10 Great Cinematic Sociopaths

In honor of the Joker, who truly sets the bar for crazy society upheaving id, I'm going to run down some other superb psychopaths on film.

10. Francis Begbie (Trainspotting)

If Renton is right and the Scottish are the “most wretched, miserable, servile, pathetic trash that was ever shat into civilization”, Francis “Franco” Begbie somehow manages to ooze below that bar. In a film of heroin junkies, Franco stands out as a beyond horrible person. His addiction is not smack, but violence and hurting people. He glees at the girl bleeding from the recent head wound or at any opportunity for a violent altercation. He is a uncaring and unsympathetic man, who sucks down everyone around him in his world of horrid. Even when Renton has kicked the habit, living clean and legitimate in London, it is Franco’s arrival, needing a place to hide from cops, that sends Renton back on self destructive habit.

Defining Moment: Tossing his empty beer glass over his shoulder to haphazardly start a bloody bar fight because, you know, nothing else was going on.

9. Mickey and Mallory Knox (Natural Born Killers)


As the title suggest this pair just likes to kill, plain and simple. Though I suppose it is important for a married couple to do things together.

Defining Moment: Escaping from jail and doubling their body count on live TV.









8. Henry (Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer)

Forced to watch his mom have sex with her clients, sometimes while dressed up as a girl, Henry finally snaps and murders her, though it’s very possible this a lie as he switches how he murdered her from strangulation to stabbing to shooting. The man doesn’t seem to take joy in killing or show an uncontrollable need to do it, but he is practiced in it enough to know how to school a friend in the finer art of avoiding detection.

Defining Moment: Proving in the final scene that he will always be a monster no matter what.

7. Anton Chigurh (No Country For Old Men)

The Coen Brothers have a knack for creating men who are a personification of unstoppable evil, and Anton Chigurh will no doubt be the most remembered of their chilling antagonists. Sure there’s the haircut, and of course the killing, but it’s more than that that makes him standout. It’s his demented smile when he’s strangling a cop with his handcuffs. It’s his unique use of killing with an air gun. It’s him sparing people’s lives based on the fate of the coin flips. These are the things that shock you when you first see it happen. That make veteran sheriff Tommy Lee Jones retire. That stick in your mind hours later, as you dreamily think about what he’s like in bed… uh… I mean… what?

Defining Moment: Killing the men who just hired him for no apparent reason.





6. Tommy Devito (Goodfellas)

It’s a sad case really. Being in an organization above the law he has a lot of freewill to just do what he wants. And he is in a constant state to prove his machismo against all the other mobsters to show how tough he is. Throw in a rather choleric persona, and we have a recipe for a lot of unnecessary and angry killings. Murdering on whims, keeping everyone around you so frightened they are afraid to compliment you less it be taken in the wrong way, and no one calls him on this. They are only pissed they have to keep on digging graves. He really is someone to be pitied. Poor, poor man.

Defining Moment: Killing the kid he previously shot in the foot while making him dance, because he sassed him.

5. Max Cady (Cape Fear)

I am of course talking about Robert Mitchum’s pitch perfect bad guy, not Robert DeNiro’s surprisingly inferior one. It’s practically awe inspiring how methodical this man gets in torturing the family of Gregory Peck’s Sam Bowden, the man who testified, putting him away. He stewed in prison learning the law in order to take his revenge within the letter of what is legal or at the very least to leave no evidence. The man instills fear, watching the family as they go bowling, hanging outside the daughter’s school, poisoning the family dog. And then he is able to file suit against the cops for harassment and provoke Gregory Peck into assaulting him. The man is frightening, of course being helped by Bernard Hermann’s spectacular leitmotif helps.

Defining Moment: The psychological torture of giving a mother the choice to have sex with him or allow her daughter to be raped, which he has no fear of reprisal because he doesn’t think Bowden would put his daughter on the stand to relive the experience, is the clincher.

4. Vic Vega (Reservoir Dogs)

Everything unravels during a caper for the hip criminals in Quentin Tarantino’s directorial debut. It is believed that one them is a cop and no one knows who to trust. Everyone’s a suspect. That is except for Mr. Blonde, because no one seems to think that a cop would go on an unnecessary shooting spree during the robbery (though to be fair if they hadn't done what he told them not to do, they'd still be alive). And certainly not be so calm about it to right afterward to grab a Kahuna burger, some fries, and a drink. Or you know kidnap a cop to torture. Mr. White is disgusted with him and with Joe for putting him on a job with the whack job. It takes a special breed of sick for cop killers to be pissed-off at just being in your presence.

Defining Moment: Everyone knows the scene. He starts off saying he doesn’t care what the cop says, he’s going to be tortured because “it’s amusing for [him] to torture a cop”. A jig to “Stuck in the Middle with You” by Stealers Wheel and a pan later, Vic Vega is talking into the cop’s dismembered ear and about to set him on fire.

3. Patrick Bateman (American Psycho)

Sure the man has an unquenchable urge to kill and revels in blood, but it’s this dude’s vanity that is the scariest thing. The man is on the burst of tears for fear he won’t get a good table at a restaurant, does hundreds of crunches and is on an anorexic diet, despite having Christian Bale's body, and feels the need the kill a fellow employee because people think he has a superior business card. He is so wrapped in the shallow New York business world of the 80s of bigger and better and flaunting it, the fact that he uses the murdered business partner’s apartment as rather messy treasure trove of Saran wrapped dissected bodies and has a carving utensils at the ready is the less disturbing thing. Though not be a whole lot. And on a side note, how does a nude man who chases a screaming and bloody prostitute with an equally bloody and screaming chainsaw through an apartment building not attract anyone’s attention? I mean at least someone yelling at them to keep it down.

Defining Moment: Enjoying his reflection in the mirror, while fucking two women.

2. Frank Booth (Blue Velvet)

God this guy is sick. And so creepy. I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared of a fictional character than I was of Frank Booth. And not just that this guy would gut me like a fish or put on lipstick and kiss me at a moment’s notice, but also because I was scared for him. I mean the dude really needs help. He has issues in that freaky way only David Lynch would think of and Dennis Hopper could pull off. And the guy manages to control everyone around him with no more than ballsy intimidation, forcing himself into someone’s home, making Kyle MacLachlan ride around and drink Pabst Blue Ribbon with him, and gently coercing a woman to be a party to his demented sex after kidnapping her husband and son. A true inspiration to the children.

Defining Moment: Inexplicitly switching from helpless infant to drug crazed sadist in one hell of a sex scene.

1. Alex DeLarge (A Clockwork Orange)

In a list full of sickos, murderers, sexual deviants, and people addicted to violence, it takes someone with a special characteristic on top of all that to true shine above. Alex DeLarge is that someone. Yes, the others murder and rape without remorse like he does, taking upmost happiness in pain and blood, but none of the others on this list reached their peak sociopathic tendencies at the age of 14. Stanely Kubrick’s adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s stunning world of a future of roving with teenage gangs doing what they will to whoever they will can send shivers down the most hardened spine. I mean this kid is so horrible Burgess had to invent a whole new word to describe his heightened level of depravity: ultra-violence. But it the scary idea isn’t that a kid who’s balls have just sprouted hair can do these things, it’s that the film tells us because it is his choice, it is better than an automation just doing what is right. You tell them that during your next murder trial.

Defining Moment: A stunning rendition of “Singin’ in the Rain” whilst violently crippling a man before gang-raping his wife.