The latest sword rattling and (let’s face it) crazy talk emanating from North Korea, and especially from the Democratic People’s Republic’s young, untested head of state differs little in tone and in content from the vividly bellicose rhetoric we’ve come to expect from Pyongyang over the years. After all, North Korea’s leaders over the past seven decades — Kim Il Sung, his son Kim Jong Il and, third time's the charm, Kim Jong-un (photo above)— have all been remarkably eloquent when outlining the ways in which their country’s standing army (the fourth largest in the world) will heroically unleash a “sea of flame” on its enemies.
And yet, as dire as the consequences would obviously be if North and South Korea (and their de facto proxies, the US and China) moved beyond colorful threats and got into a shooting war, one would need a funny bone of stone not to find at least some humor in Kim Jong-un’s picturesque warnings of imminent doom. To be sure, an economically crippled, profoundly militarized, isolated, authoritarian gulag state ruled by a megalomaniac is hardly a laughing matter; but something about any North Korean leader’s manner of expressing himself— with that unique mix of ornery hubris and Python-esque hyperbole— brings to mind moviedom’s most entertainingly whacked-out rulers.
Here, Time offers a look at ten cinematic leaders— historical and fictional, monstrous and embraceable— who remind us that the line between utterly crazy and genuinely charismatic is not merely thin, sometimes it’s downright invisible.
Not too many characters in movie history can lay claim to an introduction as memorable as that accorded the muscle-bound, masked leader of the roving band of post-apocalyptic sociopaths in The Road Warrior. “The Lord Humungus!” screams the bespectacled, cringing herald known as the Toadie, announcing his lord and master’s presence. “The Warrior of the Wasteland! The Ayatollah of Rock and Rolla!” His backstory might be a little vague: does that mask hide hideous scars from wounds suffered in battle? Or is there truth to those rumors of a horrific baking accident? But the Humungus shines as a compelling, mysterious figure who had a demented brand of greatness thrust upon him by the violence and anarchy of the post-nuclear age. Sure, he’s a deranged bastard,but as the leather-clad, goggle-wearing psychos who comprise his motley army might argue, he’s our deranged bastard.
John Gielgud, Peter O’Toole, Helen Mirren, Malcolm McDowell— all titans of the stage and screen who, collectively, have given some of the most powerful performances in some of the most celebrated cinematic works of the past seven decades. And then there’s Caligula. Directed (for the most part) by Tinto Brass, written (largely) by Gore Vidal, the 1979 history-porn debacle combined sleaze, brutality, and pretension to a degree rarely seen this side of a Steven Segal production. Outlining the myriad reasons why Caligula has become the standard by which all artistically-minded movie failures are measured would require volumes— starting with the fact that most of the cast and crew thought they were making one movie, while producer Bob Guccione (yes, of Penthouse magazine fame) was determined to make another, porn-ier film.
In the meantime, suffice to say that Malcolm McDowell, in the eponymous role as the demented first-century Roman ruler, manages to invest a hateful, murderous Caesar with a kind of pitiful grandeur. There’s no reason to see this movie more than once— but all serious moviegoers should try and sit through one viewing, if only to watch the talent on display valiantly struggling against Guccione’s “vision” for the film, which can perhaps best be described as sado-puerile.
His fearless performance as the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin (the self-proclaimed Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular) in Kevin MacDonald’s 2006 drama garnered Forest Whitaker an Oscar. That is right and fitting— his Amin is one of the indelible movie madmen of the past decade. But what makes Whitaker’s characterization especially harrowing is the glimmer of humanity and weakness that occasionally peers out from behind those crazed, hooded, staring eyes. No one in his or her right mind would want to spend five minutes with that man, but watching him on screen for an hour or two generates the sort of thrill that only the greatest actors can elicit from an audience.
Not too many people are lukewarm about the original Wicker Man. Most of those who have seen the 1973 cult classic either revere it as a truly creepy exploration of faith and violence, or dismiss it as eighty minutes of boredom with five minutes of predictable “horror” slapped on at the end. (No such schism exists over the 2006 remake starring Nicolas Cage— everybody hates that one. ) But even the original movie’s detractors can agree that Christopher Lee’s portrayal of the Medusa-haired leader of the pagan island community is among his very best— and that’s saying something, considering Sir Christopher has appeared in nearly three hundred movies. At the end of the film, as Lord Summerisle leads his pale, windswept flock of loons in the most terrifying rendition of the medieval song, Sumer Is Icumen In, that any of us will ever hear (god willing), Lee seems not so much to be acting the part as inhabiting the body and soul of a true believer caught in the throes of pantheistic ecstasy. That’s entertainment!
Leaving aside the question of whether the unsettlingly cut chest he displayed in the film was actually his own pectoral property or some sort of futuristic prosthetic device (all evidence points to the former), Ricardo Montalban’s turn as the magnetic, freakishly strong, genetically engineered übermensch Khan Noonien Singh remains one of the most thoroughly enjoyable portrayals of a villain in any sci-fi flick, ever. When, near movie’s end, a grotesquely wounded Khan channel’s Melville’s Ahab yowling at the white whale— “From hell’s heart I stab at thee. For hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.”— we know we’re in the presence of greatness. Daft, scenery-chewing, spellbinding greatness to which the only appropriate response is, of course: Khaaan!
Often overlooked in any critical take on Sacha Baron Cohen’s satires-on-steroids is the Cambridge-educated Englishman’s not insubstantial acting chops. Sure, when he’s portraying Ali G. Borat and his other preposterous inventions, his performances can sometimes feel not so much like acting as a kind of manic, unfiltered bit of improv. But that “oh, he’s just being himself” interpretation of what he’s up to diminishes Baron Cohen’s uncanny ability to actually be his characters. In The Dictator, his portrait of the despicable President Prime Minister Admiral General Haffaz Aladeen (and his double, Efawadh) is at times howlingly funny: beyond the astonishingly offensive blather pouring from his mouth, he looks and sounds like the sort of self-assured, power-crazed maniac who might, in fact, rule over a northeastern African “republic”.
How best portray the man who might be the most infamous figure in all of human history? If you’re the masterful Swiss actor Bruno Ganz, there’s only one answer: all in. In Downfall, which chronicles Adolf Hitler’s final descent into raving paranoia in the spring of 1945, as the Red Army prepares to conquer Berlin and his generals and gangster cronies desert him, Ganz plays the Reich’s madman with a terrifying intensity. But he also manages to find in the Fuhrer’s galvanizing (and meme-generating) tirades something that we, the audience, can not only see and hear but (in a creepy way) share: namely, an all-consuming fear. It is impossible to feel pity for the character Ganz is portraying; but to the actor’s enduring credit, the Hitler of Downfall is no mere monster. He is a haunted, frenzied, malignantly self-absorbed villain and, at the end, he’s all too human.
As entertaining as Gladiator is, and as deserving of an Oscar as Russell Crowe was for his performance, Joaquin Phoenix’ Commodus is ultimately the crazy glue that holds it all together. The script can’t decide just what it is that makes the character so twisted. Daddy never loved him? Raging envy of Crowe’s Maximus? Incestuous cravings for his sister, Lucilla? Or is he just a bad seed? It hardly matters in the end. What draws us to Commodus, even as his behavior grows increasingly repellent, is the lonely little boy that we occasionally glimpse inside the power-crazed emperor. Phoenix’ great achievement, meanwhile, is to convince us that the little boy might still be saved — even as we see the grown Commodus smothering him further with every brutal, irrecoverable act, just as he strangled his own father.
A pale, withered and yet formidable bard of rage, Palpatine— whether portrayed by Ian McDiarmid or voiced by Clive Revill— is about as perfect an embodiment of a toxic Will to Power as the movies have ever seen: a creature satisfied with nothing less than dominion over the Galaxy itself. The special effects in so many of George Lucas’ movies are, all these years later, rather laughable (if still loveable), and Palpatine’s get-ups are no different. But, as with all of the characters in all the Star Wars movies, the quality of the Emperor’s cheesy, costume-store guises often appears to be inversely proportional to the audience’s degree of delight at the onscreen proceedings.
Of all the plush, purple, huggable and irredeemable villains in all of movie history, Lots-O’-Huggin’ Bear is the plushest, purplest, most huggable. And the one most clearly without any hope of redemption. As voiced by the great Ned Beatty, Lotso is, at first, a mellow, comforting presence: a strawberry-scented guide for Woody, Buzz, and the rest of the toys as they navigate their confusing new home at the Sunnyside Daycare Center. Before long, though, Lotso’s true colors come through. Untrustworthy and ruthless, the bear has a tragic back story— he was (he believes) heartlessly abandoned by the little girl who once owned him— but even the cruelest personal history can’t mitigate his level of malice. With his coterie of sycophants and his deceptively easy-going Southern accent, Lotso brings to mind Strother Martin’s sadistic Captain in Cool Hand Luke: a jailer and leader who pretends he wants to be loved, but is far happier being feared.
Rico says he hasn't (and won't) see all these films, but there are some splendid villains out there...
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