“The villain is the character that the people remember,” said actor Udo Kier, an icon of world cinema who’s carved out his own specific niche of Euro-flavored antagonists in a career spanning six decades. But remembrance, and inevitable reverence, for villains bears a divisiveness as we’re morally conditioned to demonize them.
The historical depiction of LGBTQ+ characterization, as with all disenfranchised groups, reflects the cultural casting of the “other” to the realm of the demimonde. As explored in Vito Russo’s book The Celluloid Closet, it appears there are few depictions worthy of celebration, as queerness itself was an automatic code for villainousness. Queer audiences were conditioned to the role of scavenger, devouring crumbs of potentially toxic reflections.
In retrospect, these depictions are still owed deference as stepping stones to an ever-evolving depiction of queer villains. Wickedness is merely a matter of perspective.
A constellation of significant cinematic queer villains suggest these characters reflect a more integrated spectrum of the human experience, clawing their way, often viciously, out of the closets and corners they were relegated to.
10. Jafar – Aladdin (1992)
During Disney’s formidable renaissance from the late 1980s through the 1990s, a significant villainous resonance shaped the formative years of millennial children. The inherent queerness of several iconic animated villains provides a subconscious resonance. Many of them represent a significant threat to not only the inherent power structures, but they are also resisting gender norms through attempting to destroy the fabric of the heterosexual heroes and their designated love interests. Ursula in The Little Mermaid (1989), Scar in The Lion King (1994) and Dr. Facilier of The Princess and the Frog (2009) all bear the inherent signature of this coding.
But lording over all of them is Jafar, voiced by gay actor Jonathan Freeman in 1992’s Aladdin, the vizier to the sultan who pursues the powers of a genie in a magic lamp to gain control of the kingdom. Cunning, abusive, murderous, and unabashedly bitchy, Jafar is a decadent, mascara-lined threat.
In a poorly administered 1994 sequel, The Return of Jafar, Freeman returns in somewhat inhibited fashion (though a nod to Jafar in Norma Bates drag from Psycho underlines his queerness).
9. The Oogie Boogie Man: The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) and Audrey II – The Little Shop of Horrors (1986)
Gay Black villains are few and far between, and more often than not flamboyant Black men have been relegated to comedic relief or asexual helpmates on hand solely to support the interests of heterosexual leads. But queer-coded voice work brought about several sensational characters in animated films, including the Oogie Boogie man voiced by Ken Page in The Nightmare Before Christmas, a portly menace depicted as a burlap sack filled with insects who has murderous intentions on Santa Claus.
A similar flamboyance defines the voice work of Levi Stubbs as the carnivorous alien Venus Fly Trap in Frank Oz’s Little Shop of Horrors (1986). Audrey II, named for the passive, eternally victimized lisper Audrey (Ellen Greene), the object of Rick Moranis’ affection, becomes the perverted catalyst uniting the meek romantics and then threatening to destroy them. Stubbs (a member of the Four Tops) imbues the all-consuming Audrey II with increasingly sinister pizzazz.
8. Dracula – Blood for Dracula (1974)
Vampirism and sexuality have always been synonymous, and queerness has long been part of the Dracula canon (specifically in Lambert Hillyer’s 1936 sequel Dracula’s Daughter, where Gloria Holden seems to be seeking a cure for her lesbianism as much as for her bloodlust).
But of all the countless iterations of Bram Stoker’s iconic bloodsucker, there’s perhaps no one who was better suited for plumbing perversion than Udo Kier in Paul Morrissey’s Blood for Dracula (1974), produced by Andy Warhol. In this version, the Romanian Count is far too recognizable to obtain the female virgin blood he needs to survive, leading his servant to arrange a trip to Italy to find a fresh supply of “wirgins.” There, he meets the two comely daughters of an aristocratic family (lorded over by Vittorio De Sica) who claim to be virgins but were long ago deflowered by Joe Dallesandro’s fox in the henhouse.
When Dracula drinks non-virgin blood he becomes violently ill, so Kier spends a lot of time regurgitating tainted hemoglobin. Kier dazzles as an otherworldly menace in constant agony trying to survive in a world which seemingly can no longer provide him sustenance. Maurice Yacowar, who wrote extensively on Morrissey’s filmography noted “In this corrupt world, sex means death to the romantic hero.”
7. Barbara Covett – Notes on a Scandal (2006)
The aptly named Barbara Covett, viciously portrayed by Judi Dench in Richard Eyre’s Notes on a Scandal (2006), is enamored with her beautiful younger colleague Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett), a new teacher at Barbara’s school. Barbara has secured a reputation as an impossible battle axe whom neither faculty nor students seem to enjoy. When Barbara discovers that Sheba is involved in a Mary Kay Letourneau scenario with a student, Barbara sees an opportunity to wield power over the younger woman for whom she’s developed romantic designs. Of course, this toxic love triangle can’t survive the instability and impatience of Barbara’s desires, and her gaslighting eventually backfires.
6. Jo Courtney – Walk on the Wild Side (1962)
Edward Dmytryk gave us the first blatant, full-blown lesbian predator in American cinema with Walk on the Wild Side (1962). Barbara Stanwyck’s New Orleans brothel madame Jo Courtney recruits troubled young women for her 1930s flesh menagerie. Not unlike Judi Dench, she’s sexually obsessed with a younger, beautiful woman who she hasn’t been able to completely control… yet. Having rescued starving artist Capucine off the streets, Stanwyck tries to keep her victim in a gilded cage at the Doll House. Her tenuous control over the depressive artist is upset when a previous lover, Laurence Harvey, comes knocking. But Jo, whose name is not her only masculine characteristic, has no intention of letting her bird fly away. The anguish of Stanwyck remains potent, and deriding her legless husband (metaphorically suggesting the ultimate emasculation) sparks her brief monologue about the uselessness of men.
5. Aileen Wuornos – Monster (2003)
Charlize Theron won an Oscar for Best Actress in portraying serial killer Aileen Wurnos, a prostitute who murdered seven men from 1989 to 1990. Several documentaries have detailed the crimes, but Patty Jenkins’ directorial debut Monster delves into the significant trauma which shaped Aileen, a sexually abused child destined for tragedy.
We meet Wuornos just as she’s begun a tenuous relationship with Selby (Christina Ricci, playing a fictionalized version of Tyria Moore) when a brutal kidnapping and rape leads Aileen to murder in self-defense. However, a door has been opened, allowing her to wreak vengeance for the decades of abuse she’s endured, ultimately leading to her capture and conviction. Jenkins allowed Aileen to be viewed as both victim and victimizer, and while her actions are reprehensible, it’s the portrait of a societal outcast who found the love and affection she needed a bit too late to turn the beat around.
Theron and Ricci are exceptional in their tenuous romantic development, swooning into intimacy at a roller rink sequence set to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing.”
4. Emily/Warren – Homicidal (1961)
Arguably, Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 classic Psycho is one of the most famous queer-coded characters of all time, even if his gender dysphoria is somewhat ambiguously defined as the resulting consequence of an abusive, overbearing mother who stymied his sexuality. In the wake of Hitchcock’s juggernaut, William Castle’s blatant rip-off, Homicidal, would inadvertently present a narrative more accidentally progressive. A beautiful blonde woman named Emily murders a justice of the peace during a rushed procurement for a marriage license. What follows is a sordid tale about forced transgenderism catalyzed by misogyny and greed, for Emily has lived most of her life as a wealthy gentleman named Warren. Their father demanded his wife give birth to a boy, creating a vicious masquerade which would warp Warren/Emily. Silly and sleazy, Castle was capitalizing on Hitchcock’s success while incorporating various elements of the tabloid flurry surrounding the sex reassignment of Christine Jorgensen.
The result is an early portrayal of trans visibility. The actress Joan Marshall (credited as Jean Arless) portrays both Emily and Warren, but Castle’s subterfuge in the credits is indeed misleading, and he unintentionally (and superficially) gave us a non-binary villain who was irreparably warped by the misogynist dictates of a patriarchal monster.
3. Tom Ripley – The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)
There have been several classic adaptations of Patricia Highsmith’s iconic identity thief Tom Ripley, but Anthony Minghella’s sumptuous 1999 version, The Talented Mr. Ripley is a masterclass in queer identity switching. Matt Damon headlines, in one of the best performances of his career, as a meek blank slate whose repressed desires in 1950’s Italy bring him to murdering the handsome playboy (Jude Law) he idolizes. But the trouble with murder is it often leads to more, and so a serial killer is born. Gwyneth Paltrow and Cate Blanchett are the innocent women caught up in Damon’s scheming, each examples in their own way of how women become the collateral damage in the rippling (or, rather, Ripley-ing) effects of homophobia’s lasso.
2. Sebastian Venable – Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)
One of the most notable queer villains in cinematic history was an invisible one, unfairly reduced to a regressive trope in the vein of Frankenstein’s monster within the context of The Celluloid Closet. But Sebastian Venable, the murdered, cannibalized specter haunting Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly, Last Summer was a prescient trailblazer of intersectionality within the queer community. A white, elitist poet uses his codependent mother Katharine Hepburn as a honeypot to attract men, but when she ages out of her usefulness he employs cousin Elizabeth Taylor on his annual summer stint of sex tourism. When he’s literally consumed by his victims, Taylor returns home traumatized, her aunt threatening to lobotomize her.
The truth is eventually revealed, but it’s how director Joseph L. Mankiewicz visualizes Sebastian which remains potent and provocative. In 1959, the word “homosexuality” was not allowed to be uttered thanks to the Hays Code, so amongst all the innuendo and coded language, Sebastian is a headless body appearing in Taylor’s memory flashbacks. The collective anxieties which didn’t allow for visual representation of Sebastian echo early film restrictions of Jesus Christ, whose personification by a mortal man was deemed blasphemous.
1. Lydia “Linda” Tar – Tár (2022)
There’s as much to admire as there is to criticize in Lydia Tar, the self-made conductor in Todd Field’s formidably staged character study Tar (2022). Cate Blanchett eclipses the entirety of an impressive career as this aspirational monster, showcasing the ultimately corrupting essence of power. Having risen through her niche world as one of the most celebrated contemporary composer-conductors, she’s on the verge of a major career feat. Frightening all the men in her wake, who avoid or admire her, Lydia has all but forgotten her wife (played by Nina Hoss) and child through her various affairs with young female musicians who idolize her. But when a young woman she jilted kills herself, Lydia’s predatory nature begins to hobble her reputation.
Not unlike Sebastian Venable, Lydia Tar reflects the warping progress of privilege and absorbed assimilationist tendencies. As such, Lydia Tar is evidence of how cinematic villainy reflects changing attitudes and cultural progress, a lesbian who seizes control without a clapperboard demanding moral disapprobation.
