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The Best...Bond villains

Donald Pleasence as Ernst Stavro Blofeld
  • Posted at 6:00pm
  • 17 September 2008
  • by AndrewDickson-RT
  • 4 comments

Bond villains. They're usually mad, they're frequently bad, and they're always dangerous to know. In the 21 Bond movies to date, there have been 24 assorted psychopaths and geniuses, each with a dastardly and often earth-threatening scheme. Their one shared goal is the destruction of 007, and the messier his demise, the better. Here's my rundown of the best Bond villains depicted on screen:

5. Karl Stromberg

Appearing in the over-the-top The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), Stromberg is best known for planning to destroy the world and build a new one underneath the sea. He doesn't get his hands dirty in the film, but looks effortlessly cool blowing up helicopters, feeding treacherous employees to sharks and unleashing the legendary Jaws, all from his cosy pad, Atlantis. To top it off, Stromberg has a suitably nonsensical disfigurement - a webbed hand.

4. Franz Sanchez

An unconventional choice, this, but bear with me. He may only be a drug dealer, but Robert Davi's chilling performance makes Sanchez, who appears in Licence to Kill (1989), a truly memorable villain. The genius of Davi's portrayal is in his unpredictability: one minute he's cracking a joke, the next, lowering a newly widowed Felix Leiter into a shark tank (am I detecting a recurring theme here?). Sanchez is a more realistic Bond villain than his predecessors.

3. Rosa Klebb

In one of the series's most iconic scenes, flame-haired Rosa Klebb, dressed as a chambermaid, lunges at a bemused Bond with spiked shoes. Priceless. Klebb doesn't aspire to conquer the world in From Russia with Love (1963), instead focusing on finding the mysterious Lektor device and killing Bond. Lotte Lenya steals every scene she's in, and the character has gone down in movie folklore, with the spiked-shoe scene being echoed recently in The Dark Knight (2008).

2. Ernst Stavro Blofeld

From 1967 to 1971, Ernst Stavro Blofeld appeared in three successive films, with both his appearance and personality differing wildly each time. He makes a great Bond villain by the sheer scale of his schemes, including starting a world war and using a laser to hold the world to ransom (he doesn't do things by half, does Blofeld). Bond fans wonder whether he'll ever return to the series, but having been dropped down a chimney in For Your Eyes Only (1981), it looks unlikely we'll ever see Bond's archenemy again.

1. Auric Goldfinger

"Do you expect me talk?" asks Bond, as a laser beam edges closer to cutting him in half. "No, Mr Bond!" replies gold smuggler Auric Goldfinger. "I expect you to die!" He's cold, he's ruthless and, as a Bond villain, he's absolutely perfect. German actor Gert Fröbe gives a mesmerising performance in the 1964 film Goldfinger, oozing evil at every turn. We might feel slight sympathy or compassion for other Bond villains, but not this one. Goldfinger also gets a great sendoff - he's sucked out of an aeroplane. As Bond villains go, could there be a better one?

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Comments

  • Posted on 20 October 2008
  • at 8:31pm
  • by Al

Have to agree on Sanches but Red grant also up there and kronstein has always been underated as a villian

  • Posted on 16 October 2008
  • at 6:06pm
  • by 007BS

Blofeld is tops on appearances alone but Goldfinger got the better lines and for an OTT performance let's not forget Elliot Carver in TND - his typing skills really get me going - "Let the mayhem begin !"

  • Posted on 18 September 2008
  • at 9:41am
  • by Ionaclio

Oh come on, let's have another woman in that list! What about Grace Jones as May Day in A View to a Kill, (1985)? As fellow assassin to Max Zorin she was a fearsome beast, but later changing sides and sacrificing her own life. Her scarey laughter on carrying out her wicked deeds, haunts me to this day!

  • Posted on 17 September 2008
  • at 9:45pm
  • by Zane

I think Max Zorin from 'A View to a Kill' should be up there. The guy was nuts!! The result of a genetic Nazi experiment, no less. And he hooked up with Grace Jones - Mayday. Now that is scary!!

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