Least effective villain?

You people can’t fool me. That is clearly Gob Bluth with just a smidge more meat on his bones.

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John Mikl-Thor was in Zombie Nightmare and actually thought “I need to do something dumber.”

Imagine thinking that for a moment. Keep thinking about it until you go insane.

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The police man in Why Don’t They Look? is the least effective villain.

Listen, brother. His goal was to ruin the fun of those teenagers. He gave a three day lecture about not doing fun things on the road but they went out and did fun things on the road anyway. He was foiled instantly. All that work boring people for nothing.

Then the train came and killed 2/3 of the teenagers. If they hadn’t been having fun waving at each other, they would have seen the train.

But, if you think about it, the police man killed those teenagers. If he hadn’t delayed the youngest one with his boring lecture, the youngest teenager would have been down the road and across those tracks days before the train came by and the older two wouldn’t have been there to wave at him instead of watching the road.

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I think he’s a Dollar Tree version of Willem Dafoe. But that’s my two cents on the matter.

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I don’t feel like Satan in Jody Goes Walnuts is much of a villain. Is that really the only new recruit he made in that whole county since the 19th Century witch-burning?

Another fan pointed out elsewhere that Melissa didn’t get much done, either. She was immortal, eternally young, all that jazz. Why didn’t she make like the bad wife in Chehkov’s In The Ravine and build herself a local empire on the bodies of her in-laws and their offspring? (And Aksinya would’ve eventually passed away, which was something Melissa didn’t have to deal with so long as she kept delivering the Prince of Lies his goods.)

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I gotta stop telling Annalee my best theories during poker night…

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A theory circulated back around the turn of the (21st) century was that when Democrats were ascendant, zombies became popular (fear of the masses), and when Republicans were ascendant, it was vampires (fear of elite).

The conclusion being if Libertarians ever were ascendant, we’d get a lot of werewolf movies.

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Struggling through The She-Creature again since it’s part of the Gizmoplex vault. It strikes me yet again that Lombardi is a really sucky villain. Ironically, Crow as peddler of his likeness is considerably more menacing and memorable. Part of the issue is that every male character in this film is a half-aSLEEEEP sleazebag with super-annoying verbal tics as a stand-in for actual personality (except for King). So it makes him fade into the background even when we’re supposed to be in awe of his powers. Also, it’s just bad writing that he uses the bland proxy of a bland proxy to do the actual murders. (Most of which appear to be random and have zilch to do with any personal feelings on his part.) Finally, with the pomade and wattles he always looks like he’s returning from a kid’s birthday party where he was upstaged by a teenager in a Barney suit.

As evil magicians go, gimme’ Lodak from The Magic Sword: better wardrobe, better motivations, and wayyyy more overall panache. Even if he also lost at the end, as bad guys always must.

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I don’t know. Ol’ Scratch came out on top in Touch of Satan.

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But he’s up against a really incompetent “hero”, so it’s only fair. :wink:

What’s more the shame is that the actor playing him is about the only one in the film with any chops (though Marla English holds her own too). But his motivations are either opaque or nonexistent, and he’s surrounded by actors who are slightly less expressive than King Friday XIII.

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He set his sights pretty low there, though. (I think I mentioned as much upthread.)

Community-theater Satan from The Undead and X-Mas Pitch? Now there were some fellas who were happy in their work!

Hard disagree about English. She looks bored to death most of the time she’s not asleep or hypnotized. Which makes sense given what she had to work with. I think Kathy Downs as the society lady who’s inexplicably drawn to Dr. Mumbles is the only one who came off well. (Which is interesting given that the end of her film career was about two years away.)

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Maybe I’m reading into Marla English’s performance, but I saw it as working with what little she was given and selling it. But I definitely agree about Kathy Downs, she was believable as well.

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While I’m sure it’s unintentional, he feels like someone who thinks he’s big league, but really isn’t. He does have a gimmick, but no idea of how to utilize it properly, so he just wields his creature summoning ability in either random or petty ways. It’s the older smug guy who has a plan to make money.

Also, it felt like the script might have had an idea of a subplot of Carlo seducing the original ‘love interest debutante’ as his purpose for staying at the house. I swear he checked out the blonde once or twice and was weirdly insistent about staying there despite there being no reason for it, outside of an open bar. But nothing comes of it, and the movie is probably better for it. It risks dragging if it was any longer.

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[nod] A scriptwriter armed with more than a pencil stub and bar napkins might even have set up a plot twist where we thought the Creature was set loose by the assistant, but it was really by the society girl instead. (And I feel like that needlessly complicated chain of creation only happened because there was no budget for an actual transformation from modern woman to monster. :confused: )

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Holy cow, that makes a lot of sense! That would have been a good complication, though I agree it might have been difficult to shoehorn in with everything else. They could have dropped the go-nowhere scene with the scientific demonstration to make room for this, would have been better I suspect.

Or what if the subject is merely a focus, and the she-creature is a materialisation of Lombardi’s own id? It could be a manifestation of his misogyny and issues with women. I think there’s scope for a modern redo of the film along these lines (rather than the murder-mermaid of the actual remake).

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“Murder-Mermaid” IS a great title, though.

Feeling all fired up now like Crow & Tom writing their Girl In Lovers Lane fanfic.

“Yeah! And then-- then the Leech Woman and the Dark Viking Priestess DON’T die and they all get together for coffee and stuff!!”

“Yeah and then they have a cool show and YOU lead them from afar like Charlie!”

“Yeah!!”

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Or you could have them host a roundtable show. It would be like The View, only with more likeable women.

Shades of Forbidden Planet here, which isn’t something to be ashamed of (and so we come back to The Tempest again).

The resolution could come as it was discovered that the she-creature’s targets were all for one reason or another (at least in his mind) a threat to Lombardi’s relationship with/dominance of Andrea.

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an episode I have seen more times than I can count, yet can recall less of what actually transpires than the Bots can regarding City Limits

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KITTY! :paw_prints:

Banked turns. :toothbrush:

Easy-Spirit™ Pumps. :sandal:

Roast-Your-Own-Pineapple!! :pineapple:

That’s all anyone needs to know.

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