Film director Walter Hill once described Westerns as “a stripped-down moral universe that is, whatever the dramatic problems are, beyond the normal avenues of social control and social alleviation of the problem.” It’s a fitting description of a genre that, perhaps more than any other, presents good and evil in pretty binary terms.
In Westerns, the law is often corrupt, justice is just a matter of who can draw fastest, and the men who claim to uphold order are frequently just as dangerous as the outlaws they hunt down. Western villains are among the most memorable in all of cinema, primarily because of this. There’s often little attempt to explain away their actions or justify their behavior. Sometimes, they really are just plain evil. Here are seven of the best Western movie villains of all time.
7
Sheriff Cobb – Silverado
1985
Silverado is not a perfect film. It’s full of cheesy dialogue and familiar clichés, but it also has an infectious sense of fun, a rousing score, and some excellent performances from its ensemble cast. One of the standout actors is Brian Dennehy, who plays the grinning, corrupt Sheriff Cobb and turns law enforcement into a protection racket. What makes Cobb such a great villain is his relationship with Silverado’s Paden. The two men were once friends, and there’s a sense that he might have once been a decent man, or at least someone capable of genuine friendship. Even when he does reprehensible things, the connection between the two lingers right until the final shootout, where Cobb laments: “This used to be a quiet town.”
Of course, none of this stops Cobb from murdering, torturing, and kidnapping anyone who stands in the way of cattle baron McKendrick. He carries out these acts with a jackal grin and even retains a morbid sense of humor that makes him ever-likeable, bemoaning the presence of the heroes by saying: “I’m running out of deputies.” His coldest scene is where he shoots disgruntled employee Kelly ostensibly in self-defense, and Silverado subtly shows how Cobb prepares for the attack, drinking his coffee with his left hand and waiting for Kelly to approach him before gunning him down and barely spilling a drop. It’s a wonderful, brutal moment that reveals just how calculating Cobb really is. He might disarm you with his charming smile, but there’s no illusion that he is a stone-cold killer.
6
Angel-Eyes – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
1966
Lee Van Cleef’s rat-faced snarl made him a go-to heavy in Hollywood Westerns, and he gave memorable turns in classic movies like High Noon, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and Ride Lonesome. In Spaghetti Westerns, though, he was largely cast against type, instead occupying the roguish mentor figure — usually an outlaw or bounty hunter who takes on a paternal role for the young hero. He played variations on this role in For A Few Dollars More and The Big Gundown. His role as Sentenza in Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is the exception — and he makes the most of it.
Nicknamed Angel-Eyes in the English-language version, Sentenza is a professional killer hunting a stash of buried Confederate gold, trying to locate it before Blondie, “The Good,” and Tuco, “The Ugly.” While the other two spend most of the time bickering, double-crossing one another, and scrambling to stay alive, Sentenza pursues his objective with cold, methodical determination. What makes him such an effective villain is his nonchalant approach to murder. In his opening scene, he calmly extracts information from a man who tries to buy his life, only for Sentenza to explain: “When I’m paid, I always see the job through.” He kills the man and his sons without hesitation, then demonstrates that his own sense of loyalty is rather more flexible than he let on, repeating this mantra when he kills the man who hired him.
Sentenza is more than a simple gunman, too. He manages to finagle his way into the Union Army, adopting the identity of a Union Officer to infiltrate a prison camp to get closer to the gold. While other characters rely on quick draws, subterfuge, and a lot of luck, he is happy to manipulate an entire military operation if it gives him an advantage. His interrogation of Tuco, where he uses his position to subject the captured outlaw to a brutal beating, is the most harrowing scene of the film. Van Cleef’s performance is wonderfully malevolent — he doesn’t have many lines, but that callous smile and intense stare make him more intimidating than many villains.
5
Jack Wilson – Shane
1953
Jack Palance isn’t in many scenes in the classic Western Shane, but he creates such a lasting impression that he was immediately announced as one of Hollywood’s most memorable villainous actors. Director George Stevens’ creative editing choices make Wilson an almost supernatural presence, a figure of menace whose arrival signifies a real escalation in the hostilities between the homesteaders and the greedy cattle barons. He rides into town on a huge, hulking horse, a dreadful harbinger of things to come.
Later, as he crosses the saloon, Stevens uses a dissolve to give Wilson’s movement an eerie, almost ephemeral quality. Even the town’s dog recognizes the danger he represents. It’s as if the entire town can sense that something terrible has arrived. The scene where Wilson goads farmer Frank “Stonewall” Torrey into drawing against him is the coldest in Shane. Torrey is simply no match for Wilson, and the killing is less a fair fight than a calculated murder. Wilson even taunts Torrey before killing him, turning the encounter into a public humiliation. Palance makes Wilson a terrifying presence in Shane because he never needs to prove himself. His reputation precedes him, and everyone knows exactly why he is in town.
4
Ben Vandergroat – The Naked Spur
1953
Robert Ryan is one of the great unheralded actors of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Over his career, he played all sorts of characters, but it’s invariably his villains that endure. His most famous Western role is probably the strangely noble antagonist of The Wild Bunch, but in Anthony Mann’s The Naked Spur, he got the chance to play a really nasty piece of work.
Initially, it feels like the two lead actors are playing against type, with James Stewart playing the craggy bounty hunter Howard Kemp, and Ryan playing the charming, amiable fugitive Ben Vandergroat. However, it doesn’t take long for Vandergroat to show his true colors. Much of The Naked Spur revolves around the tension between the men escorting Vandergroat and the question of who will ultimately claim the bounty. Kemp is accompanied by an aging prospector and a volatile cavalryman, and Vandergroat quickly learns how to exploit the distrust and resentment that is already simmering between them. He quietly observes and waits, while planting doubts whenever he sees an opportunity. He undermines Kemp’s authority and encourages the others to turn against each other, until he spots an opportunity to make a break for it.
The most chilling thing about Vandergroat is how casually he kills when he gets loose. He convinces the prospector to free him by promising a hoard of gold, then ruthlessly shoots him in cold blood while smiling. It’s a chilling moment because Vandergoat never loses the amiable tone in his voice. This combination of charm and ruthlessness makes him a much more interesting villain than the brooding, snarling villains Hollywood was churning out. In a film where everyone is motivated by greed, he is particularly adept at finding the weaknesses among his group and turning them to his advantage.
3
Frank – Once Upon a Time in The West
1968
The story of Henry Fonda’s casting in Once Upon a Time in the West has become the stuff of film legend. Fonda was known for playing decent, principled men, so casting him as the villain in Sergio Leone’s Western epic was a deliberate attempt to subvert audience expectations. As Henry Fonda himself recalled, Leone wanted the camera to pan around Frank, and as it revealed his face, the audience would shout: “Holy s***, it’s Henry Fonda!” The result is one of the all-time great villain introductions: Frank and his gang ambush a family, killing the adults before Frank steps forward and murders the youngest boy. Leone is a genius for using the audience’s trust in Fonda’s screen persona to make Frank’s evil feel even more upsetting.
Frank is a hired gun working for a railroad baron, Morton, tasked with clearing the way for the expansion of the railroad. He has no particular interest in justice, honor, or even the personal satisfaction of a fair fight. He kills because he’s paid to, and does so with a chilling lack of hesitation or qualms. Fonda was surprisingly adept at portraying Frank’s malevolence, making him a slick operator while the threat of violence is never far away.
This ambition gives Frank an interesting added layer. He’s an unscrupulous killer, but he’s also a pragmatist who recognizes that his kind is dying out. Fonda plays the role with a cool, casual indifference. Frank rarely raises his voice, and his calmness makes his cruelty all the more unnerving. At least, he remains calm until the mysterious Harmonica (Charles Bronson) arrives, following him like a harbinger of death. In a film concerned with the death of the Old West and the arrival of a new age, Frank represents the old ways, trying desperately to adapt to the new world. The irony is that the very violence that makes him so effective is the same thing that prevents him from escaping his past.
2
Little Bill Daggett – Unforgiven
1992
Clint Eastwood’s seminal revisionist Western is one of the greatest the genre has ever produced, and Gene Hackman’s Oscar-winning performance as Little Bill is one of its greatest assets. Unforgiven’s Big Whiskey sheriff, Little Bill, sees himself as a man bringing order to a lawless town. The trouble is that his idea of justice is inseparable from his own violence, and he has convinced himself that almost anything he does in its name is justified.
Oddly, many of the best Western villains are lawmen, and Little Bill is one of the best despite, or perhaps because, he doesn’t actually think of himself as an antagonist. As he puts it in his last words, “I was building a house!” he just sees himself as making the best of his situation, doling out justice and brutality in equal measure. There is, at least initially, a logic to Little Bill’s violence. He brutally beats English Bob to dissuade other bounty hunters from visiting his town. Big Whiskey has rules, and he intends to enforce them. But the problem is that Bill’s rules ultimately amount to whatever he says they do. He decides who deserves punishment and how much violence is acceptable. He is a brutal character, and Hackman’s trademark chuckle makes his violence all the more disturbing.
His treatment of Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman) is where it becomes impossible to view him as anything but an evil character. After capturing him, Little Bill tortures him in an attempt to discover the whereabouts of William Munny, but the cruelty quickly takes on sadistic undertones. It becomes an exercise in dominance, as Bill whispers intimately to Ned in between beatings. He ultimately kills Ned and displays his corpse as a further warning. Little Bill’s chuckle, self-assurance, and apparent reasonableness all help him believe that he’s a decent man doing a difficult job. But his authority has become a convenient excuse for cruelty, and he cannot distinguish between maintaining order and protecting his own power. Hackman would later play a heightened version of this character in Sam Raimi’s The Quick And The Dead, but Little Bill is so much more disturbing because he has convinced himself that his own authority makes his violence legitimate.
1
Tigrero – The Great Silence
1968
The Great Silence is maybe the best Spaghetti Western not directed by Sergio Leone. It’s certainly one of the bleakest, most downbeat Westerns ever made, largely thanks to the gleefully evil villain, Tigrero. He’s a bounty hunter who operates under the cover of legitimacy, using the law to pursue his own interests while making a mockery of the justice he is supposed to represent.
On paper, Tigrero isn’t necessarily villainous at all. He is hired to hunt down outlaws hiding in the mountains and operates entirely within the boundaries of the law. In another film, he might even be a heroic bounty hunter who brings in dangerous fugitives hiding in the hills. But the outlaws are largely unarmed, or at least untrained with their weapons, and the warrants have all been issued by a corrupt local authority. Also, Tigrero has no intention of bringing his targets in alive, hiding behind paperwork and official approval while consistently ensuring that his victims never get the chance to defend themselves.
Tigrero’s unsettling, intense stare and barely contained malice make it evident that he derives genuine pleasure from the suffering of others. He doesn’t just kill his quarry because it pays well; he enjoys outwitting them, then using the law to justify his actions. In one of his cruelest moments, he gets the drop on the town’s kindly sheriff, and rather than shooting him, he shoots the ice beneath his feet, sending him to a freezing, watery grave. Kinski played his share of villains, in films like Aguirre and The Wrath of God, but Tigrero is arguably the most gleefully malevolent performance of his career. He embodies The Great Silence’s bleakest idea: that when the law itself is corrupt, then the people who exploit it are rendered virtually untouchable.
- Release Date
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January 27, 1969
- Runtime
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105 Minutes
- Director
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Sergio Corbucci
- Writers
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Sergio Corbucci, Vittoriano Petrilli, Mario Amendola, Bruno Corbucci, John Davis Hart, Lewis E. Ciannelli