peeping Tom (1960). Peeping Tom has famous fans like Martin Scorsese, who counts the film among the greatest about filmmaking, but it was a blow to the career of Michael Powell, who saw the movie’s controversy fatally wound his career as a director in the U.K. Featuring the first female nude scene in a British film (among other things), Peeping Tom stars Karlheinz Böhm as Mark Lewis, an aspiring filmmaker whose approach to the craft involves murdering women on camera then watching the results. A part-time softcore porn photographer, Mark also has a dark and horrid history involving his father (Powell himself), who subjected his son to eternally disturbing experiments. The apple doesn’t fall far, and Mark’s psychosis leads him to his own grisly suicide.


Advertisement

The Dark Knight

Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight (2008). One wonders what Heath Ledger would have said or done had be been around to accept his Oscar in 2008. Would he have approached the podium humbly, accepting his award like the modest thespian he seemed to have become? Or would he have slithered into character, lashing his tongue and whipping his head just like he did in his iconic portrayal of The Joker? We’ll never know, but Ledger sure did leave behind a whale of a signature performance, which few would decry as the best ever in a comic book film. Ledger’s Joker lives to spread madness, and his peak is probably the infiltration of a hospital, wherein he dresses up as a female nurse before fleeing the building and blowing it up.


Play Misty for Me

Jessica Walter in Play Misty for Me (1971). Who knew Arrested Development had a direct link to Clint Eastwood? Long before she embodied Lucille Bluth on the beloved TV series, Jessica Walter played a lovestruck maniac in Play Misty for Me, Eastwood’s directorial debut. Walter is Evelyn, a loyal listener of radio DJ Dave Garver (Eastwood), who makes the grave mistake of bedding his fan. Evelyn reveals a warped personality disorder, and proceeds to attempt suicide, sabotage Garver’s career, and nearly murder the DJ’s squeeze (Donna Mills). Not even a psycho ward can rehabilitate Evelyn, who, like Alex Forrest, has a hankering for butcher knives.


The Cable Guy

Jim Carrey in The Cable Guy (1996). Ben Stiller took a step behind the camera for The Cable Guy, directing Jim Carrey and Matthew Broderick in a surprisingly dark comedy about a regular Joe (Broderick) who hires Chip (Jim Carrey), the world’s craziest cable installer. Broderick’s character is soon unable to escape his newfound friend, suffering Chip’s presence wherever he goes, from his home to a little eatery known as Medieval Times. Carrey’s screw-loose highlight is a nightmare sequence, which sees Chip barrelling down a hallway with toxic green eyes, demanding some attention from his stalkee. Chip just wants to hang out. “No big deal!!!”


Apocalypse Now

Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now (1979). Francis Ford Coppola’s dense Vietnam opus completely boils down to the introduction of Marlon Brando’s Colonel Kurtz, whom Martin Sheen’s Willard must murder by order of the U.S. military. A rogue deserter who’s certifiably batshit, Kurtz has much to say about “the horror” of war, particularly how fond of it he’s become. Tucked away in a trippy hut in a small Cambodian village, the bald-headed wackjob does not disappoint, ably living up to the hype the movie spends its near-entirety building.


Advertisement

No Country for Old Men

Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men (2007). “You can’t stop what’s coming,” a lowly redneck murmurs in No Country For Old Men, and so it’s true when that “what” is Anton Chigurgh, the non-discriminating killer indelibly embodied by Javier Bardem. Interpretable as death incarnate, or the odious wind of change, Chigurgh is remorseless in his murders, not to mention surgically precise. He mows through a roster of victims with terrifying stillness, ironically bringing the storm, yet acting like its eye. Like Michael Myers, Chigurgh is scary and mad enough that just looking at him could put you down.


Audition

Eihi Shiina in Audition (1999). Takashi Miike lands on the list again for conjuring up another murderously gonzo figure. In Audition, Eihi Shiina is Asami, an actress duped into filmmaker Aoyama’s (Ryo Ishibashi) faux call for actresses, which is in fact his way of finding a new mate. Asami seems too perfect, but Aoyama takes her anyway, only to find that she was a fatally wrong choice, with a notable affinity for piano wire. Miike effectively blurs the line between reality and fantasy, leaving the viewer to decide the validity of so much grisly dismemberment, but Asami’s madness is scarily authentic—a quiet trait of a pretty girl with hideous abilities.


Mommie Dearest

Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest (1981). Joan Crawford might have been a monster of a mother, but Faye Dunaway emerges from Mommie Dearest as seeming even more grotesque than the diva she’s portraying—a vain screen goddess who made life hell for daughter Christina (Diana Scarwid). A (cold-cream-coated) portrait of neuroses gone wild, Dunaway is a campy scream as the screen legend, whose obsession with cleanliness is dwarfed by her tendency to fly off the handle. No one has ever watched this movie and looked at wire hangers the same way again, and furthermore, looked at Crawford without seeing Dunaway’s psycho-camp embodiment.

R. Kurt Osenlund

R. Kurt Osenlund is a creative director and account supervisor at Mark Allen & Co. He is the former editor of Out magazine.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.