Today I’ve been working on my little book (I am writing a children’s fantasy novel) and obsessing over villains and how to make them really, really scary. Well, I’ve been obsessing over this question for awhile now actually, as anyone who’s been a victim of my line of villain-related questioning will know.
So here’s what I needs ta know, aiight.
- Who is the scariest villain of all time?
- Why is he or she so damn scary?
- What makes a good villain?
- Is it more important that a villain has a story behind their villainy, or that they are unpredictable?
- Do men make scarier villains than women?
- What’s scarier in a book: the unseen/unknown, or something that’s physically confronting?
These are my scariest keep-me-up-at-night villains:
Fucking terrifying mofos from Return to Oz, the 1980s sequel to The Wizard of Oz. This film starred a young Fairuza Balk (the scary chick from The Craft) as Dorothy, and presented a MUCH less cheerful vision of Oz than its 1939 musical counterpart. As well as electro-shock therapy performed on children, Return to Oz featured these terrifying creatures with high-pitched giggles who rode around Oz on four wheels attached to their elongated arms and legs, and wore scary long-haired masks on the top of their heads. You knew they were coming when you heard the squeaky-squeaky of their wheels.
My best friend from high school and I used to walk around the empty streets of his neighbourhood late at night freaking each other out with sudden declarations of, “You know what would be super scary right now? If the WHEELERS just came around that corner. OMG. Totally.”
Another treat from Return to Oz (obviously this movie has scarred me for life). Mombi was a seriously sinister princess who had a gallery of women’s heads that she had chopped off real women, and she would wear a different head each day.
At one point, just to crank up the creepiness, Dorothy is wandering through the gallery of disembodied heads, all of which are watching her, and comes across Mombi’s real head in a cupboard. She accidentally wakes it up, the head screams “DOROTHY GAAAAAAAALE!” and then the headless body comes lumbering out of the bedroom to fuck Dorothy up. For fucking reals.
Can’t even shout, can’t even cry
The Gentlemen are coming by.
Looking in windows, knocking on doors,
They need to take seven and they might take yours.
Can’t call to mom, can’t say a word,
You’re gonna die screaming but you won’t be heard.
Okay. Now… imagine that said in a sing-song nursery rhyme kind of way by a little girl. Then imagine silent, gliding skull-faced men in immaculate black suits who have stolen the voices of an entire town and are slowly making their way through it overnight, taking seven hearts out of seven chests.
SO brilliantly creepy, you’d never realise it was a plot from an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Hey! It won an Emmy, okay?
There are obviously loads of others that I’ve missed, but these are the three that always stand out in my head (and my nightmares).
So who keeps you up at night?
