The 411 Movies Top 5 11.11.11: Week 295 - Hottest Movie Villains

Posted by Trevor Snyder on 11.11.2011

From Michelle Pfeiffer in Batman Returns and Megan Fox in Jennifer's Body to Famke Janssen in GoldenEye, January Jones in X-Men: First Class and more, the 411 staff ranks the 5 hottest movie villains of all-time!



Regular readers of this column might have noticed that I usually try to theme each week's topic with that week's biggest new movie release. So this week I sat here for about ten minutes trying to think of a good topic that would tie into Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar, before finally just giving up and deciding to dust off an old Internet standby - hot chicks. And so, without further ado:

THE TOP 5 HOTTEST MOVIE VILLAINS

TREVOR SNYDER

5. Lola (Kate Nauta), in The Transporter 2
Sure, the first Transporter was a pretty decent flick, but let's not forget that the centerpiece moment of the film was when Jason Statham stripped off his shirt and covered himself in oil before fighting a gang of burly guys. When it came time for the sequel, the filmmakers thankfully understood that maybe they should offer up a little eye candy from the other side of the spectrum, too. Enter Lola, the badass assassin who, for no reason other than the awesome images it results in, prefers to go about her deadly business wearing nothing more than pink underwear. Practical? Probably not. Awesome? Oh yeah.






4. Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman), in Batman & Robin
Uma Thurman is one of those hard to figure out actresses that looks great sometimes, and other times, well, not so great. But she's in top-form in Joel Schumacher's otherwise lamentable Batman & Robin. Thurman seems to understand how corny everything around her is, so she goes deliciously over-the-top, cranking up her character's villainous sexuality to silly, but effective extremes. Her performance, and appearance, is one of the very bright spots awarded to those who dare to sit through the film.






3. Madison Lee (Demi Moore), in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle
A lot of the hype surrounding the second Charlie's Angels film centered on the return of Demi Moore, who had been spending the last few years in a self-imposed acting sabbatical. That attention was paid off when viewers actually got a look at the 40-year-old Moore, who looked fantastic in the movie. In fact, she looked even better than her three younger co-stars. Watching this film, it's really no surprise that Moore was able to get a husband half her age.






2. Sil (Natasha Henstridge), in Species
The idea of sleeping with an alien might sound like a gross one, but present an alien that looks like Natasha Henstridge, and suddenly I think you'd have a lot of guys stepping up in the name of "scientific exploration." Wait, what's that you say? She kills you while mating with you? Hmmm…you know, it's actually going to take me a little bit to decide if that's really a deal-breaker.






1. Jennifer Check (Megan Fox), in Jennifer's Body
I guess it's not cool to like Megan Fox anymore. As an online personality, I'm only supposed to talk about her with disdain. But forget that – I've really got nothing against her, and I'll gladly watch her in this underrated horror-comedy again and again. After all, no matter how you might feel about her or her undeniable overexposure, let's not pretend she doesn't look fantastic in this movie. In fact, this is probably the last time she looked this great, before she went just over to the wrong side of the plastic surgery highway. Anyway, this is about Fox being turned into an evil man-eater blah blah blah, she's hot. That is all.

BRYAN KRISTOPOWITZ

5. Helen Downing (Annie Potts), in Who's Harry Crumb? (1989)
I've had a major crush on Annie Potts ever since I saw her as the slutty, gold digging nymphomaniac Helen Downing in the John Candy classic Who's Harry Crumb?. She isn't a pleasant person at all. She wants to kill her rich husband and make it look like an accident so she can get all of his money and run off with her boyfriend Vince Barnes, played by Tim Thomerson. She really doesn't give a flip about her kidnapped stepdaughter Jennifer. She treats pretty much everyone around her like dirt. She's just an evil, awful person. And yet she's incredibly attractive. It's probably the whole nymphomaniac thing. I mean, if she's willing to have sex with Eliot Draisen, the slime bag played by Jeffrey Jones, that means she'd probably have sex with me. Who the heck wouldn't want to have sex with a character played by Annie Potts? That black bra she wears in that one scene is pretty awesome, too.






4. Holly Thompson (Meg Foster), in They Live (1988)
We don't find out that Meg Foster's Holly Thompson is a villain until the very end of John Carpenter's classic They Live when she reveals to Roddy Piper's John Nada, Keith David's Frank, and the audience that she's in cahoots with the scumbag free enterpriser aliens, so it's kind of hard to "like" her at all. But, when it comes to Meg Foster it's hard to stay mad at her for long. Those beautiful blue eyes are goddamn hypnotic. She had a pretty decent body back in the 1980's, too, so there's that. But those eyes are the key to falling for her. You just don't want to stop looking at them.

Well, at least I don't.




3. Eve (Joan Severance), in See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989)
Joan Severance's Eve is one evil bitch. She works for a psychopathic blind guy that likes to steal rare coins that aren't rare coins (watch the movie to find out what the heck the "coin" is), she has no problem shooting sweaty fat guys in public (or innocent blind and deaf guys for that matter), and she hangs out with a smarmy Kevin Spacey with an "English" accent. She also likes to tease men with itchy noses. But then, she has killer legs, always wears a short skirt, and she looks absolutely fabulous naked. Those three things help balance out all of the evil stuff she's responsible for.

I'm sorry. I'm a sucker for a woman in a short skirt.




2. Lash (Musetta Vander), in Oblivion (1994)
Like everyone else on this list, Musetta Vander's Lash is an absolutely horrendous human being. She's selfish, mean-spirited, and she uses a whip to hurt and intimidate people. That's just awful stuff. But then, with that jet black hair, that wonderful rack, and that beautifully devilish face you can forgive her generally bad attitude, at least for a little while. It also doesn't hurt that she knows she's incredibly hot. It's always nice to meet confident people. She'd never give me the time of day, which the rational person in me says is a good thing (if she doesn't kill me for sport or whatever her weird beard alien boyfriend no doubt would). The romantic moron in me, though, is pissed that she won't, at least, give me a look. I think I'll have to win the galactic lottery or something to get a shot with her. She looks like the kind of gal that "responds" to money.




1. Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer), in Batman Returns (1992)
Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman is all about two things: that skintight leather outfit that accentuates every curve, and that gnarly, "I don't give a fuck" attitude that she develops after being pushed out that window. She looks fabulous, obviously, in that outfit. I can look at her all day long and never get bored. As for that attitude, that newfound aggressiveness and danger, it's just so alluring. So what if she draws you in and then stabs you in the side with her claws? You got to get close to her for that brief moment. That's what likely kept Batman interested.

LEONARD HAYHURST

5. January Jones as Emma Frost in X-Men: First Class (2011)
Emma Frost from the X-Men universe is inherently one of the sexiest and hottest female comic characters. While many cited that January Jones didn't have the natural ‘assets' to play her as portrayed in the comics, I think visually she did well (her actual acting in the movie could be considered one of the film's low points for me). What really helped with the hotness was the 1960s fashions as there is just something about big hair, low necklines and high skirts in that go-go dancer style that's good for some retro sexiness. Of course, the fact that her primary wardrobe is thigh high boots and lingerie goes a long way as well.






4. Lara Flynn Boyle as Serleena in Men in Black II (2002)
Sequels have to be close to the original, but don't want to repeat themselves. One of the best gags in the original was having an intergalactic cockroach walking around with human skin on as a disguise. So, in the sequel they do a similar gimmick, but in an opposite way. Here, a plant-like hydra disguises itself as a sexy lingerie model. The character obviously takes cues from old Russ Meyer movies with tight black leather and tentacles that serve to make Serleena a nasty kitten with a whip. Serleena is a maneater, literally.






3. Salma Hayek as Santanico Pandemonium in From Dusk ‘Til Dawn (1996)
You know you're a hot screen villain when after coming out of one of the most over the top vampire movies ever made everyone is asking who that one chick in that one scene was. Hayek is dancing in next to nothing with a snake around her neck and then lets a guy drink beer running off of her foot. I don't have a foot fetish like Quentin Tarantino, who plays the lucky guy in the scene, does, but even I have to admit that's hot. I would probably have the stunned expression he has on his face at the end of the dance on my mug as well. Then she turns into a vampire and bites his neck out. It was probably worth it. The sexiest part of Hayek in the scene is her hips, she knows how to use them and they look like they were drawn by an artist from Heavy Metal.






2. Famke Janssen as Xenia Onatopp from Goldeneye (1995)
This entire list could be Bond babes. I wanted to limit myself to one and Janssen just edges out Caroline Munro from The Spy Who Loved Me. Janssen has everything you want in a bad Bond babe. She's got that classic James Bond name, killer looks and body and she's psychotic to a spectacular degree. It's not that Onatopp enjoys pain or gets off on pain, it takes her to this whole other plane of ecstasy that normal humans can't fathom. Even as her entire body is slammed to death against a tree, she's probably having the biggest orgasm ever in recorded history. Danger is sexy and a woman who can squeeze you to death with her thighs while making love is about as far as you can go on the dangerously sexy scale.






1. Sharon Stone as Catherine Tramell in Basic Instinct (1992)
Sharon Stone went from toiling away in B-movies to being one of the biggest screen sexual icons of all time with just one performance. Hell, just from that one infamous interrogation scene that has been parodied a million times until this day was enough to put her on the Mount Rushmore of hot villains. You can tell how successful a movie is by how many imitators come after and tons of sexual thrillers littered the 1990s. The villainous vixens in those movies pale in comparison to Stone here, the very definition of icy blonde. Tramell was the type of sexual creature that had never been seen in movies before. There was an inherent power to her that she drew from her overt, stark sexuality and she loved to see people's reaction to it, as demonstrated in the interrogation scene. Michael Douglas, king of the sexual thrillers, dealt with a crazy bitch in Fatal Instinct, but Stone's performance here makes Gleen Close in that movie look like Disney princess.

JEREMY THOMAS

5. The T-X (Kristanna Loken), Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
Kristanna Loken burst into the world of fame with this role, which took the Terminator into a frighteningly sexy direction. The T-X was truly the perfect weapon to send back to the present modern day, as it could not only use it's high-tech assets but its guile and sex appeal to get where it needed to go. The T-1000 was a great facsimile of a person and the T-800 was a out-and-out killing machine, but this was a smarter and yet no less lethal Terminator. Loken knew exactly how to play this character and gave her just a bit of honest-to-goodness (or evilness) sex drive underneath the cold exterior. Check out where she analyzes John's blood with her tongue to see what I mean; that's a look of ecstacy when she realizes she has her target. Plus, you know, she has the ability to morph her hand into all sorts of attachments. That could come in handy.






4. Xenia Onatopp (Famke Janssen), GoldenEye
Famke Janssen has played lots of roles at this point and has injected a healthy dose of sex appeal into all of them. I almost put her on her twice between this and evil Phoenix in X-Men: The Last Stand but my disdain for the movie pushed it just a bit out of the top 5. Anyway, this was the role that brought her worldwide recognition and a deserved level of recognition it was as she played the kinkiest Bond girl/villain yet. Sure, doing the deed with her would lead to your death but what a way to go. The only reason that she isn't higher is that her M.O. doesn't exaclty let her partner finish, unless they're into autoerotic asphyxiation and I'm not.





3. Santanico Pandemonium (Salma Hayek), From Dusk Till Dawn
In most worlds, Salma Hayek would be hovering around #1 on my list of Hottest Just About Anything. On this list she's #3, but that's nothing against her hotness. Her table dance as Santanico Pandemonium is one of the hottest scenes of all-time, bar none. Hayek does this absolutely perfectly; there's no other way to put it. The only thing that drives it down the list is that she reveals herself to be a fairly monstrous vampire and that she treats those she lets stay alive like dogs, calling them "Spot." Still, even with that being the case I wouldn't be totally adverse to going "Arf, Arf."






2. Jennifer Check (Megan Fox), Jennifer's Body
I still feel that Jennifer's Body is one of those films that suffered horribly because, like most horror-comedies, it was mismarketed. It also had the bad luck of coming out when anti-Fox feelings were at an all-time high. Even if you don't like the film, you can't deny that Jennifer is one of the hottest movie monsters of all-time. Think about it...this is Megan Fox without the tattoos and the usual skankiness that she often gets accused of, and it's a Megan Fox that Brian Austin Green has never touched. The only downside is that she eats you, but there's always the chance you'll get some before that. I think that's worth the shot.






1. Kathryn Merteuil (Sarah Michelle Gellar), Cruel Intentions
Maybe not everyone's first choice, but for me there is no other. Sarah Michelle Gellar threw me (and everyone) for a complete loop with this role. I mean, this was Buffy. Buffy was, at this point, a girl fresh out of high school and while she wasn't virginal, she was still the good girl. Then Gellar takes this turn as a flat-out evil, drug-using seductress who manipulates and sleeps her way to everything she wants. She makes a bet with her stepbrother and offers to sleep with him if she loses. That's pretty twisted for the girl who just a year earlier had been a a sexually-novice Vampire Slayer. Gellar is fantastic in the role and just to-die-for, Oh God I'll Do Anything For A Piece of That Hot. End of story, no contest to me. Kathryn is your hottest movie villain.

Agree with our choices? Disagree? Be sure to share your thoughts and your own Top 5's below. And don't forget to include suggestions for future Top 5 columns...we're always looking for the next great list.

Till then, be sure to check out Trevor Likes Movies, my personal movie review page at Facebook, as well as the rest of the great columns on 411.

See you next week with a brand new topic.