Great comments, Paula. I will have to hunt down that Gunsmoke episode. I've never seen it.pvitari wrote:Everyone mentioned so far, and...
Ben Johnson as Bob Amory in One-Eyed Jacks, of course. His first unrelenting villain and one of his best. Though when it comes to Ben's bad guys (and he played many of them through the years), the one that really shivers my timbers is his racist rapist in the Gunsmoke episode "Quint-Cident."
A whole slew of character actors in b-westerns -- Kenneth MacDonald, Pierce Lydon, Terry Frost, Harry Woods, etc. -- usually they were townie types with sinister slickster mustaches, backed up by a bunch of familiar faces playing their henchmen, guys like Charlie King, Roy Barcroft, Marshall Reed, and Lane Bradford (though I saw Bradford playing a nice guy just the other day). There are literally dozens of these fellows making trouble for the B-western heroes and virtually all of them are great fun to watch. The head villains and their boys (and sometimes their equally bad girlfriends whom they truly love) often form extraordinarily entertaining outlaw families with their own internal dramas and backstabbing.
Lee Marvin in The Man Who Was Liberty Valance. Oh, how I want to pound his face into that steak he throws on the floor! A walking id or superego or whatever you want to call it. He's a great big oversize demon baby.
Henry Fonda in Once Upon a Time in the West. The coldest blue eyes ever.
Bruce Dern. HE KILLED JOHN WAYNE. *gasp*
Glenn Ford in 3:10 to Yuma. One of those villains who uses the truth to screw with your head. Gives me the creeps. (Russell Crowe is pretty good in the remake, though the original is still by far the best.)
Charles Kemper in Wagon Master. That unctuous fake-polite tone masking a deep and abiding nastiness... ick! Kemper could play sweet fellas too... just a great all around character actor.
William S. Hart. He was bad... until he was good. Usually because he fell in love with a sweet young lady and he would then see the error of his ways.
Henry Fonda really scared me in OUATITW. Ooh. Baaaaaaaad man.