Seven Psychopaths, the new exercise in bad taste from the enfant terrible of black comedy Martin McDonagh hit screens last week. To celebrate Hollywood’s interest in the psychotically-inclined, we’ve compiled a list of cinematic crazies. While the appearance of a good villain can make for a memorable experience at the flicks, it’s the truly psychotic ones that leave a lasting impression; whether the calculated callousness of Se7en’s John Doe, or the histrionic menace of The Dark Knight’s Joker. Let’s revel in the madness for a moment.
Norman Bates- Psycho
The original, the most famous, and perhaps the only one that will remain an immortal symbol of insanity, Hitchcock’s boy-next-door schizoid Norman Bates represented the madness hiding in ordinary prosaic and humdrum small towns. Inspired by notorious serial-killer and grave robber, Ed Gein (who also provided the basis for nasties like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Silence of the Lambs), Bates also had a bit of a mommy complex.
Psycho-babble: “It’s not like my mother is a maniac or a raving thing. She just goes a little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven’t you?”
Francis Begbie- Trainspotting
“Begbie didn’t do drugs. He just did people”. Robert Carlyle positively oozes violence as bug-eyed sociopath Franco Begbie, the man with a hair-trigger temper who can only express himself through profanity-laced aggression (with a distinct indecipherable Schemie twang) and full on explosions of carnage. But he’s a mate, you know, so what can you do?
Psycho-babble: “Armed robbery. With a replica. I mean, how the fuck can it be armed robbery with a fucking replica?”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8YT9Zs-NJo
Anton Chigurh- No Country for Old Men
The personification of evil has a bowl haircut it would seem. Terrifying. His name may be pronounced ‘sugar’ but Javier Bardem’s unstoppable hitman is anything but sweet. With an inventive choice of weaponry (a captive bolt pistol being his main tool) and a twisted code of ethics (coin toss, friend-o), Chigurh murders without remorse criminals, lawmen and innocent people alike. As Cormac McCarthy’s novel contained barely any descriptive details about the character, the Coens and Bardem opted to give him an eerily unplaceable accent, making it seem as though he “comes from nowhere”.
Psycho-babble-: “Would you hold still, please, sir?”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYoNJ4Sv2fU
Asami Yamazaki- Audition
It’s the perfect idea in theory: in order to avoid all the awkwardness and pressure of dating, you hold a fake “audition” for the role as “the wife” in a film, and take your pick from the female hopefuls. The brainchild of widower Shigeharu’s producer friend, the plan goes swimmingly at first, leading to some face-to-face time with the shy and demure Asami. But when it turns out that she’s more than a little bit mentally unhinged and keeps a vomit eating half-corpse in a burlap sack in her sitting room, things take a turn for the nasty. Madcap cult director Takeshi Miike gives us a breezy romantic drama for the first hour before taking us all the way to hell. Asami’s innocent “kiri, kiri, kiri” refrain is also the noughties answer to nazi dentist Dr. Szell’s “Is it safe?” from seventies chiller Marathon Man. Horrible stuff.
Psycho-babble: “Words create lies. Pain can be trusted.”
Tommy DeVito- Goodfellas
Probably the most irredeemable character to ever grace screens, the clown prince of cruelty Tommy DeVito was magnetically portrayed by Joe Pesci (whose performance was so good that it forever doomed him to typecasting). What makes the callous and wayward Tommy so frightening is his air of dangerous unpredictability that dominates the whole film; Trigger-happy one moment, amusing and charismatic the next. But Pesci doesn’t play this as a one-note character and Tommy’s insane propensity for violence is coupled with a total devotion to his elderly mother, who gleefully prepares dinner for her son’s crew as the corpse of Billy Batts lies in the car boot in her driveway. The last frame of the film sees Tommy turn his gun on the camera and pull the trigger, warning us to withhold our judgements on the gangster’s evil actions, because we’d choose his glamorous lifestyle too, given half a chance (and a complete lack of empathy).
Psycho-babble: “Just don’t go busting my balls, Billy, okay?”
Annie Wilkes- Misery
Kathy Bates’ genuinely unsettling, faintly comic performance as lonely nurse Annie Wilkes earned her an Oscar in 1990, and her transformation from life-saving carer to deluded torturer still curdles the blood to this day. When famed novelist Paul Sheldon crashes his car and injures himself in the middle of nowhere, the cheerily disturbed Ms. Wilkes takes him in and begins to nurse him back to health. But it turns out that she’s a bit of a fan of Sheldon’s characters and is not best pleased on discovering he’s about to kill one of them off. The film descends into a psychotic love story and what starts as unnerving hospitality eventually grows into a terrifying, unpredictable rage, culminating in the infamous “hobbling” scene. It might take a few minutes to get onto your feet after this one.
Psycho-babble: “I am your number one fan. There is nothing to worry about. You are going to be just fine. I am your number one fan.”
Patrick Bateman- American Psycho
While the film may seem somewhat restrained in comparison to Bret Easton Ellis’s source novel (It’d take a brave filmmaker to attempt “The Rat” on screen), it manages to capture the books scathing satire of Reagen-era yuppies and their shallow, consumer- driven lifestyles. At the centre of all this is Patrick Bateman; narcissistic, rich, misogynistic and completely deranged. Christian Bale trained for several months to achieve Bateman’s male model physique and apparently even took some inspiration from the dead eyed intensity of Tom Cruise. Director Mary Harron places particular focus on the novels black humour, which stems from Bateman’s obsession with the mundane banalities of his privileged life. One scene sees him have a catastrophic meltdown over a colleague’s superior business card, before getting the man drunk and joyously hacking him to pieces. What’s great about the scene is that after the horrific murder, Bateman inhales a deep breath, savouring the vile chemicals in his brain, before a celebratory cigar. All to the tune of Hip to be Square.
Psycho-babble: “There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman; some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me: only an entity, something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable… I simply am not there.”
